Priyatam Mudivarti

day 1 — old san juan — old cob­bled streets, women dressed to kill

As soon as I landed, I crashed straight into my hos­tel (Cas­tro Guest House at Calle de Tanca in old san juan), the loca­tion was the best in town. For a frac­tion of cost at 28$ per room as com­pared to the hotels in the neigh­bor­hood (200$-400$), this is the back­pack­ers par­adise hos­tel. As always my best back­pack­ing trips are with­out a plan. This time, I didn’t even have a guide book. I picked up a map from the vis­i­tor cen­ter, a free tour book and a few brochures. It was already 2pm, I decided to have a quick bite and check out Old San Juan with famed cob­bled streets and Span­ish colo­nial archi­tec­ture, a pre­served town since 400 years. I ended up vis­it­ing a lot of ‘Plazas’ (or old forts), it was mostly a lonely but joy­ful day for me. I must have walked over 5 miles. The best times I had was at the El Morro San Fel­lipe cas­tle; there was a grave­yard with the back­drop of the ocean and a slant­ing wall on the side (where I was sit­ting). The view was breath­tak­ing. I came back at the night, didn’t see any­one in the hos­tel, which was strange, so headed to the Sher­a­ton casino. I made 200 bucks.

They say that the women in Puerto are dressed to kill, I say that they’re dressed to test your man­hood.

day2 — Bac­ardi, Bio­lu­mi­nes­cent bay, Amer­i­can Pol­i­tics

I woke up late, headed to the largest Rum dis­tillery in the world — Casa Bac­ardi. Here, they make 100,000 liters of rum every day. We had to take a ship from the port of Old San Juan, it costs 50 cents per trip, only. The tour is free and of course comes with a com­pli­men­tary rum tast­ing tour, which is free too. After the tour, I came back and took a trol­ley tour of old San Juan (free) before head­ing to Bio­lu­minis­cent bay with Eco­Tours & Adven­tures. I highly rec­om­mend them, they were really good, espe­cially the tour guide — George. He asked me what I do for a liv­ing, I said I’m into com­put­ers for which he gave a look to me as if I told some­thing like … the day is brighter than night. Do we Indi­ans have it writ­ten on our faces that we are in IT? What­ever. I’d rather say I’m a pho­tog­ra­pher or a writer. Read more about Bio­lu­mi­nes­cence here with a small rift of water­flow and these are like elec­tric sparks gen­er­ated, mostly green­ish in color. It’s amaz­ing to watch it right by your side. Even bet­ter, have these water droplets fall on your hand or feet, its like sparkles crawl­ing like mer­cury. One of the girls jumped into the river for a minute and for a moment we thought we were watch­ing a mer­maid. It was beau­ti­ful. On our way back, George enter­tained us (there was an older cou­ple and two girls from Min­neapo­lis). It’s always refresh­ing to see how the locals think about the world, how they speak from their heart. . It’s amaz­ing that such won­ders exist in the world and very few wit­ness it. When you’re pad­dling in your kayak in the lagoon, each drift is coupled.

“You see, the prob­lem with Amer­ica is, they think only in one direc­tion. Money, Money, more mooonnnney. We Puerto Ricans are not like that. We have cul­ture. We belong here. We do things with pas­sion and when we started this tour com­pany we were being threat­ened by the Amer­i­can Tourist com­pa­nies which have tie ups with vir­tu­ally every hotel in the town. We were being crushed,” he said.

I asked him if thinks Puerto Rico should be a state and not just a com­mon­wealth of United States. “No, we would be more happy to be a sov­er­eign coun­try. We have every­thing to sus­tain our­selves. Today, Amer­ica treats us like lit­tle ‘change’. They will send 50,000 troops from Puerto Rico to Viet­nam when every other state in the main­land US sends less than 20,000. You see, my friend money is not everything.”

We were silent. He talked (bitched) for another 1 hour, things about Pol­i­tics, his­tory, Amer­i­cans and why Cannabis is good for your hair. I took his card as he was a wildlife pho­tog­ra­pher too.

