Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic
                                       
A travelogue by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1992 Mark R. Leeper

                                      
   _September 7, 1992:_ I begin this log on September 7, 1992, at 3:40
   PM. And it really starts with an ending. We have just finished about
   96 hours at a science fiction convention in Orlando. Evelyn will cover
   the convention in her con report, so there is little point in me
   covering that part of our trip. I will say that for me at least the
   convention ended very positively. As we were waiting for the shuttle
   we lined up with a bunch of perfect strangers. At least I thought so.
   The woman ahead of us in line looked at me and said, "You must be
   Mark." She knew Evelyn from one of the parties and apparently knew of
   us as a couple. It turned out that someone else in the line had also
   heard of us. He was talking about science fiction at AT&T and he also
   recognized Evelyn and me. On the way in, he was asking if we met
   through science fiction. (Actually, we didn't. We met in high school
   when I was the top mathematician in the Western [3]Massachusetts Math
   League and Evelyn was the top female mathematician.) But I love to be
   recognized by someone who has read my film reviews or through
   something else I have written. I remember going to a small science
   fiction convention sometime around 1975. Somebody saw my name and said
   she thought she had heard of the Leepers before. I told her I thought
   it was very unlikely. These days, through my willingness to write a
   little and to say yes when someone asks for a favor, a fair circle of
   people know who we are. I am sure Evelyn is known by more people than
   I am, but that's fine too. And Evelyn said that at one party about six
   different people told her they liked her film reviews. She had a
   button made up saying, "No, _Mark_ is the one who writes the film
   reviews." I had a button saying, "No, Evelyn is the one who does the
   book reviews."
   
   Generally after a world science fiction convention when you get on the
   plane, you will see a fair number of people who very obviously came
   from the convention. Curiously, this time I didn't. It's almost like
   nobody was flying from the science fiction convention to San Juan. Can
   it be that there are not a lot of science fiction fans in Puerto Rico?
   
   Well, we sat waiting for the plane and watched a little girl with big
   Spanish eyes play on the floor while her mother watched her. And the
   little girl flirted with us.
   
   It was tough to hear the boarding announcement since the public
   address system had burned out and announcements were being made by a
   bullhorn. But we are now on the plane. The Captain is making
   announcements in English and Spanish, though a little less
   enthusiastically when in English. When we take off, the man across the
   aisle from me crosses himself. That is something you rarely see on
   most of the flights we take. Puerto Rico is still strongly and
   emphatically Catholic.
   
   Dinner on the plane was chicken and rice (arroz con pollo). I tried
   listening to the in-flight musical program, but there was something
   wrong with the drive mechanism on the cassette and even the classical
   channel sounded almost as bad as punk rock. I pulled out one of the
   travel books and started reading the history of Puerto Rico.
   
   History of Puerto Rico, Part 1: Some time around the First Century
   A.D., Venezuelan Indians apparently went in canoes and found the
   island we call Puerto Rico. Why they should travel this way has not
   been recorded, but it has been suggested that they may have wanted to
   find a shorter route to the equator. Fortunately, there were no
   inhabitants on this island to misname. In 1493, Columbus showed up to
   claim the island. He had been given the island by Ferdinand and
   Isabella of [4]Spain, who didn't even know the island existed, but
   assumed it was theirs to give away whether it existed or not. History
   records a great confusion in the alleged minds of Ferdinand and
   Isabella as to what actually belonged to them and what did not. It is
   not clear if the Indians on the islands were the original Indians, but
   when Columbus arrived, the Indians were the Tainos. From the Tainos'
   point of view, these were white gods who came ashore. Of course, the
   white gods seemed to be fixated on the yellow jewelry that the Tainos
   made from the pieces of metal that washed up on shore. Columbus sailed
   back to [5]Spain with more fabulous tales for Isabella.
   
