San Juan and Vieques March 2013

San Juan and Vieques Puerto Rico . March 2013

 

Where one door closes another one opens, so true.

Winters apartment produces one hurdle after another which is all to do with the Banks inability to get anything right. This leaves us with resulting problem of what are we going to do over the 2 week school Spring break.

Winter has a second job where he is teaching Math on line for the Vieques teachers and students and is asked to go to the island for a few days for face to face teaching. He will be paid and assistance is given with his travel and accommodation.

 

I head over to Puerto Rico a few days early whilst he is still working and stay in a hotel called El Convento. Gorgeous place which as the name implies had a history as a convent amongst other things. It is situated in the heart of old San Juan and close to El Morro, one of the 2 fortresses that guarded the city from the marauders and pirates. These fortresses are found in most of the Caribbean Island and Caribbean South American coastal towns.

 

The streets are reminiscent of all the other old towns I have visited, narrow, cobbled and wonderful old architecture of centuries gone by. Beautifully restored and because a lot of cruise ships stop overnight or depart from San Juan, there are plenty of upmarket shops and restaurants. Also houses MANY souvenir shops and bars!!

 

We eat the first night at an Italian restaurant connected to the hotel and that is very good. I spend my one full day as a tourist visiting the El Morro, the plazas, check out the shops with restraint and find a great cafe called Saint Germaine on Calle del Sol and close to the 2nd fortress St Christobel. Highly recommended to me and I pass that tip on! Fantastic coffee called Quatro Sombras (4 shades). Sadly couldn't find any to bring home.

 

That night we ate at a traditional Puerto Rican restaurant where I had churassco ( not only found in Argentina) and Winter ate Mofongo which is fried plantain and pork cracking broken down in a bowl into a cup shape and then filled with a meat of your selection, the most common being pork. Didn't excite me but the margarita did!

 

We set out for our drive to the ferry Thursday morning. An hour away from San Juan. The cargo ferry takes either an hour or 90 minutes depending on the seas and which ferry you take. An easy trip.

We are met by the house caretaker Mishael who guides us to the house in a barrio called Monte Santo, which Winter found to rent. I am getting very anxious as we are climbing up a hill away from the beach. We JUST manage to get the car up the steep driveway and are met by a charming, extremely clean and well presented little house with incredible views across the barrio and to the Caribbean. We have everything we need there and as we bought provisions from the mainland for the 5 days, we are set.

 

We spend the next 3 days exploring, visiting beaches and generally lazing around the place taking in the views! My favorite being Sun Bay and the little town of Esparenza where the little Malecon ( promenade along the sea wall) is located amongst a few restaurants and bars mostly owned by Gringos and offering gringo fare! We are happy to just have an ice cream and cook for our selves! I am hooked on tostones which are plantain fritters, crunchy outside and soft inside and Winter cooks these so well! Fantastic with guacamole of which we have become experts and believe we have located the perfect recipe but more of that to come!

 

There are 2 main towns on Vieques. Isabella Segunda known as Isabella II, where the ferry comes in and Esperanza where most of the Americans hang out. The Island appears on the surface to be pretty simple and humble but one of the resorts is owned by the W and hence a lot of wealthy Americans and Puerto Ricans stay here or own property here. The roads are terrible and the drivers are lunatics with no regard to road rules. When you enter a beach reserve you are meant to pay a $2 toll per car but that depends if somebody can be bothered being there to take your money or if they close the booth and leave for lunch!

I think that we have selected well to be staying on the hill in the middle of the island as everything is in reach!

 

The beaches are idyllic, soft silver sand with coco palms offering shade and turquoise waters gently rolling in. In some areas the water is warm and others much cooler but no complaints from me! The island is a series of one small bay and beach after another. It has a very Interesting history of one invasion after another, piracy and then eventually used by the USA as a base for armed forces training and bombing where no care was taken of the flora or environment. It wasn't until about 20 years ago after many problems that the island was passed back to the people and the army left. Of course leaving a mess in their wake which is slowly being cleared up but a lot of the island is off limits due to unexploded ordinance.

 

On the days Winter worked I had my first practice sessions of driving on the right hand side of the road avoiding horses and big iguanas who play chicken with the drivers and many of them loose out so a lot of squashed lizards!

The horses have the misnomer of being called wild. They are apparently not. The owners often let them roam wild and steal each others animals which then causes uproar. There have been many accidents involving horses and vehicles and this is when the owners don't come forward. For the most part they look skinny and under nourished. They have been cross bred in the past for particular purposes, military duty, farming and a means of transport. This breed has very hardy hooves which don't require shoes and their back structure and the way they walk means a different way of riding them with little bounces up and down, looks quite funny! They are found everywhere! By the side of the road, along the beach, in town!!!

So I manage to get up and down the drive way, find my way to the beach and to the bakery! There are very few street signs and we had no idea of our address and only found our way by the small highway kilometer counting sign. Turn at 5.3, take left, a left a right then a left! The beach was at 7.8!! the stupid thing is that because of the Spanish influence in days gone by the speed is in miles, the gas in liters and the road signs in kilometers!!