day 3 — Day trip to Ponce, quiet dinner

I took a day trip to Ponce. It wasn’t the best trip of my entire jour­ney, besides the tour guide we had was a pretty tough lady. Are you sure you are from Boston? Yeah, why do you ask? Well, I’m orig­i­nally from India. She seems to be pleased now, she thought I was Kal Penn from Name­sake, hid­ing my iden­tity. I said I don’t ike Mira Nair. I dont like Deepa Mehta either. We argued for a while. There were two cou­ples in the tour van. One of them was a very old but sweet cou­ple in their 80s. He was an engi­neer and she was a math­e­mati­cian. She said she did pro­gram­ing in super­com­put­ers 30 yrs back. They were so much in love together, I couldn’t believe. I asked them, are you dat­ing? They said, they’re mar­ried for 56 years. You wouldn’t have seen any other cou­ple like this before. When we asked the old man, when he met the lady, the old woman was actu­ally blush­ing. God, these are the true beau­ti­ful things you would want to expe­ri­ence in life. Thank you. Ponce, is the sec­ond biggest city in Puerto Rico. I didn’t quite like it as it was dirty and too hot. (90’s). We went to a palace built in the early 1900s, it paled in com­par­i­son to what I’ve seen in Rajasthan. We checked out the city cen­ter and the Ponce Museum of Art. I liked the Art Museum, there were some exquis­ite con­tem­po­rary art pieces. And we headed back. I would not rec­om­mend some­one to goto Ponce, not worth it, unless you are dri­ving by south coast when you can pass by. Mean­while, I got a text from the MN girls I met the day before, we were plan­ning to catch up din­ner and drinks in Old San Juan. We met up at a great place. I tried the veg­e­tar­ian vari­ant of a pop­u­lar dish, it was noth­ing like what I tasted before — fried Plan­tains, peas, veg­eta­bles all put in an earth­ern pot. It was good. We went to check out some art gal­leries as it was the “Gallery Month”. There was this place called El Espi­onal. Exquis­ite pieces of art in white clay. And then I saw some­one. She was beau­ti­ful, ele­gant and all by her­self. She had a par­tic­u­lar grace in her walk and the way she held her­self. It’s hard to find such ele­gance these days. Women rely too much on makeup, dress­ing and fake hard to act inno­cent and fem­i­nine. Before I realised I could give her a com­pli­ment, she was gone. And so were the MN girls as they were get­ting late. I didn’t feel like pub­bing alone, came to my hos­tel early at 10 and worked on some of the pics I’ve taken. I slept early.

day 4 — the ele­gant lady

Some­times you wish, that all your wishes just appear out of thin air, even if it’s for a day. Some­times how you wish Des­tiny was by your side.

I woke up late, missed my tour van by 10 mins, I decided to sleep again for another cou­ple of hrs. When I got ready, just when I was shuf­fling the maps in my hand I saw some­one open the door next to my room. I didn’t know there were oth­ers liv­ing in this hos­tel as I never say any­one, not even near the com­mon bath­room. And when I saw her, I was think­ing about des­tiny, per­haps serendip­ity. I saw the ele­gant lady. The same one, from the art gallery. She went away before I could say Hi. I gath­ered some of my maps and headed out­side think­ing that I could prob­a­bly talk to her later but we ended up meet­ing at the front of our gate. She was from Man­ches­ter, UK, a city not too far from where I lived in UK (Leeds). She had plans for the day and I asked her for some sug­ges­tions as I had no plans. We parted our ways in a few min­utes only to meet at another point in the town after half an hour, look­ing help­less. I must have talked about des­tiny before. This time, both of us were con­fused about what to do and where to go. I sug­gested, we rent a car and drive along­side the coast­line, all the way to Rin­con, as I heard the beaches were great there. On the way we could stop at Arecibo Obser­va­tory, the largest sus­pended tele­scope in the world (the place where Golden eye and Con­tact movies were filmed). We agreed and in less than an hour, we hit the road. It was 2pm. We talked a lot and as I guessed, she was the think­ing girl, a great con­ver­sa­tion­al­ist that kept me dri­ving in good spir­its. We checked out the Arecibo obser­va­tory, it was great, espe­cially the museum inside. We hit the road again and con­tin­ued our talks on back­pack­ing and life in gen­eral. At one of the junc­tions, I took a right turn sud­denly, must be one of my bet­ter instincts. It was the best instinctive_right_turn of my life. There was a lovely beach, mas­sive coast­line with sun kissed sand, trees, caves, birds, peb­bles and with absolutely no human inhab­i­tants in the vicin­ity, except for a few surfers at one cor­ner. The next two hours, we walked, almost a mile, pass­ing the caves, bushes and another stretch of the shore, watch­ing the sun­set and tak­ing strides in talk­ing about life. Only this time, it was a bit more per­sonal. I think as Adults, we often have feel­ings of being cut off from the par­adise, of being weighed down by respon­si­bil­i­ties. Child­hood is the golden par­adise we are always try­ing to recre­ate. And some­times, when we travel with no strings attached, ready to explore this world, we embody the longed-for qual­i­ties of child­hood — spon­tane­ity, sin­cer­ity, unpre­ten­tious­ness. In the pres­ence of a fel­low trav­eler, we feel at ease, caught up in their play­ful spirit, trans­ported back to that golden age. I enjoyed talk­ing to her. I never pho­tographed a model before in a beach, some­thing I wanted to try and I was glad she agreed for, grace­fully. The other beaches and sun­sets I’ve seen pales in com­par­i­son to this expe­ri­ence. We headed fur­ther north to have din­ner at Rin­con late night, and we ended up at a beach side restau­rant, with more beer. It wasn’t tough to con­vince our­selves that spend­ing on the beach for another 4 hours, was a great idea. So we stayed till 2am, walk­ing on the beach. Alone. Did we talk? A lot. With beer, of course.

