Bread and Bread

Friday, 11/1 1. san francisco, patron saint of animals, merchants and stowaways San Juan felt like arriving back home after our vacation-within-a-vacation. Outside our hostel, Posada San Francisco, we saw the guy from our kayak tour we’d been calling “San Francisco” (for the city in California, not the street in San Juan that our hostel was on). Posada San Francisco on Calle San Francisco. “Are you stalking me or am I stalking you?” He had a lilting Indian accent. We invited him to join us for dinner after we all got a chance to check in and change. This time our room was on the sixth floor, similarly spare but to the point of having no shelves or clothing rods in the closet. As with our previous room, there was a wooden cross above the bed. No bible in the drawer, though, because there are no drawers. One of the nice things about traveling is that you don’t necessarily learn the most textbook things about each other first. We learned that Hakim had gon...

10/31, Thursday 1. life of oh my The last part of our day in Esperanza was a kayak tour of Mosquito Bay (not to be confused with Mosquito Pier ), a shallow lagoon inhabited by microorganisms—three hundred thousand per gallon—that glowed when anything touched them. After a bumpy van ride to the water, our guides,   Carlitos and Joshua, led seven kayaks of tourists—mostly Californians—into the dark bay. We all had blue lights clipped to the front of our boats, and Carlitos had a green light in his springy pontyail (guys with would-be Afros can rock the ponytail look so much better than guys with thin, silky hair). When we dipped our paddles in the bathtub-warm water, they made bluish white trails, like glow-in-the-dark bubbles. The kayaks across from ours had thin glowing lines at the spot where yellow plastic touched water, like Hondas bound for a late-night racetrack. Zigzagging fish became bolts of lightning. When we cupped our hands, we cradled stars. I decided A...

10/30/13, Wednesday We asked a cab driver to take us to Mosquito Pier, the snorkeling spot recommended by the guy at Blackbeard, where we rented our snorkel gear (everyone had an opinion about which beach was best, but we gave his a little more weight). She dropped us off in the middle of a long needle of land with waves on one side and still water on the other.  I didn't have my camera with me that day, but luckily there is the internet, to remind you your experiences are not unique. We saw a sandy spot, but how to get to it without hacking our way through the jungle? Then a small road appeared out of nowhere, and there was the beach. Snorkeling, it turned out, was easy and fun. You could swim and breathe at the same time! And look at things! The breathing had always been the hardest part of swimming for me to figure out. We finned along a wall of rocks, taking in the tiny tropical worlds inches below the surface. Layers of coral and gray-green grass and dark plu...

10/29/13, Tuesday 1. welcome to the rainforest After a morning of thwarted laundry, we set out for El Yunque , the rainforest and national park in the center-east of the island. As soon as we saw a sign that said Welcome to the Rainforest, something in me shifted—a tension I wasn’t even aware of released, and I started to cry. So I know, now, that hypnotherapy is working, because the rainforest is my mental safe place. Don’t laugh. Que pasó, El Yunque? We explored a visitor’s center built like a tree house and sat impatiently as a bossy, faux-friendly guide narrated a map that only had one road. Then we took off up that road toward the mountainous cloud forest in the heart of El Yunque. I tried not to be the asshole who constantly talked about one rainforest expedition while on another. But: El Yunque was quite American with its well marked roads and trails, whereas Bako was wild and tricky to navigate. I remembered B staying behind at the cabin, fuming that Ryan ha...

We interrupt the Blog As You Are Project to bring you the Way Too Many Details From My Puerto Rico Trip Project! I feel very old-school, posting excerpts from my travel journal almost a week after returning. A proper modern traveler would upload pics as she went and not use much text at all. But one of the best parts of the trip was the internet detox component, which I’m doing my best to maintain now that I’m home. So far this has translated into checking Facebook five times a day instead of fifteen. It’s an uphill battle. 10/27/13, Sunday 1. just like ricky martin After a long travel day and a logistical morning, we made it out to Corozal, a hilly inland town where we had a date with Rafael to ride horses. AK found him through a confederacy of tourist activities called PR For Less. Dos Hermanos ranch was a small, square, flat-roofed house painted light green. Behind it, a stable with rusting, corrugated tin walls. Dos Hermanos, un camino. A handful of scruffy, fr...

Here’s an unsurprising fact: Back-to-back trips to Puerto Rico and the Salton Sea are wonderful for the mind (I relaxed, did lots of travel journaling, and my cycle of cancer-death-baby thoughts hit an all-time low) and kinda rough on the body (I’m tired, covered in mosquito bites and have a couple of mofongo pounds to work off). But enough about me—onto AK’s account of her vacation with me. AK’s Blog As You Are post is a departure in that it chronicles an exceptional day, not an everyday day. But even fabulous tropical vacations include confusing iPhone directions and cheerily sexist tour guides. I’m excited that you guys finally get to hear AK in her own words, after years of seeing her through the filter of me (she says I mildly misquote her, which I’m sure I do). Now, with no misquoting…. Unlike on our trip to London, it was not hard to find a good mojito in PR. Or a dozen good mojitos. Saturday, Oct. 26 9 am—Alarm on my iPhone goes off in our private room at the ...