   In 1508 Ponce de Leon made a secret deal with the governor of the
   Caribbean that he would mine Puerto Rico for the governor if he could
   keep a third of what he mined. The fly in the ointment was Diego
   Colon, son of Christopher Columbus (Cristobal Colon). Isabella had
   granted the Colon family the right to rule the New World. Diego had a
   better idea of how to mine the island: he could enslave the Tainos and
   get them to do the work. Telling [6]Spain he would teach the Tainos
   Christianity, he enslaved 5500 of them and put them to work in mines,
   thereby teaching them the value of Christian love for all people. He
   got the adult sons of the rich in [7]Spain to come and become noblemen
   who were in reality slavemasters. These were nobodies who were the
   children of somebodies in [8]Spain. They would be called "child of
   somebody" or "hijo de algo"--later shortened to "hidalgo." This
   wholesale enslavement was not what Ponce wanted and he detested the
   abuse of the Tainos, but the smell of gold had now driven the Spanish
   nobility crazy. Ethical treatment of the Indians would slow the gold
   production. Anyway, the enslavement policy was really ethical because
   it was making Christians out of the Indians. So of course Christ was
   on their side and you can't get more ethical than that, can you? Well,
   can you? Of course, the Spanish still let the Tainos think that the
   white men were gods. In 1511 the Tainos decided to test the hypothesis
   by seeing what happens if you hold a Spaniard under water. Of course,
   the Spaniards had claimed to be immortal so what harm could it do to
   grab a Spanish boy and hold him down in the surf? Unfortunately,
   something went awry and the immortal boy died. Now they'd done it.
   Knowing the Spanish capacity for forgiveness, the Indians knew they
   were dead whatever they did and decided to revolt. The revolt spread
   to the areas ruled by the hidalgos. However, where Ponce's kinder
   policies were in effect, the Indians did not revolt. Ponce, however,
   did have to crush the revolt and he himself enslaved 200 Indians.
   
   [9]Spain still did not accept Ponce's policies and jolly old Ferdinand
   ordered to try another land. Ponce was sent away to explore a
   peninsula up to the northwest, a place called La [10]Florida. Besides,
   this conflict with Colon was making Ponce old before his time.
   
   (More on this history to come.)
   
   There was a man sitting in the row behind me on the other side of the
   aisle who saw the travel book I was reading and wanted to look at the
   pictures and asked if he could see it. His English was fine but he
   pointed to his eye when he said "see" just in case he had the
   vocabulary wrong. He looked quickly at the book. It turned out he was
   a photographer, I think. He spent most of the flight taking some
   pictures out of a small album and putting others in. I was trying to
   see what kind of pictures and he saw that and handed over one of the
   albums for me to see. All I could really tell is that the setting was
   [11]New York City and there were several photos of Miss Puerto Rico
   Tourism.
   
   I practiced a little of the old Espanol on Evelyn and somewhat
   surprised her that in some cases my memory for vocabulary was better
   than hers. She is a lot better than I am at understanding Spanish, but
   surprisingly in speaking and making herself understood, the margin is
   a lot narrower. I say that is surprising because, of course, her
   father is a native speaker. Raphael "Ralph" Chimelis was born on a
   small farm in Puerto Rico. The Chimelis family came from [12]Spain
   and--as supposition based on the un-Spanishness of the
   name--presumably from [13]Greece before that. From some family
   upheaval, Raphael moved to the Dominican Republic. That side of
   Evelyn's family is somewhat colorful and also may be somewhat
   cantankerous. Evelyn glories in the story that her grandmother would
   argue so much with the minister running her church that eventually she
   was asked to leave and never come back. There was a lot of behavior
   that was scandalous in its own day, but is now a bit tamer by current
   standards, things like people keeping mistresses or unmarried people
   living together or parents and children not speaking to each other. I
   have never kept track of all the stories. I guess the family had its
   problems respecting conventions and authority. I admire that.
   
   Anyway, so young Raphael grew up in Puerto Rico and the Dominican
   Republic. I think it was the Puerto Rican farm he described one day.
   It sounded small. He described a pen where they kept two turkeys, "So
   when you were a boy you had two turkeys?" I asked. "Yes." "Then when
   you grew up you did it again?" He thought that was very funny.
   (Apologies to Evelyn's only sibling, Ron Chimelis, who at one point
   was the youngest newspaper owner in the country and has since been a
   popular radio personality in Western [14]Massachusetts and a sports
   writer for the Springfield newspapers.) But I am getting ahead of
   myself. Raphael moved back to Puerto Rico to finish his schooling
   (through eighth grade) and then moved to [15]New York City. These were
   hard times during the height of the Depression, but Raphael (now
   Ralph) grew up in poverty and claims he didn't find out until years
   later that there was a Depression.
   
