Flying over Puerto Rico

Leaving Mayaguez airport on a Cape Air flight
There were only two passengers on this flight... but Cape Air never cancels flights

When I was planning to leave PR for two weeks of Christmas/New Year vacation I decided to take a Cape Air flight from Mayaguez to San Juan instead of driving to San Juan and flighing from there.

The extra expense of flying was more than offset by not having to pay for 2 weeks of parking at SJU, not having to drive there and ... as an added bonus ... seeing Puerto Rico from the air. Here are a few pictures:

Lago de Guajataca
Over the mountains
In the clouds
Approaching San Juan
Cape Air planes at the San Juan airport
Starting the return flight from San Juan Flying over Isla Verde
Somewhere over NW coast... does anybody know where this is?
And over the mountains again.

Now I am thinking of taking a weekend trip to St Croix ( I have previously visited both St Thomas and St John, but haven't been to the largest of the USVIs) with Cape Air: the connection is good: leaving Mayaguez at 9:25 I can get to St Croix in about two hours... and the fair from MAZ is only $240 round trip - less than from San Juan.

Tropical freeze

Holiday Inn in San Juan/Isla Verde boasts of its tropical atmosphere, while, in reality it is overly air conditioned everywhere and its grand ballroom/biggest conference room is a huge refrigerator.

And I am here, since yesterday noon, freezing my extremities off, together with circa 50 fellow sufferers, wrapped in all clothes they brought, sweaters, jackets, woolen caps (some people, obviously knew what to expect, while others did not) even comforters!

I wonder what the tourists say: "I have been to Puerto Rico! Brrrrrr" ????

For me, personally it is not the end of suffering. I have unexpectedly been thrown into four twelve hour (!!!) days of advanced conversational Spanish, expected to discuss - intelligently, if possible - issues like "modelos y tipos de pobreza" and "descubrimiento social???"... or whatever... I can't really think in any language after 12 hours of that!

I knew I would have to discuss stuff like that... I just naively thought that I could do it in English, since it is a US government organized event. Silly me....

Good night, ladies and gentlemen, I am bushed... and frozen, and ... worst of all ... they serve an abundance of very tempting sweets FIVE times a day, so I better take some more insulin, again...

Two more days of frozen Spanish immersion from 7 am in the morning till 7:30 at night.
If I survive this ordeal I'll be back ... on Friday perhaps ???
Wish me luck, please.

Enjoying El Convento

Daughter flew in from Atlanta yesterday afternoon and after driving through Isla Verde and Condado, we reached Old San Juan, where we booked a room in the converted convent, El Convento, now one of "the best small luxury hotels of the world".

El Convento has plenty of charm. The rooms look like they are taken from an old convent - which they are - and equipped with some modern amenities (Flat screen TV, Bose music box). Outside the rooms are long, charming corridors, open to patio El Nispero, where breakfasts and lunches are served

I, a newly minted Puerto Rico resident, loved the patio, shaded by a 200 year old nispero tree, but Daughter, an Atlanta dweller (= lots of trees, lots of shade, not much sun in most of the houses there), who is a sun worshipper extraordinaire, chose to make a - charming - nuisance of herself, and asked that all her meals - whether those from the patio or from the fabulous tapas and paella restaurant El Picoteo
be served on the hotel's garden terrace, a place with a nice view of the cathedral, the city and the sea and which had sun ALL day long. And the staff was mostly happy to oblige.

On the floor above the garden terrace there is another terrace with a cute swimming pool and jacuzzi and an even more magnicent view of the city and the sea. A great place to relax after Viejo San Juan sightseeing and shopping.

Cruising Carribean - San Juan part 2

After lunch we paid a visit to El Morro, a fort built to protect Puerto Rico from an attack of unfriendly powers.

El Morro is huge, still impressive, though a bit gloomy.

Walking from El Morro towards the governor's mansion, you pass this big, big green lawn with the view of coastline.