We had 5 nights on the island and really didn't see as much as we should have as there are museums and historical places of interest but I just loved the beaches!

The only concern for us was the lack of telephone communication and Internet as the house had no reception and this mucked up my plans to write and Winters lesson planning. We have all become so tech reliant!!!

We returned to Puerto Rico on the Tuesday evening, stayed there one night with the plan being to return to Miami for the remainder of the school holidays as Winter has some visits to make to the education department and needs to get his resume sorted for his return to The USA mid year. Proving difficult as it is spring break here which is the equivalent of schoolies and there is no available accommodation unless you want to pay a fortune! There is also the big schoolies concert so Miami is bursting at the seams.

Hence one night in Miami and onto the Bahamas for 4 nights!

Winters head is spinning with all the English and I am getting some relief from the Spanish!

This time it's see you all soon and next epistle will be from the Bahamas!

 

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days 16-17 Panama City

Final days 15-17 Panama City.

 

The bus trip from Boquete was uneventful. No further quakes experienced by us and no child molesters on the bus. We arrive in David at 10.15 am to find our bus leaves for Panama City at 11. Esther told us they left every 15 minutes, I am not so sure that she is a liar but either misinformed or doesn't understand what we are asking her.

The bus is a large modern coach and we have been warned to wear warm clothing as the aircon is always freezing (on this she was right). The seats are comfy and recline. There is a toilet but I refrained from drinking too much as the smell was grosse. Pity those who were sitting nearby!

We stopped after 3 and a half hours for a 30 minute break then travelled for a further 3 and a half until we reached our destination. The scenery was very nondescript, flat, dry, uninteresting. That is until the last hour when we hit a small mountain range and a few smaller pueblos along the way.

 

The bus terminal as usual was on the outskirts of the city and an extremely busy place, bus transport is big in these countries. The hotel where we were staying has a desk here and a courtesy bus to transfer us to the Marparaiso. This is our last hotel and Gecko have pulled out all stops on this one. The moment we walked in I wanted to turn around and leave. The walls were dirty, the lift floor had not been washed in months, the floor tiles chipped with large pieces missing, it looked like an hourly rate hotel. The area it was situated in was sleazy, noisy, piles of rubbish everywhere on the street corners and we are warned not to go out at night unless in a group! fantastic!!!!

Things do not improve when I hit my hovel of a room. Walls dirty, hair in sink and shower. I pull back the bed linen to discover a dirty pillow case with hair on it. I head back to reception and they immediately change my room to an upmarket suite? Ha Ha!!!! A similar hovel but pillow case looks less grubby! I really want to move to another hotel, I feel grossed out and for the 2 days that we are there ( the others talk me into staying) I feel like I can't touch anything. The staff are pleasant but that is not enough for me to be able to change my opinion of the place and I am joined by the others on their mortification of the hotel selection. This is not a cheap back packer holiday we are on, we have paid a lot of money and received very little. I paid almost $500 single supplement and that was a rip off as the hotels wouldnt have even cost that for the trip!!! None of us expected 5 star but we all expected clean hotels in safe areas. Not dumps located in unsafe areas. We feel like all along the way we have had the worst rooms in the worst hotels. Meryl puts this down to the local ground handlers. She has been on a continuous gecko tour which started before this and commenced in Mexico then Guatamala and she says the hotels and guides were very good and she was very comfortable but this leg of her tour has been a sharp contrast. We wonder how long it has been since Gecko has actually sent anyone out into the field to check the standards.

 

Linda and Sarah head off to do their own thing and follow lonely planet whilst Davidson and I go with Esther, I am feeling a little embarrassed for her as it looked like she was going to be on her own. I wish that I had gone hungry, her selection this time topped them all off, it was like eating in a bad Coles cafeteria.

 

I have unpacked my travel towel and wrapped that around my pillow case and eventually get to sleep dreaming of bed bugs. Somewhere in my room there has to be moth balls or camphor because it is really upsetting my breathing and I spend the night sucking on ventolin.

 

Panamax entering canal

Note different water levels

The morning dawns to a very hot day but we are looking forward to our city tour. We head off in a nice mini bus to Miraflores which is the first loch in the Panama Canal. A large building has been erected overlooking the loch and it houses viewing platforms, a 4 story museum and tourist centre. The ships start entering the canal at around 9.30, the first one of the day is a Panamax. This type of container ship has been built to specifications for the canal. It has 11 inches clearance either side and is almost the length of the loch and just allows for the pilot boats to fit in behind it before the gates close. The principal is an amazing feat of engineering with the principal of the water flowing from the highest level to the lowest when the manholes at the base of each gate are opened. The ships are assisted by cables to guide them and help them stop but move under their own steam. Getting through this loch takes around an hour and there is another set at the other end of the canal. It takes ships 8-10 hours to traverse the canal completely from the Atlantic to the Pacific. I could have stayed there all day but we were only given 1 and a half hours to see the ships go through, watch the 20 minute history film and get through the museum.