   Ralph met and married Florence (nee Fanny) Berlin, a Jew from the
   Bronx. I guess the relationship, coming from two so different
   cultures, strikes me as unusual. Somehow it reminds me a bit of I LOVE
   LUCY, particularly because Florence even now seems to dress often in
   the style of Lucille Ball on that program. Both had an affinity for
   sundresses and bright red lipstick.
   
   When the war came, Ralph went into the Army. When it ended, he left
   briefly but was recalled to the Air Force during the Korean War and
   eventually attained the rank of Chief Warrant Officer. I guess his
   work was always more in logistics than in actual fighting. He was
   ready to retire in the 1960s and go back to school when the Air Force
   cut his orders to go to Vietnam. There he really was near action and
   was in positions that were shelled, including Bien Hoa and Ton Son
   Hut. When he finally was discharged, he decided to make himself a
   college professor of Spanish. He had a bachelor of general education
   from the University of Omaha that he had gotten during his time in the
   Air Force and went back to the University of [16]Massachusetts to get
   a master's degree. At the University of [17]Massachusetts he was
   delighted to discover that his daughter was becoming associated with a
   gentleman with both a great mind and a sharp wit. (I am modest too.)
   Ralph became a Spanish professor at Western New [18]England College.
   One of Ralph's brothers had a Ph.D. in astronomy and is a professor
   and another one used to pick tobacco. Quite a lot of diversity there.
   
   So the purpose of this trip was for Evelyn to find her roots and for
   us to see the Spanish culture.
   
   Well, we got to San Juan airport and rented a car. We got a black
   Mazda. Actually we got two. The first one had a brake warning light
   that would not go out. Finally, we got going for real, actually moving
   out and seeing San Juan at night, actually traveling, actually getting
   ourselves totally lost. We were staying at a guest house called the
   Tres Palmas and the map they sent us was out and out wrong, and in
   addition what was right was pretty hard to understand. The map from
   Hertz was a little better but the street names were in tiny type that
   was nearly impossible to read by the dome light.
   
   We got to Tres Palmas and found our room small and shabby but
   generally clean. The room is just about big enough for a double bed
   with two feet on either side. There are maybe six feet from the foot
   of the bed to the door. There are two chests of drawers, but the
   bigger one is treacherous and I have decided it is best to ignore it.
   The drawers have lower tracks but no upper tracks. If the center of
   gravity gets pulled out beyond the edge of the frame, the drawer and
   its contents fall out onto the floor. The bathroom is very tiny, just
   large enough for a toilet, a tiny sink, and a shower. The only place
   to lay stuff for use at the sink is on the tank of the toilet about
   three feet away. There is no hot water but there is slightly warm
   water if you are willing to sacrifice water pressure. At the end of
   the room where the head of the bed is, there are tiny ants, mostly on
   the night stand, but also on the bed occasionally. The room's best
   features are a small refrigerator and a color television with cable
   that gets some mainland programs, but also such interesting local
   color as cock-fighting. The latter has the bloody spots edited out.
   There is apparently no PRSPCA.
   
   The currency in Puerto Rico is the worst and most difficult to figure
   out of any country we have visited. Usually a country will have two
   units of currency, and usually they will have a ratio of 100 to 1. The
   coins will have a numeral and the unit of currency. Well, they start
   out okay with the big unit being something called a "dollar" and with
   the bills at least having numerals to show how many dollars they
   represent. Of course, they are all the same size, so it is really
   tough to tell them apart by feel. I pity a blind Puerto Rican.
   
   The coins have denominations spelled out in words that are not even in
   the local language. They say things like "one cent" or "five cents";
   "1 cent" and "5 cents" might be better. Now we get into fractions as
   well as words. The big coin says "quarter dollar." If I have my ratio
   right, and I am not sure I do, this is 25 cents. I also got in my
   change something from what must be a foreign currency. It is smaller
   than a cent but it is silver, suggesting it might be more valuable
   than the one-cent piece. It is labeled "one dime." None of the other
   coins or bills say how many dimes they are, so I assume it came from
   some previous system of currency or some other country. I guess it
   does say "United States" like the others, but no other coin measures
   its value in dimes. I think what I'll have to do is ask someone to
   break a quarter-dollar and give me my change all in dimes and I'll see
   how many I get. I can easily see how this weird currency could drive
   the Puerto Ricans to the bughouse.
   