day 5 — El Yunque, beer at the beach and pub hop­ping
I woke up late, as we reached only by 4 ish. We had our own plans for the day but were look­ing fwd to catch up in the night. I drove down to El Yunque National Rain For­est, the only rain for­est in US, hiked 3 trails, the last one was a pretty tough one but by the time I reached, it was noth­ing like what I’ve seen before. There was a tower on the top for view­ing and it was like stand­ing near the pearly gates of heaven. It was all white, 360 degrees around me, so much fog that it was mov­ing fast like the clouds and cov­er­ing the sky. I stood there for some­time try­ing to cap­ture the essence of the nature. Fas­ci­nat­ing. It was already 5, I wanted to drive fur­ther south east and touch sun­set and come back. I drove along­side Route 3, near San­ti­ago beach. There were a cou­ple of other beaches where I had the local Medalla beer, it’s the cheap­est beer in the world — 1$. I don’t usu­ally drink and drive but this time, I gave it an excep­tion. And the beer was mild any­ways. Came back to my hos­tel, took a shower and felt like my legs were try­ing to touch my bum. The next door was locked, I left a lit­tle post-it note at the door, to catch up next morn­ing. Just when I was about to doze off some­where in between mid­night and my dreams, I hear a knock on my door. It was 12:30. She just came back from the same bio­lu­mi­nes­cent tour I went the other day. She asked if I was inter­ested for a drink. Are you buy­ing for me? Yes, the first one. We went to a few pubs, live music bars, of course the famous Rumba café where Dirty Danc­ing, part II was filmed. We came back at 4 am.

day 6 — Caribbean drive alone and salsa

I enjoyed dri­ving alone, the day before. This time, I hit the south and south west, towards the Caribbean coast­line. All the way through, while I was dri­ving, I had the FM radio on. Span­ish music is very inter­est­ing, hip, happy and gen­er­ally very party-going, spe­cially their reg­gae­ton. I went via Route 1, and express­way route 52, crossed Ponce and headed towards the tip of route 116 and route 333. Route 333 was beau­ti­ful. So many beaches in a 20 minute drive. These were my best pics. Walk­ing and being by the side of the beach, all alone is a dif­fer­ent story alto­gether. It’s not true to find out rea­sons not to get con­nected when we have so much beauty in the world, so much life still alive and kick­ing and in these beaches, inhab­ited by very lit­tle humans, it’s a rare beauty to expe­ri­ence a new life. I went to another beach, Santa Beach on route 325 for watch­ing the sun­set and a few Madella beers before I headed back. It was a long drive back, almost 3 hours. I came back to my hos­tel and saw a lit­tle post-it.

Waited till 8 .… see you at neo rican café or the ter­race if you’re still awake!

I took a quick shower and headed to another famous café down the alley called — Neor­i­can café. They have live music with a world music twist. That night was a Salsa night, so the women as usual were dressed to kill. And then a lady came in a red dress. All heads turned around. Did she have a man with her? She was alone. Well, she was the ele­gant lady her­self, the lady in red. We talked with gusto, had lots of beers and danced for the live salsa for the rest of the night. We headed back to the hos­tel, few beers still left in her room. I didn’t mind. We have a bar right in front of the hos­tel and a small patio on the ter­race, so we were there till the end of the last bot­tle. It was pretty late. It was 4. Very rarely, will you meet a girl with such ele­gance, very grounded and focussed in life. Some­times, it’s impor­tant to share with the other per­son what you feel about them, even if there is no pur­pose and expec­ta­tions. Gen­uine­ness never has to pay a price.

day 7 — break­fast and good byes

I didn’t have much time, we went to break­fast together and did our last part­ing ways of good byes and sweet hugs. Its always tough. You know, like the stom­ach play­ing the lit­tle rat race inside, when your intestines are wob­bled up and you feel that you haven’t eaten any­thing from morn­ing but still feel like puk­ing. Life always comes with lit­tle sur­prises. With my back­pack, I went down­stairs, opened the gate, walk­ing down the street and some­thing in me said I should turn back. I turned back. She was there, in the bal­cony, wav­ing good bye. Sweet. The lit­tle moments of gen­tle warmth and hope.

day 7.5 — des­tiny knocks again
I had a con­nect­ing flight at Newark. My flight got delayed for 4 hours. I checked the other flight tim­ings, I went to gate 137 and waited there, for more than 2 and half hours. The gate says — “Man­ches­ter, UK depart­ing at 7pm”. I met the ele­gant lady, one last time. I sur­prised her, she was jump­ing. We had one last laugh together before she left.

Time just flies or is it inertia?

Click here for the pics.