I don't like acronyms but OMG! We arrived Wednesday in San Juan at approximately 5:30 p.m. after waiting 2, yes 2 hours for maintenance issues with our U.S. airways aircraft. I wasn't even sure if I wanted the plane to lift off after that. We all know what happened with the Hudson river plane last year I know it was a bird but still. And Puerto Rico is surrounded by all water. :) Needless to say we made it!
Whisked away by Francisco, after greeting and throwing our bags in the car we toured el barrio de ponce de leon and it's remote surroundings. We weren't expecting the tour but it was definitely good because we would have been lost the first night. I mean we kinda were but even more! We threw our bags in our humble casa where the neighbors appreciate their culture and don't seek to please the thousands if not millions of tourist that trek through their city every year. It's kind of a hostel, Francisco has a two bedroom house a bathroom and a kitchen. $25 a night. a steal for sure!
1st night:
Whisked away by Francisco, after greeting and throwing our bags in the car we toured el barrio de ponce de leon and it's remote surroundings. We weren't expecting the tour but it was definitely good because we would have been lost the first night. I mean we kinda were but even more! We threw our bags in our humble casa where the neighbors appreciate their culture and don't seek to please the thousands if not millions of tourist that trek through their city every year. It's kind of a hostel, Francisco has a two bedroom house a bathroom and a kitchen. $25 a night. a steal for sure!
1st night:
- Grandfathers 24 hour cafe: good eats, vino y sausage
- Following, we set out to find this club called Cups. We felt like we were so close I mean the street it was on, calle san mateo, is imprinted in my head: But we never found it :) De nada por que we learned our area, walked and talked. San Juan can be so still at night.
2nd day & night
- Ventured into Old San Juan where we kinda sorta inconspicuously entered into La Perla, which is deemed a "bad area" to most Puerto Ricans. We entered, taking a few photos and then this girl creeped over to the court yard where we were sitting. Now my curious eyes, which have witnessed La Perla before, wanted to see more. So we got up and began to walk along the street. This area is right across the street from the touristy attractions, divided by a wall, there are a ton of shacks, homes, torn down structures, trash, drugs, lots of drugs but most of all a tight knit community. The girl that creeped over turned out to be, let's call her Maria, a young beautiful puerto rican who told us we shouldn't take pictures of somethings.
UTP(us): Why?
M: This is a really bad area. My english isn't that good but the police come in and we have to watch who comes in. They raided 5 homes just the other night.
UTP: For what?
M: Drugs but they get paid off too sometimes... (interrupted by the walki-talki I didn't notice she had) ...You can walk around just be careful.
She was monitoring La Perla for $50 a day she said. Not bad she said, for not doing too much. And because I'm not a scary person we explored La perla.
- Johnny aka Floco lived in La Perla, he introduced himself as we walked by turned out he had family in Jersey. He paid no rent, had no running water inside and the electricity was rigged to work. He considers himself a liberated soul who lives with passion.
- Left La Perla and headed to the Port, where we found a kite, no joke flying by itself over the ocean-so far out-so we reeled it in. It took like 10 minutes, it was really out there. :) Crazy mayn!
- Ricky, 21, studies criminal justice at U of San Juan and works at a souvenir shop. He 's going to show us around his hometown of Loiza, which is a town full of all black people dominga (sunday)!
- Last stop: The Nuyorican, ahh an amazing place, walked in on a Spanish political poet, Rey Andujar, who definitely knew how to perform. All over the stage, he was, with his magnificent passion, we couldn't understand most of it but the bits in english were powerful. We ended up talking in the street with locals for 2 hours: Emanuel expressed his frustrations with being a commonwealth and not being able to vote for our president. He would have voted for Obama by the way :) The violence. a corrupt system that doesn't care about it's citizen. and the crappy economy.
-Dawn J.
Exposing roots everywhere we go!