   Well, I ended the day watching a bad Hercules film on television and
   working on my log.
   
   _September 8, 1992:_ I was up early writing in my log. At 8:30 AM we
   had continental breakfast. That means coffee, coffee cake, doughnuts,
   and orange juice. Now before I was married I would occasionally stay
   in the basement of Evelyn's parents' house. At breakfast I learned to
   avoid the orange juice. It had a very funny flavor which to me tasted
   as if it was mentholated. They all tasted it and it tasted fine to
   them. They thought I was nuts. Flash forward to the early days of my
   marriage. Evelyn prepared frozen orange juice. One sip and "Blah, this
   tastes mentholated. Evelyn, exactly how did you make this orange
   juice?"
   
   "The usual way."
   
   "Describe it exactly."
   
   "Well, I bought the frozen orange juice concentrate and let it thaw in
   the refrigerator for a few days to make it easier to mix. Then I...."
   
   "Does your mother thaw the orange juice?"
   
   "Sure, most people do to make it easier to mix."
   
   "I don't think most people do and I know the can doesn't say to thaw.
   Next time let's do it exactly how it says on the can."
   
   Today was my first taste of mentholated orange juice since then. And
   it was from a refrigerator pitcher that looked like it hadn't been
   washed in a while.
   
   Our first stop of the day was a visit to El Castillo de San Cristobal.
   This is the largest fort in the Americas. It majestically overlooks
   the Atlantic, though it was built more for land attacks than for sea
   attacks. It was built at the throat of land that separates Old San
   Juan from the rest of the island.
   
   Now I have a bit of a problem with Spanish military history. I am
   willing to admit that Ferdinand and Isabella needed to stop Moorish
   expansion into [19]Spain. They did that in 1492. And I suspect that
   [20]Spain may have been in the right in the Spanish-American War. In
   between those events I know of no military conflict that in which
   [21]Spain participated for which I think of [22]Spain as the side
   morally in the right. If in such a conflict it is unclear who is
   right, I will generally side against [23]Spain. Where it is clear,
   [24]Spain is always the villain (to my mind).
   
   Why am I so down on [25]Spain and its policies? I guess in the final
   analysis it comes down to religious belief. The Spanish believed in an
   after-life that lasted for an eternity and was horrible to all but
   Catholics. The ultimate favor you could do for someone was to convert
   that person to Catholicism, at any price. It was a logical and
   consistent belief that sanctioned incredible immorality as being
   almost an irrelevancy. The net result of more Catholics was what
   counted.
   
   My moral view is that religion and even the existence of God is
   irrelevant to morality. No moral God would sanction any action that
   would seem to be immoral by intuition. Any moral God would detest and
   would be debased by any immoral act done in His name. The Spanish who
   so enthusiastically supported the Inquisition and who raped the New
   World for Gold, Glory, Gospel, and Slaves were a criminal nation as
   bad or worse than any country that is called that now. The holding of
   Puerto Rico was a strategic necessity in maintaining control and
   continuing the rape of the Americas. It is sort of in the neck of a
   bottle of water whose base is the Gulf of Mexico. It was useful in
   controlling access to the whole coastline from Venezuela through
   Central America up to [26]Florida. Well, they succeeded in bringing
   Catholicism and impoverishing any place they had power. Some of the
   powers who fought them for control might not have been a lot better,
   but I can't help but feel that English or Dutch rule of this area
   would have been a little more compassionate and less selfish. There is
   little doubt in my mind that [27]Spain was worse for South America
   than the Dutch were for South Africa.
   
   Well, I guess this is a good time for the second part of our history
   lesson.
   
   History of Puerto Rico, Part 2: As time passed, the King of [28]Spain
   continued to allot real estate in Puerto Rico as if it really belonged
   to him. The Indians, facing the combined forces of military might and
   [29]European disease, were finding that staying on the island was only
   helping the Spanish by supplying them with slave labor, so they bid
   their homes farewell and retreated. This meant there was a slave labor
   shortage. Luckily, there was a good supply of non-Catholic blacks in
   West Africa and their souls needed saving really badly, so black slave
   labor was introduced to the island.
   
