An American Abroad

Casa Blanca: Ponce de León is Not at Home

August 8, 2018 by 1 Comment

I know I had the right address: 1 Calle San Sebastián in Old San Juan is hard to miss. When you get there, you can’t go any farther.

There was even a plaque by the door identifying the place as Casa Blanca, the residence built for Juan Ponce de León and his family back in 1521. It was also the first fortification built by the Spanish in the San Juan islet.

Juan never actually moved in. He died in Florida after being shot by a poisoned arrow, but his family and descendants lived in Casa Blanca until the mid-18th century.

The place is not just one casa; it’s a whole compound of buildings. On the Sunday that I went, I didn’t see another person there–not even a security guard, a ticket-seller, or a docent. While it was cool to have the premises to myself, I found the lack of information, maps, or informational brochures disappointing. I wandered about the premises without any idea of what I was looking at or what its historical significance was. Gates were shut, but not locked. I wasn’t able to get inside any of the buildings. Supposedly visitors are allowed into the de León family dining room, but if that’s the case, I wasn’t able to figure out how to do it.

There were some pretty gardens and courtyards, though many parts were in need of gardening and repair.

This was the only living soul I encountered at Casa Blanca. Perhaps a descendant of a de León family pet?

Filed Under: Puerto Rico, San Juan Tagged With: , ,

Lote 23

August 7, 2018 by Leave a Comment

A shiny Airstream caught my eye as I drove past. There was a row of buildings cheek-by-jowl in a blighted area of Santurce — and then there was an open space with this silvery sausage of a trailer set at one side. There were people milling around it, but from my car window I couldn’t make out what was going on.

Then one day I went to a movie, and while suffering through the pre-show commercials, I saw this Diet Coke ad.

The image of the attractive Puerto Rican woman buying a Diet Coke from an Airstream food truck clicked with me. I knew where that trailer was. But I didn’t yet know what it was.

A few weeks later, I was looking for a place to meet up with a high school classmate who was visiting Puerto Rico. I asked my colleagues for a casual restaurant recommendation. They told me about Lote 23, a vacant lot on Avenida Juan Ponce de León that had been given over to small food stalls. Two of them operated from Airstream trailers.

At that point it all came together for me.

Lote 23 is an outdoor food court comprised of more than a dozen food shacks and a couple of trailers. It celebrates local cuisine, chefs, and culinary entrepreneurs; Starbucks and Subway need not apply. The space manages the neat trick of being simultaneously hip and down home, chic and welcoming to all, creative and grounded. You eat sitting at picnic tables — who knows who might sit down next to you?

Travel vlogger David Hoffman did a video segment about Lote 23 that shows and explains more about it.

One of the wonderful things about Lote 23 is that you can go out to eat with friends and sample a variety of foods and cuisines. You can get Cuban sandwiches, poke bowls, chicken fingers, stir fry, mac and cheese, and cocktails all from different vendors.

If you go by day, you’ll be kept cool outdoors by the “Big Ass” fans (yes, that’s an actual brand name) that create a strong breeze and by a system of water atomizers that produce a cooling mist.

And if you go by night — my favorite time — you might catch some live music or even a movie. The place is lit with little Italian lights overhead, giving it a warm, romantic glow.

Almost anytime there is a good time for people-watching.

Since I discovered Lote 23 a couple months ago, it’s become one of my go-tos for dining out. Both the concept and the execution are wonderful. This is an idea that other cities could copy with minimal investment. I hope they do.

So as we say in Puerto Rico, buen provecho!

Filed Under: Puerto Rico, San Juan Tagged With: , ,

El Museo del Mar

August 6, 2018 by Leave a Comment

I’ve always been interested in sailing, boats, and life at sea, even though I have very little experience with any of it. Part of this interest comes from my wanderlusting soul, but there’s a geekier element to it too: I like the stuff of sailing. Compasses, sextants, radios, engines, radar displays, and the whole host of related instruments speak to my gearhead side.

I found a lot of that kind of stuff at El Museo del Mar, Old San Juan’s Museum of the Sea. It’s a one-room affair, tucked in amid a row of shops on Calle San Francisco. It’s somewhat misnamed, being a museum of ships and boats rather than of the sea itself.

There were many antique compasses on display. These have a special place in my personal iconography. My one and only tattoo (so far) is a compass rose. I got it in China after I’d lived there a year. It symbolizes a new direction in my life, the plotting of a new course.

