evan

Maj, Amita June and I got off yesterday pretty well from Montreal. It was a bit of a rush at the last minute, since we decided to meet with our general contractor for house renovations just before going to the airport. (Yeah, I never thought I'd have a general contractor or do house renovations, either.)

 There was snow a foot deep in Montreal when we left. It's been a crazy April in Quebec, and a little bit depressing. I love snow more than anyone I know, and even I am starting to get sick of it. Spring already! C'mon!

We whizzed through the lines at Dorval airport -- no crowds, for some reason, even on a Friday afternoon -- and had a really nice flight to Dulles Airport on a little Embraer airplane (leather-ish seats, two across). At Dulles we managed to connect with Jani, who had come in from Las Vegas at about the same time. He was happily esconced in the Red Carpet Club (membership has its privileges), so we took a walk around the airport and had beers, crabcakes, garlic fries and Caesar's salad at the Gordon Biersh in terminal D. Not bad, for airport food.

 The flight to San Juan was pretty uneventful, too. We managed to get a row of three seats across for me, Amita June and Maj, which was pretty comfortable... even if it was row 13... on Friday the 13th! Maj says if you have enough 13s they cancel each other out and you get good luck instead. I guess so.

Jani, being a super-flyer, had the best seat on the plane: a bulkhead exit row window seat. It was pretty impressive; I went over about half-way through the flight and asked if he knew the serial number of our plane. He said, "Not from memory."

We hit the ground in San Juan around 10PM, and the high-school class on the plane burst into cheers. I asked a couple of them about their trip while we were waiting for baggage to come of the carousel. They'd just done their high-school trip to Washington DC, for a week. I don't think there's a highschool in America where kids don't do a Washington DC trip. But it seemed a little funny to me that high-school kids in PR would go to DC to see the sights, just like kids in the 50 states. What does seeing the Jefferson Memorial mean to kids who've grown up in a US protectorate all their life? Seeing the Capitol building, where decisions are made about their home, but where they don't have representatives? It kind of brought home the complex relationship between PR and the rest of the USA.

Getting out of the airport, we were hit with a blast of humid, heavy tropical air. "Jani, you must feel like home!" said Maj. She loves the humidity -- for some reason, it really energizes her. Me, it makes me want to sit somewhere shady and drink painfully icy beers. There was a line of white taxi-vans with the logo "Taxi Turistico" on the side waiting for us. We had some trouble telling our cab driver where our hotel was, but once we got that figured out a $17 trip to Condado Beach got us there. I'm an inveterate cabbie-botherer, but he cab driver didn't understand most of my questions ("How do you pronounce 'Ponce'?") and was more interested in watching the TV on his dashboard.

Our hotel, the Casa del Caribe, has got really mixed reviews on the Internet. I can see why -- it's a small hotel with very rudimentary services, and a big patio with fans and tables and a little library. Jani, Maj and I turned to each other when we got here: "Khao San Road!" The place is simple, clean, and basic, but people who are more used to the frigid sterility of a Motel 6 would probably be a little put off. Anyone who's travelled in the tropics before is going to think it's great.

Maj and Amita June crashed out as soon as we got there, but Jani and I went out looking for late-night food. Our hotel is a block from the Marriott, and a block from the Radisson, so the street was pretty hopping on a late Saturday night. Slick-looking people in nice clothes were waiting in a line-up at the club on the corner of our street. We tried to go see the beach, but we went in the wrong direction. The area we're in had a lot of restaurants open -- a Chinese one, a sushi shop, an Argentinian steakhouse, a Spanish marisqueria. We asked at a liquor store, and they pointed us to a Puerto Rican restaurant next to the 24-hour Walgreen's.

We got a couple of Heinekens and tried out the local specialty, mofongo. Mofongo is a mash of green plantains, mashed up and then fried and then mashed again and then fried again (I think... there might be more frying and mashing going on than that). It was heavy, covered with a rich red sauce, and really filling. I had mine with shrimp, and Jani got a pile of fried pork. Just the kind of fry-up you need for a late-night fix.

This morning Amita June and Maj got up at 8 and had breakfast while I showered. Then, we all went out to the beach right behind the Marriott (which Maj found immediately -- I guess now that I'm married I've got to outsource my sense of direction). It was beautiful -- shallow, turquoise water with gentle waves ringed by a beach of soft golden sand. Amita June loved jumping up and down in the water, and so we hustled back to the hotel (2 blocks away), changed into our suits, and then came back and swam for a while.

Jani slept in, and AJ and Maj are taking a nap now. I'm going to go back and roust them all in a little while, so we can head into Old San Juan. We have the Wikitravel Get-together launch meeting at 3PM at La Bombonera, a historic restaurant in the old town. It should be pretty fun -- Andrew (Sapphire) is coming in quite soon, and we'll see our 5th g-t member, too.

 Downsides so far? For me, it's always about connectivity. I can't seem to get the WiFi at the Casa del Caribe working, so I'm up at the nearby Starbuck's (!) checking email and blogging. And none of our cell phones seem to work. We all have multiple bars on our phones, but when we try to make a call, we get weird recorded messages, then get hung up on. I'm going to try to contact Telus and see what the hell is going on.