   About 1516, Puerto Rico built its first factories for sugar and, of
   course, rum. Ginger also became a major product. Then the King decided
   that Puerto Rico would be a sugar colony only and outlawed the
   cultivation of ginger. The sons of the hidalgos thumbed their noses at
   the Crown and continued the profitable ginger trade.
   
   In the 1520s the capital was moved to San Juan and the name officially
   became Puerto Rico. This left the capital vulnerable to sea attack.
   The island's rich resources and strategic position attracted the
   British, French, and Dutch. In 1522 the Spanish started fortifying Old
   San Juan. For years the strongest fortified structure was Casa Blanca,
   the old home of the heirs of Ponce de Leon. However, its location
   allowed it to defend only itself, and after much wrangling the Crown
   agreed to fund a fort (El Morro) at the toe of the foot-shaped
   peninsula that is Old San Juan. On other parts of the island the
   French invaded and got a foothold at San German.
   
   With the permission of Queen Elizabeth I of [30]England, the pirate
   Sir Francis Drake preyed on the ships taking booty back to [31]Spain.
   In 1585 [32]Spain and [33]England went to war. In 1588 [34]Spain sent
   its invincible navy to [35]England to settle the matter only to have
   it vinced.
   
   With the Armada crippled, Francis Drake turned his sights on Old San
   Juan. With it captured he could take Puerto Rico. Drake made some
   serious mistakes, however. Under cloak of night he attacked El Morro,
   setting fire to several Spanish ships. Adios cloak of night. Drake was
   having dinner with friend John Hawkins in his cabin when they were
   joined by a Spanish cannonball. Feeling three was a crowd, Hawkins
   promptly died. Drake withdrew. Four years later, in 1590, George
   Gifford, Earl of Cumberland, tried to lay siege again. The attack was
   well-timed since influenza had wiped out most of the fighting men of
   San Juan. Starting eighty miles east of the capitol, Cumberland
   marched his men to San Juan. Cumberland actually captured the fort of
   El Morro. Just one problem: remember the influenza? Six weeks later
   Cumberland had four hundred fewer men. Not long after, he also had one
   fewer fort. Rather than seizing Puerto Rico he contented himself with
   burning a couple of plantations and headed home.
   
   In 1625 it was the Dutch who tried to take Puerto Rico. In September
   they tried a land assault on Old San Juan. They forced the Spanish to
   retreat to El Morro and besieged the fort for a month unsuccessfully.
   In late October the Spanish staged surprise counter-attacks and the
   Dutch were forced to retreat.
   
   Philip IV of [36]Spain ordered a bigger fort, San Cristobal, to be
   built at the ankle of the foot-shaped peninsula to guard against land
   or sea attack. The two forts were connected by a stone wall, making
   the strongest Presidio in the Indies.
   
   Here endeth the history of Puerto Rico, part two.
   
   So it is Wednesday morning and we have set out to see Old San Juan.
   The part we drove through was pretty run-down. I guess most cities
   have run-down areas but San Juan is mostly run-down. Ironically, Old
   San Juan is probably cleaner than the new part of the city. We parked
   in the lot of the castle of San Cristobal. The castle has a beautiful
   view of the ocean. It stands at the top of a cliff adding maybe sixty
   feet to the height of the cliff. The design is supposed to exemplify
   subtle military architecture of the 17th Century. Actually, it seems
   to be about four levels with ramps going up at odd points and angles.
   When we got in, there was a tour that had just started. They run them
   hourly and the first person requesting a tour gets to choose if it is
   to be in Spanish or English. The tour we'd just missed was in Spanish,
   so instead they showed us a videotape telling the history of the
   defense of San Juan from 1493 on. How far we don't know because when
   the tape got to about 1610, it stopped mid-sentence. Probably some
   technical flaw. We reported the problem, then walked around. The
   ground level is fairly uninteresting rooms. After a short walk around,
   I went up to a much more interesting second level. Parts of this level
   are out in the open. There are cannon emplacements facing the city and
   the sea. In one corner there is a narrow passage to a look-out point.
   The views of the sea are, of course, majestic.
   