These next two instruments were manufactured by the Chelsea Clock Company. I used to live in Chelsea, Massachusetts where they were made. The firm was founded under a different name in the 1880s and has operated under its current name since 1897. In the early 20th century, it made maritime clocks for the US government and automobile clocks for Rolls Royce.

The photo immediately below is a radio room clock. A plaque on the wall by the display reads as follows:

The sinking of the Titanic resulted in the Radio Act of 1912 that required 24-hour radio watches. The disaster also led to clocks in the newer radio rooms featuring three-minute periods marked in red. Those three minutes provided a silent period when only emergency radio messages could be transmitted.

In the US Government specifications for the Chelsea clock, it notes ‘the dial has accurate 4 second marks in red around the outside edge, over which the sweep seconds hand passes, enabling the radio operator to accurately transmit the 4-second alarm signal provided by the International Telecommunication Convention and the International Conference on Safety of Life at Sea.’

The combination barometer/thermometer below is unusual for its curved bulb.

The model ships were awesome — and I use that word in its original sense. The level of detail, patience, and skill their construction requires is astonishing.

And building a ship inside a bottle is an extravagant demonstration of genius.

There’s a display dedicated to the Titanic. I didn’t see much connection to Puerto Rico there, but I understand how the exhibit could be a crowd-pleaser.

Though I haven’t sailed since I was a kid, I would someday like to learn celestial navigation. That might be my own ship-in-a-bottle endeavor: something to do purely for the satisfaction of mastering it that has no tangible benefit whatsoever. Maybe I could learn to use a sextant like this.

I learned something about the gizmo in the photo below. I’d always assumed it was something like a throttle, whereby the captain or the helmsman on the bridge could directly adjust the speed and direction of the ship’s propellers. Not so.

This is actually an engine order telegraph, or Chadburn, after the Liverpool company that originally manufactured units like it. It’s a communications device, not a throttle. When the handle on it is moved, a bell rings in the engine room and causes a dial there to move to indicate the speed and direction ordered by the bridge.

The most unexpected feature of the museum was its display of life belts, which is certified by the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest such collection in the world. Well, it has to be somewhere, so why not in San Juan?

Filed Under: Puerto Rico, San Juan Tagged With: , ,

The San Juan Community Library

August 4, 2018 by 1 Comment

I hadn’t lived in Puerto Rico very long before I asked someone where the nearest public library was. I was met with a puzzled look. Well, there are libraries in universities, I was told. There’s the Puerto Rico National Library, which contains the island’s archives and some specialty collections. But for whatever reason, the idea of a public lending library never really took off here. I found this odd, because my sense is that Puerto Ricans show far more interest in literature and poetry than their stateside cousins.

But while there isn’t a grand public library of the size I’d expect in a city of 300,000, there is The San Juan Community Library. It’s located in a nondescript (OK, ugly) building on the outskirts of the city–almost in Guaynabo–but that made sense. A library in Old San Juan or somewhere downtown wouldn’t be near to the people who’d be likely to use it.

On the Saturday of my visit, Alice, a 77 year old retired teacher originally from Washington State, was the only person working there. She welcomed me and immediately asked me to sign the visitor log. “They want to know how many people come here,” she explained. “It affects our funding. There are so many cutbacks coming, and …” She sighed in a well-what-can-you-do way and gave me a smile.

After recording my visit, I walked through the stacks. The books are housed in one good-sized room and organized by section.

There’s a kids’ area, a young adult stack, a Puerto Rican authors corner, and so on. Books are available in English and Spanish and all the signs in the library are written in both languages.

The library has WiFi and loans out movies on DVD. In total, it has more than 29,000 items to lend. It also has a schedule of community events, including a regular chess camp, book sales, and classes in art, music, yoga, and languages.

I paid $25 for an individual one-year membership, received my library card, and went prowling through the stacks.

When I checked out, I was pleased to see Alice date-stamp the tag in the book I borrowed. I hadn’t seen one of those in years. There was something very personal and homey about it, a more intimate experience than scanning your books into a bar code reader. The whole experience — the modest scale of the library, the organized shelving with occasional pockets of clutter, the rubber stamps, and Alice herself — took me back to my youth. I remember spending scores hours in libraries like that.

It was drizzling a little when I left, but I grabbed this photo on the way out.