 

We hopped back onto the bus and did a whistle stop tour of the tourist area across the causeway that housed a yacht club and restaurants ( very nice spot) a couple of monuments then on to Panama Vieja, the old town. This is a Unesco Heritage site and is currently being renovated. For me it is what Havana should be and what Cartagena probably was pre rebuild. What a beautiful area, gorgeous architecture, religious buildings that only have the walls standing following a massive earthquake some years ago, lovely old streets and of course the old sea walls that protected the town from marauding invaders!!! We discovered a great cafe run by an expat Canadian and his Panamanian wife and had a quick lunch and very good coffee! Esther was getting tetchy as we were taking too much time and as we had dragged our feet at the canal, the tour time had elapsed and the driver had to leave!!! So we sent them on their way with arrangements for us to do our own thing and we all met up 2 hours later to return by taxi to the hovel. We missed out on the tour of the old town but it was wonderful just strolling around and checking out the indigenous artisans and seeing the local women in their traditional costumes. This is one area that if you had money and a desire to purchase a nice apartment with the intention of a cafe or restaurant in the future, it could be done as this spot is going to take off. The whole place is being rebuilt beautifully and sympathetically. Don't worry family, not on my agenda!!!

Panamanian Uniting Church

Monument to a democratically 3 time elected President. He is at one end and all the people and workers are bowing to him. Central American democracy for you!

View from bridge overlooking canal entry at low tide

Panama Vieja

Monument to Simon Bolivar, he is everywhere in Central and South America

Great street art on the hoardings

Indigenous artisans in traditional costumes

We return to the hotel but after 5 minutes in my room I have to escape. I check out a google map on my I phone and see that we are only 1 block from the water frontage. These are the things that we aren't told! There is very little direction of stuff that we can do in our free time. A 5 minute stroll down our very seedy street and I am on the malecon, that if I had the time, I could have walked all the way into the main city ( of which we saw nothing on this trip). Instead I walked across the bridge that crosses Avenida Balboa and found myself right by the sea wall that I stood on until 2 police men in a golf cart discovered me and told me to get down and walk on the correct path. No sense of humor! Anyway, I had a good walk along the malecon with the water to my right and parks to my left and outstanding views across the city at one end and the causeway we had crossed earlier in the day, at the other. How could we have not been told about this????? Bummer, battery in my camera dies before the end of my walk.

The Malecon

So I have had a lovely day in Panama City and could only wish for a night in a good hotel and another day of walking the old town and the malecon.

The girls on their previous night out had discovered Calle Uruguay where the clubs and restaurants are located and following the advise of the cafe owner in the old town, we head off to a restaurant called Market. Esther was way out of her depth and we could see that she was anxious about her bill but even though we had decided to pay for her we let her suffer a bit in case she selected the most expensive option!!! We had a great meal and even though we were experiencing the seedy side of Panama with our hotel and area, it is obvious that there is a much more sophisticated side to the city and many people there with money and style. I would have liked to have seen more of the city and its urban culture.

Back to the hovel for a last sleep and dreams of bed bugs. I wish that I had an earlier flight out as all I did was wait at the hotel until I left at midday as it was very hot and windy outside and my coughing was terrible.

Unfortunately for me I arrived at the airport with a lot of time to spare and discovered some very nice shops to "look " at. The security was the usual tough pre USA stuff and we had to go through it again before we could enter the departure lounge. The flight was late taking off but this time was made up in the air. USA immigration lines were the longest that I have seen and took over an hour to get through. Must admit that I was a bit worried about re-entering with this cough but I have never been asked so few questions particularly as I was coming from Central America. Did notice a big sign though that stated that due to budget cuts to the immigration and security services that the staff apologies for the long delays and so I wonder if the officers are not being quite so intense as a passive response.

Anyway, who cares, only 5 questions as opposed to the usual 40!

I am staying at the airport hotel tonight as I don't have a lot of faith in air timetables and immigration and thought it could be very late when I arrived. It wasn't too late but it was an easy entry and gave me time to get myself sorted out and visit American Airlines who had messed up my flights for the next leg!!

 

Yes I have another trip planned! I had booked my flights on American Airlines over their website. I am heading off to Puerto Rico next week. BUT instead of confirmation I received an email to call them which I couldn't do from Panama as I didn't have a phone, it transpires that because my credit card wasn't an American credit card, they couldn't process the order. They had however managed to deduct the 97c online booking fee from the card!!!! How does that work? So much for credit cards being world wide!

All sorted now and in my favor as when I booked there were extra charges for luggage etc but now none of that has been added on and I have everything that I wanted!

I am going to have 2 days in San Juan and then head off to an island called Vieques with Winter. He has a contract to teach the teachers how to teach math and is workshopping for 2 days whilst I laze on the beach. Well that's my plan. The island actually has a long history with the USA naval forces which is worth a read for those interested.

 

And so the Central America trip has ended. I have enjoyed the countries, made the most of all the opportunities and activities that have been offered, met some very nice people in my fellow travelers and experienced some discomfort that was unexpected. Disappointed with the tour company but not the tour. What I have discovered is that if you can find somebody to accompany you, then traveling South and Central America is not so difficult as there is transport and there is plenty of information available so if anyone is interested ..............

 

Adios y hasta luego!!!!!

 

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