   The tour takes you into the tunnels under the fort. Some of the
   tunnels presumably go down to the beach. Another tunnel went down to
   the listening room. Actually, the listening room was not for
   listening. It was for watching a dish of mercury. Anyone trying to
   tunnel under the fort would create visible vibrations in the mercury.
   
   There is also a dungeon to be seen, very tiny but there. One Captain
   Luna led a strike for Spanish soldiers in Puerto Rico to work the same
   number of hours as soldiers in [37]Spain. Luna was put in the dungeon
   with ten followers and later executed.
   
   Following the tour we tried to get to El Morro, but detours on the
   road would not let us get anywhere near. The roads of Old San Juan are
   very narrow, about two car widths including parking. This causes
   monstrous traffic jams for the most trivial of reasons. If a car stops
   to read an address or try to park, traffic can stop for a block or two
   very quickly. Driving can be a very frustrating experience. Parking
   can be worse. There is no parking anywhere near anything you want to
   go to. We found one parking place near the center of the old city and
   then discovered it was a taxi stand once we were parked. Eventually we
   decided that parking would be impossible. We quickly modified our
   plans to go to El Yunque today and hit Old San Juan when we could take
   public transit.
   
   First we had some errands to run. We wanted to find a hardware store,
   a grocery, and lunch. The hardware store was because I wanted to find
   a multiple plug, since there were not enough outlets in the room.
   There is exactly one classical radio station in San Juan or anywhere
   around. It is at 91.3. I needed a place to plug in my Walkman. Using
   modular parts centered on my Walkman, I can set up a fairly portable
   sound system in my hotel room when I travel. I have a Walkman, an AC
   adapter with a cord, a decent pair of Walkman speakers, a pair of
   earphones that roll up into a cassette-shaped carrier (so you store
   the earphones inside the Walkman), and a case with ten cassettes. The
   Walkman was a really good value from Panasonic that has digital tuning
   with eight FM and five AM stations programmable. That makes it almost
   as useful as my receiver at home, yet it fits into a large shirt
   pocket. More than half the space of the sound system is the ten
   cassettes. It is fairly important to have a good sound system when I
   travel, since a lot of my time is spent log-writing.
   
   The grocery was necessary because I desperately needed fruit juice. I
   was coming down with a cold and a cold hits me very hard if untreated.
   And it lasts me three months before the coughing stops. Usually if I
   take large doses of vitamin C the cold will turn out to be mild.
   Without the vitamin, I _never_ have a mild cold. We bought many cans
   of Goya fruit juices in serving-sized cans and a big bottle of
   Tropicana orange juice, also some cookies and two mangos.
   
   There is a story about mangos. I have had them before and never was
   too impressed. They were hard to eat and the flavor was okay, but
   nothing special. An (Asian) Indian friend bought some Mexican mangos
   and gave us two. I politely thanked him and after a week or so got
   around to the messy task of eating one. This was the most luscious
   piece of fruit I have ever tasted. The flavor was akin to Concord
   grape, but much richer. It was a real mess to eat since it was so
   juicy. The first thing I told Evelyn, who was reticent to try the
   difficult fruit, was that I would take her mango off her hands and
   that she shouldn't give it another thought. (Yes, I told her it was
   good. I wasn't going to cheat her.) According to my friend, Mexican
   mangos are better than American ones, and Indian mangos are better
   than Mexican ones. I myself am perfectly satisfied with the Mexican
   variety. Anyway, the mangos we got in the grocery must have been
   underripe or something. They were more like the mangos I was used to.
   
   For a quick meal we ate lunch at Church's Fried Chicken. It is pretty
   good and comes with a Jalapeno pepper. Supposedly spicy food strobes
   the endorphins in the brain. Just like you get a mild high from
   exercise, scientists now think you get a mild high from spicy food.
   And here I thought that I had no endorphins. Now I realize I am a
   spicy food junkie.
   
   After that we went back to the room to put the juice in the
   refrigerator and to freshen up a bit. Then we headed out to El Yunque.
   It took about ninety minutes on the road. The roads look a bit like
   roads you might see in [38]Florida. On the major roads you see little
   of the poverty you see in San Juan. You do see a lot of vendors set up
   to sell in the streets to passing cars. In the cities you also see a
   lot of people jumping out at cars to clean windshields for pocket
   change, just like in Manhattan.
   