From the outside, it’s not much to look at, but inside the atmosphere is cheery, warm, and welcoming. I have to return the book I checked out within two weeks — so I’ll be back soon.

Filed Under: Books, Puerto Rico, San Juan Tagged With: , , ,

Small Art on Calle Cerra

August 1, 2018 by 1 Comment

Not all the artwork on Calle Cerra is of mammoth proportions. There are numerous smaller works too, ranging from signs and door decorations up to murals painted on single story houses and walls.

This little guy is standing right next to the gate that led me to Calle Cerra in the first place.

He shows up again here.

I liked this sign. Psycho Deli, qu’est-ce que c’est?

My mother taught me that unless your last name is Windsor, you have no business having big stone lions out in front of your house. But I think a small metal lion on a security gate would be OK with her.

The twisted street signs of Calle Cerra have become a much-photographed icon of Santurce. I’ve seen pictures of this in various publications. Which way is up and what the hell does it matter?

These portraits are by Boomone787, also known as Xavier Muñoz. He also painted some of the portraits on Calle Loíza, which I blogged about when I first moved to Puerto Rico.

I thought this was interesting: it seems to be a mural depicting a house that the owners would like to live in painted on the front wall of the house they actually live in.

I applaud the sentiment here: “Fight for an education that teaches us to think and not for an education that teaches us to obey.”

This one is just the right size: modestly proportioned so it doesn’t overwhelm the house it’s in front of.

Someone’s a big Spike Lee fan.

The painting below is by Shetrock, who has done a number of murals in the area. I think the piece below that is as well, though I don’t see his tag on it.

These next two are photos of Watusi, a small bar whose patrons sit in plastic chairs out on the sidewalk, chat with each other, and watch the world go by. The art here is once again by Boomone787.

While this isn’t artwork in the usual sense of it, the patio of this Mexican restaurant seemed so well designed and inviting that I had to photograph it.

Filed Under: Puerto Rico, San Juan, Unauthorized Public Art Tagged With: , , , ,

Big Art on Calle Cerra

July 31, 2018 by 2 Comments

On March 29 of this year, a friend messaged me at 8:00 in the evening to say she was locked in at the Santurce Air BnB she’d rented. Literally locked in. She’d misunderstood her host’s key instructions and now found herself unable to open the gate that would allow her to leave. She needed rescuing and gave me the address: 809 Calle Cerra, Santurce.

Using Google Maps, I navigated through the Maria-darkened streets of San Juan. I thought I knew Santurce, but I’d never been to this part before. The apartment was at the top of a flight of outdoor stairs that was accessed from the sidewalk via a red gate to the right of the building. I retrieved the key from a lockbox and released Ang from her Air BnB incarceration. We had a good laugh about it.

I caught only a glimpse of the neighborhood that night. What I could make out looked to be one-third slum, one-third hip, one third light industrial/commercial. I mentally bookmarked it as a place to return to someday. And so four months to the day after I rescued Ang, I returned to check out the neighborhood by daylight. I was delighted to find the largest repository of street art I’ve seen in San Juan.

Some of the murals covered entire sides of buildings. They were clearly not the work of casual taggers.

The one below was done by NM Salgar.

This painting was the most intricate of any I saw. And it’s big; the photo here only shows half of it. I can’t imagine the amount of time it must have taken to work in all those little color dots. It was done by Shetrock, one of the most prolific and talented of the Calle Cerra artists.

I’m not wild about this particular piece, but I admire the ambition behind it.

This tree-shaded mural shows Puerto Rican baseball legend Roberto Clemente wearing his Santurce Cangrejeros uniform. Clemente was the first Latin American/Caribbean player to be enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The size of this mural is a reflection of how big baseball is here.

Below is surely one of the most beautiful hardware stores to be found anywhere.

I’m not certain, but I think the sign in the photo below is part of the artwork. San Expedito (Saint Expeditus) is one of the sketchier Roman Catholic saints. According to the entry on him in Wikipedia,

Expeditus was a Roman centurion in Armenia who became a Christian and was beheaded during the Diocletian Persecution in AD 303. The day he decided to become a Christian, the Devil took the form of a crow … and told him to defer his conversion until the next day. Expeditus stamped on the bird and killed it, declaring, ‘I’ll be a Christian today!’