Then we strolled through the grounds of the governor's mansion

Slowly it started getting darker.

It was mid January, but the street leading to the governor's mansion, and the mansion itself was still decorated for the Christmas past.

We left San Juan around midnight, enjoying flickering city lights from our veranda.

Cruising Caribbean - San Juan part 1

Approaching San Juan by Sea

The cruise harbor in San Juan is located in San Juan Viejo = Old San Juan. It is such a pleasure to walk the streets f this old town, admire its pastel buildings

imagine yourself living in a penthouse of this blue building, with its inviting roof terrace

And suddenly, voila, we have reached El Convento

Who would not stop to shop - or at least browse - in such a nice store like this one?

We felt hungry when we spotted this inviting restaurant

and stopped for a tapas style lunch.

It was pretty expensive, but ooh, so good!

Paradise???

Please close your eyes for a moment and imagine a paradise…..

Done?

Doesn’t your image closely resemble a lush tropical island with palms and sandy beaches?

Didn’t you imagine being somewhere in the Polynesia, Hawaii, Thailand or the Caribbean? Hmmm……..


Now close your eyes and imagine a cold, cold country with lots and lots of forests, thinly interspersed with small villages and a handful of medium size cities. The people there are - statistically at least - well taken care of by their government, have access to education, health care, good quality housing, long vacations and even decent paying jobs. Is that what you’d call a paradise?

The length of the day there is -during summer - more than impressive - it’s unbelievable. Yet, in winter, even in the southern part of the country, the daylight begins around 9 am and ends before 4 pm.

You notice that people, no matter how well taken care of, do not exhibit anything even remotely reminding of a joje de vivre - they are serious, if not gloomy, listen to melancholy songs all day and night long and are prone to alcoholism of a rather joyless variety : in its crudest form straight vodka (good one, though), on a street corner or in a portal of a building, from a bottle hidden in a brown paper bag.


I have been there - it is a beautiful country, full of the wild, stark beauty, thousands of lakes among the deep, dark woods… and filled with honest, friendly, hospitable people. But is it a paradise?

And yet, according to a country ranking based on a combination of UN Human Development Index and the Environmental Sustainability Index created by Yale and Columbia Universities and the World Economic Forum, if you are searching for the best quality of life ( wouldn’t it be the definition of paradise - a place with the best quality of life?) you need to move to Finland, or - in a descending order - Iceland, Norway, Sweden or Austria.

All winter paradises, perhaps. But if you are fond of islands, palms, tropics, what do you do?
I think someone in Puerto Rico had an ingenious idea of remaking Puerto Rico based on Finland as a model (see former post: Stagflation??? Tsunami???).

How could it look like? Let’s see…


First, all the high quality of life paradises have abundant natural values - so does Puerto Rico, so here we don’t have to do much.

Next - they all have very low population density. Puerto Rico has one of the world’s highest.

So, what do we do?

I have an idea: lets make a "Paradise Union" between Finland and Puerto Rico and ship the majority of Puerto Rico’s population to Finland. Finland still would have a very low population density, but now so would Puerto Rico. (And would everybody be happy?)

Third: open a rum distillery in Finland and let relocated Puerto Ricans teach Finns how to have fun on the lighter side, without necessarily always combining it with transcendental meditation of one kind or another. Lets combine sappy sentimentality with the lightness of carefree living!


Fourth: since the named ranking lists Stockholm and not Helsinki
as the most livable city in the world, we’d probably need to make a separate Stockholm-San Juan Union … or make first Helsinki a bit more like Stockholm and then make a Helsinki-San Juan Union as a part of the larger Finland- Puerto Rico Union.

Hmm, I've got to attend to my final preparations for moving to Puerto Rico, but I hope that you got ideas - even better than mine - on how can we improve Puerto Rico based on Finland and/or how to improve San Juan based on Stockholm.

So please, be my guest and post your ideas here as comments. And remember - dream big!