   Gradually the look of what surrounded the roads became more rural and
   then we turned off to climb the hills to the National Forest.
   
   El Yunque is a rain forest with a lot of plants with big broad leaves
   to collect the moisture. Bright flowers are common, particularly a red
   one that may be hibiscus and the white flower of the ginger plant. You
   follow a winding road up the side of a mountain through the forest.
   There are also places to stop and take nature trails into the forest.
   
   We thought we were pretty well by ourselves when we passed a nice
   waterfall. We parked the car and took out the cameras. By this point a
   taxi had stopped and four women had beaten us to the falls. We got
   what pictures we could but were waiting for them to leave when a whole
   tour bus stopped. A few minutes ago, there was nobody at this
   waterfall. Now we couldn't get pictures due to the hordes of tourists.
   
   A little further up the hill there is a tower to be climbed by a
   circular stair. The tower gave a commanding view of the forest around
   including a valley and in fact a view out to the ocean. Of course,
   there were tourists mobbing here also. Apparently these were all from
   a cruise ship that had pulled into the harbor. Most had taken buses to
   El Yunque, but one group took a taxi. Finally we found an empty area
   and took a path to see another waterfall. I was a little concerned
   about this since I was feeling a little under the influence of the
   first day of this cold. I was not really anxious for a long trek in
   the woods. Evelyn is persuasive, however, and I went. It took us about
   forty minutes to reach the falls. But what concerned me was that it
   had been mostly been downhill. The trip back I set the pace and I
   over-estimated the distance. It took us about twenty minutes to get
   back, but it was a lot of climbing. Both of us were breathing pretty
   hard by the time we were back and were considerably lighter for the
   perspiration.
   
   I had left one can of the Goya juice in the car. It was peach
   nectar--warm peach nectar. But in our dehydrated state, it went down
   very nicely, thank you.
   
   It took us a couple of hours to get back to San Juan. One reason is
   that routes are very poorly marked in Puerto Rico. At times a route
   will turn a corner in San Juan, and there will be no warning, just the
   route signs will be on the new stretch of road. Also, most corners in
   the city have no street signs. It makes things pretty tough on
   newcomers.
   
   Back at the room I wrote in my log. Dinner was most of a bottle of
   orange juice. The combination of getting fluids back and getting
   vitamin C proved irresistible. (I am pretty sure that the C helped
   with the cold, incidentally.) Evelyn contacted her half- uncle and
   made arrangements for Wednesday night.
   
   _September 9, 1992:_ This was our day for seeing the interior of the
   island. After breakfast we set out by car for Ponce, the second
   largest city on the island. (What do you call Puerto Rico? It isn't a
   territory; it isn't a state. Evelyn claims that commonwealth is not
   accurate. Apparently it is something akin to a commonwealth. The
   technical term is that it is a "Free Associated State," a term which
   was, I believe, coined by Sigmund Freud. Yes, it's true: Puerto Rico
   is a state of mind. The commonwealth motto is--get this--"John is his
   name." By a margin of better than two to one, Puerto Ricans prefer
   this motto to "Tuesday there will be doughnuts.")
   
   Once we got out of San Juan, the topography started looking a little
   nicer with rolling hills of green. The predominant colors are green,
   white, and blue. We stopped to look at a monument to the peasants who
   built the island. It is of recent vintage, not surprisingly.
   
   Ponce is known for its very pleasant climate. It is located in
   something called a rain shadow. I guess that means it does not rain.
   
   The most photographed building in Puerto Rico is the striking fire
   house in Ponce. It is painted in two-foot-wide horizontal stripes
   alternating bright read and (not-so-bright) black.
   
   We did some souvenir shopping. (For those who follow such things, this
   was our traditional tchatchka-search. If you don't know what that
   means, don't worry.)
   