Many stories circulated about the origin of the cultus of Expeditus. … A case containing the relics of a saint, who was formerly buried in the Denfert-Rochereau catacombs of Paris, was delivered at a convent in the city. The senders had written expédit on the case, to ensure fast delivery of the remains. The nuns assumed that “Expédit” was the name of a martyr, and prayed for his intercession. When their prayers were answered, veneration spread rapidly through France and on to other Roman Catholic countries.

Perhaps the sign is a commentary of some sort about the artwork? Who knows? Well, Shetrock probably does.

The magic of the big bunny is that the artist has imagined a three-dimensional chrome rabbit and painted it showing a contorted reflection of a street scene. It’s a painting of a sculpture that both shows the subject and mirrors the environs.

This Lichtensteinesque comic strip enlargement was four stories tall and hard to photograph. The industrial fan at the woman’s lips will give an idea of its scale.

Three Spanish ships sailing away and leaving a trail of broken, anguished bodies it their wake? I detect allegory in this one.

But if there’s allegory in this mural, it’s lost on me. It’s whimsical and fantastical, but I keep trying without success to divine some larger meaning.

This must be the coolest bus stop in Santurce. I didn’t even notice the old man sitting there until I’d taken a couple photos of him.

This last one was one of my favorites. It’s the only mural I saw that was part of an industrial plant. The artist used the idea that this is a tank of some sort to maximum advantage. Don’t lose hope: the water angel boy is coming.

Filed Under: Puerto Rico, San Juan, Unauthorized Public Art Tagged With: , , , ,

The Pulse Nightclub Massacre Memorial in San Juan, Puerto Rico

July 29, 2018 by 1 Comment

During a chance meeting with a survivor of the Pulse nightclub massacre of 2016, I learned that there was a monument to the victims here in San Juan. That made sense, since a 23 of the 49 people slain that night were Puerto Rican. I’ve been involved in the struggle for LGBT rights since the 1970s, so my curiosity was piqued. I set out to find it.

The memorial is located near the entrance to the Sixto Escobar Stadium in San Juan’s Third Millennium Park, not too far from Old San Juan.

The monument consists of seven right angle trapezoids covered with different colored tiles. There’s a small plaque in the center which says it was erected by the City of San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz, Mayor. Off to one side is a much bigger plaque that lists names of the people who died. The Puerto Ricans are listed prominently, while the other victims are listed in smaller print at the bottom. A translation of it reads:

Let this tribute to life reinforce our commitment to fight hatred – the product of homophobia – with love, product of respect. Our motto reverberates in all hearts: love is love, is love, is love …

To each side of the monument stand four boxes, on top of which are little containers of artificial flowers. Some of them have a rubber wristband around them commemorating the massacre. I don’t think these boxes and the flowers are a permanent part of the monument. At least I hope not. The boxes are made of painted wood and won’t last long.

The memorial is the first and only public monument in Puerto Rico that commemorates LGBT people. I was glad to find it. However, the monument itself is somewhat underwhelming. The abstraction of the plain, small geometric shapes doesn’t convey much to me. The different colors are no doubt a nod to the rainbow flag and the idea of diversity, but the overall effect lacks the profound emotional resonance that I’d expect of a memorial to the the deaths of 23 Puerto Ricans. To put that number in perspective, if the same percentage of people in the States had been killed relative to the overall population, 2,250 people would have lost their lives.

I also found the location of the memorial puzzling. Sixto Escobar Stadium is a decaying and partially-disused athletic complex that as far as I know has no particular relationship to either the gay and lesbian community or the Puerto Rican government.

The monument isn’t located in an area where people are likely to notice it. During the time it took me to take ten photos of it, I saw no other people pass by, even a crowded nearby beach, Playa El Escambrón, is just a few hundred meters away.

These observations aside, the most significant aspect of the monument is that it exists at all. Full props to Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz and the municipal government for erecting it. And though I found the overall design and siting disappointing, the memorial had its intended effect on me. I found myself thinking of the massacre, of the victims and their families, and of the vigil in Toledo, Ohio that Lori Seubert and I attended for the victims. The photo below shows us afterward. It also reminded me of the many people who’ve been persecuted–and even killed–simply because of who they love.

There should be more monuments to the Pulse victims and to the other mass shootings that now happen with such depressing frequency. Horrific as it is, the past should not be forgotten.

