Puerto Rico Archives - Page 3 of 3

Gilligan’s Island, Puerto Rico

March 23, 2018 by James Trumm Leave a Comment

Yes, Virginia, there is a Gilligan’s Island.

The trip began when my houseguests — my son Spencer and his friends Kyle and Alex — were looking for someplace interesting to go where they could see the Caribbean side of Puerto Rico. When they told me they want to go to Gilligan’s Island, I thought they were kidding. But they insisted that it was a real place, right here in Puerto Rico. It took a web search for me to admit that the place did indeed exist.

So we packed up the 4Runner Sunday morning and headed south toward the coastal town of Guanica. From there, our plan was to catch the ferry that supposedly ran to the island, which was just off the coast. But when we got there, we discovered to our dismay that tickets to the ferry were sold out for the day. So we drove around, stopped by a few houses and hotels, and asked if there was anyone we could hire to take us to the island. We finally found our skipper and his motorboat, and for a few dollars we started from a tropic port aboard his tiny ship. We got there at about 1:00 and asked the boatman to return to pick us up at 4:00. We wanted the three-hour tour.

The sea there was warm, calm and clear, quite a difference from the Atlantic waters I’ve been used to. The island was surrounded by mangroves and thronged with Puerto Rican families taking their ease. The choicest real estate had already been claimed by people with tents, Hibachis, boom boxes, hammocks, and beach chairs, but we managed to find a sandy inlet by the mangroves to make a little camp of our own.

We soon had company.

The water was shallow and the seafloor was smooth enough to allow us to sit right down and admire the view.

When our time was up, the skipper returned for us at the appointed hour and we headed back to San Juan.

Filed Under: Puerto Rico, Travel Tagged With: Gilligan's Island, Puerto Rico, Travel

The Hurricane Relief Pirates

December 18, 2017 by James Trumm Leave a Comment

When the history of Hurricane Maria is written, I predict it will say that hurricane relief work was too important to be left to the experts.

Yes, the Red Cross is here. So are various faith-based charitable organizations. So is the government. These organizations have done a lot of good work. But from what I’ve seen, the groups that formed spontaneously before the floodwaters had even receded have done the best work.

The people who work with these nameless groups are the most interesting people I’ve met in Puerto Rico. In my own personal vocabulary, I call them pirates. I hope they don’t mind. They sail into a neighborhood in SUVs instead of ships, disembark waving lithium-ion power tools instead of cutlasses, swarm over a house that needs a roof or a family that needs fresh water, and then go on to the next target. They don’t do paperwork. They don’t ask for money. They don’t have meetings. They don’t use PowerPoint. They don’t wear matching t-shirts. They work with other groups without any territorial pissing.

In the aftermath of the 2000 Haiti earthquake, I trained to be a Red Cross disaster shelter manager. I found the training disheartening. More than half of it consisted of learning to fill out the Red Cross’s myriad forms and to use their convoluted acronyms. It often seemed like the forms were driving the curriculum much more than the needs of disaster victims.

The pirates are the Red Cross’s opposite. They’re small, but sophisticated. They’re flexible, but focused. They have leaders, but no one has a title. They’re technologically sophisticated, but not equipment geeks. And above all, they are caring. And they keep working.

Here are some of the people I’ve been proud to work alongside.