Filed Under: Puerto Rico, San Juan Tagged With: , ,

Toroverde Nature Adventure Park

July 28, 2018 by Leave a Comment

I’ve been hosting family and friends recently. When my son Josh and his girlfriend Jessica came to Puerto Rico for a visit last weekend, we went to the Toroverde Nature Adventure Park in Orocovis, a community perched high up in the mountains in the center of the island. Toroverde really doesn’t offer much in terms of “nature.” By my definition, it doesn’t really provide an “adventure” either. But what it does offer is ziplining. And it does that very well. In addition to its Puerto Rico location, Toroverde operates another zipline facility in Ras al-Khaimah, one of the seven emirates that comprise the UAE.

I was impressed by the operation and its staff. They projected competence, assurance, and fun in well-nigh perfect proportions. The effect was to calm the jitters of the nervous while nurturing the spirit of the fun-seekers.

It was a fun, almost relaxing experience. We did seven different zipline runs, each one of which was a little bigger than the one before. I didn’t feel any fear, just the thrill of riding down a wire hundreds of feet above the valleys below.

I began chatting with one of the other members of our group. She was a fellow motorcyclist who favors big boulevard cruisers. Then I noticed that she wore a bracelet that said “Pulse.” She’d said she was from Florida. I put two and two together and asked her if the bracelet was from the nightclub where the massacre happened two years ago. Yes, she said, and in fact she was one of the DJs who was working there on that awful night when 49 people were killed and 53 were wounded.

I was momentarily dumbstruck. What do you say to someone who’s lived through something like that? I told her about the vigil that took place in Toledo, Ohio and how profoundly the shooting had affected my circle of friends. She told me that many Puerto Ricans were among the Pulse victims and that there is a monument to them somewhere in San Juan. I plan to go searching for it.

Filed Under: Puerto Rico Tagged With: ,

El Batey: The Rolling Stones’ Bar of Choice in San Juan

July 26, 2018 by 3 Comments

There’s no neon sign outside of El Batey. No neon signs inside either. And praise be, no TV. The windows have bars, not glass. The floor is uneven and rank. The place is open late til 3:00 or 6:00 or whenever. The bartenders will play Iggy Pop on the sound system on request. It’s a punky-junky dive bar located on a less-touristed street of Old San Juan.

I loved it. I could see myself going there night after night, quietly killing off brain cells with cheap rum as I sat at the bar reading and thinking deep thoughts.

It gave me a strange feeling, and the rest of that night I didn’t say much, but merely sat there and drank, trying to decide if I was getting older and wiser, or just plain old.
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary

There’s a lot of legend attached to the place. The Rolling Stones drank there when they were on the island. Some claim it was Hunter S. Thomson’s watering hole when he lived in San Juan, the place he’d go to gather the experiences he would later thinly fictionalize in The Rum Diary. Maybe. In any event, it’s the kind of place where you COULD have seen him back in the day.

The word “louche” doesn’t even begin to describe it. Inside, the walls appeared to be sweating. (No, I hadn’t dropped acid.) Scribbled signatures covered the smudged wall space like a net of black words, an effect that felt strangely cozy, but also kind of insane. The floor looked sticky from spilled drinks. The fragrance, a musty eau-de-ashtray combined with damp, ancient stone. In the dim, amber light our fellow customers all looked a little unwashed. You immediately got the message: this was not a frozen cocktail with umbrella kind of place.
― Laura Albritton, Uncommon Caribbean

It’s not a place for the rule-bound or the asthmatic. Despite a citywide smoking ban in restaurants and bars, people puff away in El Batey as if it were 1966. And the bathrooms are not for the squeamish or the dainty.

A notice scrawled on the men’s room door reminds people that access is limited to “1 (one) @ a time!”

The bar pulls off the trick of being simultaneously homey and deeply alien. Palimpsests of graffiti cover every square inch of every wall and part of the the high ceilings. How drunk would you have to be to stand on someone’s shoulders or climb a rickety ladder to write on the fifteen foot high ceilings? The writing is so multilayered as to defy reading and much of it seems to be in the Drunkish language, contributing to the strangeness of the place. But knowing that 50 years worth of earlier patrons appreciated the place enough to leave their mark makes the place seem intimate and human.

There are only two actual signs in El Batey. One reminds you of where you are. And the other reminds you that the president is a wanker — as if you might forget either of those things.

Business cards and other ephemera make up the lamp shades that surround the dim lights above the bar. A couple of clamp lamps light the corners of the other rooms. It’s dark, the vibe is chill, and the promise is anything goes.

And over in the corner, an old jukebox awaits quarters, hoping that someone will play “Paint It Black.”

Old God sure was in a good mood when he made this place.
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary

(Some of the photos in this post were taken by Josh Trumm)

Filed Under: Music, Puerto Rico, San Juan Tagged With: , , , ,

At Rincón They’re Walkin’ the Nose

June 8, 2018 by 1 Comment

It’s one of those rock lyrics I’d heard a hundred times and never understood, straight out of 1962, when a great song was one that sounded just right blasting out from the monophonic tube-powered radio speaker mounted in the center of the dashboard of your father’s mid-fifties Oldsmobile. It was Surfin’ Safari, the title song from The Beach Boys’ debut album. The chorus was easy to sing along to, but some of the verses were incomprehensible. This one, for instance:

At Huntington and Malibu
They’re shooting the pier
At Rincón they’re walkin’ the nose
We’re going on safari to the islands this year
So if you’re coming get ready to go

I’m from Toledo, Ohio. I’ve also lived in Boston, southwest China, and Tunisia. “Shooting the pier” and “walkin’ the nose” meant nothing to me. And I’d never heard of Rincón.

Then I moved to Puerto Rico and began hearing about a town on the west coast of the island where the surfing was awesome and the vibe was chill. I started noticing cars sporting this sticker:

So on Saturday, Lori Seubert and I made the two and a half hour drive there from San Juan to check it out. We wound up here:

It only took a few minutes for us to conclude that we’d come to the right place.

We began the day at Club Nautico, a breezy bar open to the the elements on two sides. They were doing a fair business at noon on a Saturday. The barmaids were friendly, the beer was cold, and surfboards hung from the rafters. It looked like the kind of place you could waste your days dissolving into cocktails, tall tales, and paradipsomania.

Properly lubricated, we headed for Maria’s Beach and stayed near there the rest of the day. We parked by a row of tourist shops, a café, and an oyster and clam bar.

We hiked the road up to the century-old Punta Higüeras lighthouse, a handsome landmark surrounded by a lovely public park.

Lori, of course, made friends with the native fauna right away while I admired the scenery from the high ground.

One of the stranger structures of Rincón was a blue building that, 55 years ago, housed an experimental nuclear reactor. Construction of the Boiling Nuclear Superheater (BONUS) Reactor Facility was begun in 1960. The plant operated between 1964 and 1968 and then was decommissioned due to “technical problems.” The building was decontaminated bit by bit over the next four decades and was turned over to the Puerto Rican government, which attempted to repurpose it as a museum. It’s unclear whether it still functions in that capacity. It certainly didn’t look like a going concern on the Saturday we were there. There was a fence around the property and a lone car in the lot, presumably belonging to the security officer patrolling there. The reactor dome made a bizarre backdrop to the beach scene.

It seemed reckless to build an experimental nuclear reactor just a couple hundred meters from the beach, especially in a community where tsunami evacuation signs are posted on every road. The reactor is just a few hundred meters from the beach. Fukushima, anyone? I couldn’t help but think that the authorities who sited it there probably figured “hey, let’s put it in an out-of-the-way corner of Puerto Rico–if it blows up, who cares?” In another weird twist, the building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.

Later in the afternoon, we returned to where I had parked the 4Runner. We stopped into the T-shirt shop and met Michael, tall, tan, muscular, and handsome with sun-bleached brown hair to his shoulders.

His father had been one of the American hippies who came to Rincón to chase a dream and a wave and the next good high. There he met a woman who had a place there and they never left. And they apparently passed on the hippie aesthetic to their son.

After chatting with him and buying a couple shirts, we went down to the beach to watch the sunset.

Lori and I weren’t the only couple enjoying the sunset. Down the beach from us a bride and groom were being photographed while their wedding party hung out and watched. Another couple watched the sun go down from their surfboards and then paddled in together.

When there was no more of the sunset to be seen, we headed to the café we’d passed by earlier, ate pub grub, and listened to a three-man band doing covers of old Santana tunes. At one point, Lori shot pix of me while I was perusing a tourist info table and plotting our next Rincón visit.

Oh yeah . . . my surfing friend Shannon tells me that “walking the nose” is about the same as ten toes on the nose, a/k/a hanging ten. It means to surf while standing at the very front of your board. It can only be done on a longboard by the most highly proficient surfers.

Filed Under: Music, Puerto Rico Tagged With:
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