   We found a good place to stop for lunch at a cafeteria. Good local
   food. I had pastel and platano. Pastel is a lot like Mexican tamale.
   It comes wrapped in a banana leaf. Then there was white rice and fried
   sweet plantain which is indistinguishable to me from fried banana. We
   also shared an avocado salad that had lots of avocado. Avocado is a
   taste I picked up from Evelyn. It's the sort of thing I wouldn't
   haven't wanted even to taste as a kid. But now I know that at one
   point in our prehistoric past there were only nutritious vegetables.
   Most of the dinosaurs ate ferns and things. Try eating some fern
   sometime. You'll know why the dinosaurs died out. Some got fed up with
   eating ferns and hence we got carnivores. Eventually some cosmic ray
   hit some plant and it started mutating off fun foods like avocados,
   bananas, and Mexican mangos. These are easily distinguished from
   asparagus, squash, and yes, President Bush, broccoli.
   
   In fact, I wonder if avocados and mangos may not be close relatives.
   Both look like big green eggs and have large stones. But I am
   digressing. (And I hope people realize that the above is not intended
   seriously. I never know.)
   
   After lunch we did a little pointless shopping and returned to our
   car, then set out to find Tibes on the outskirts of town. Again, this
   was tough to find since street signs are so hard to find. We did,
   however, find Tibes (pronounced "TEE-bess").
   
   It is an ill-wind that blows nobody any good and tropical storm Eloisa
   of 1975 was not that ill a wind. The storm caused the Portugues River
   to flood and with it pull up a bunch of top soil at Tibes. It
   uncovered a man-made formation of stones that dated to pre-Columbian
   times. Uncovered were two plazas and a burial ground. Many Indian
   artifacts were uncovered. These were from the Igneri tribes that
   migrated to Puerto Rico from Venezuela about 300 A.D. They believed in
   life after death and buried adults in a fetal position. Children were
   buried in jars. Burials were done in caves. When bats flew out of the
   caves, they were thought to be spirits of the dead returning, so bats
   were both feared and revered. This was the first known instance of the
   popular belief that when you die you develop an appetite for plucking
   large flying insects from the air and swallowing them alive.
   
   Archaeologists have gone to the site but now it has also become a
   tourist attraction, comprising a museum, the grounds where the find
   was made, and a botanical park showing species of plants that would
   have been used by the Igneris.
   
   For reasons not well understood (at least by me) the Igneris liked to
   carve figures in triangular stones. These triangles look sort of like
   what you would get if you started with a ball of modeling clay, broke
   it into two equal pieces, rolled them both out as snakes, put one over
   the other in a cross formation, decided you didn't like that, and
   rolled the two snakes back into a ball, then grabbed the two poles of
   the ball, squeezing them to points and letting a third point form
   between your two index fingers. You end up with a shape that is almost
   like a fat boomerang that is triangular rather than L-shaped.
   
   A plaza has a circle made up of stones, some of which are carved into
   bat heads or have human heads etched in. There is a reconstructed
   village of about six huts nearby. The museum section has a film
   showing artifacts found, several exhibits of artifacts, and three or
   four resident dogs sleeping in the shade.
   
   Following this we set out for Ciales, where Evelyn's father lived as a
   boy. Now as the crow flies this was about ten miles, but it was over
   the hills than run through the center of Puerto Rico. Every dozen
   yards or so the road twists to the right or to the left. The houses
   become more rural as you go, with livestock in the yards. I can't
   imagine people living on this road commuting to work. It just takes
   forever to get anywhere.
   
   We finally got to Ciales via Arecibo. Evelyn had instructions to call
   her uncle when she got into town. Instead, she decided first to look
   for the house where her father was born. She had the address so we
   drove around for a while and finally found someone who knew the
   street.
   
   What a sight we must have looked like! Two mainlanders in sunglasses
   with cameras on a street that probably hasn't had a native speaker of
   English this year. A woman looked at us quizzically from her porch. We
   could not find the address number four, but not all the buildings had
   numbers. Evelyn didn't want to ask. Of course, my Spanish is not so
   bad, so I asked the woman on the porch. That broke the ice and Evelyn
   said that her father was born on that street. The woman brightened up
   and got excited. She called her husband out. She thought that number
   four was torn down in 1955, but she did remember the Chimelis family.
   (She pronounced the name Kimelis--I should find out if the Chimelis
   pronunciation is just an Americanization.)
   
   Well, when that was done, we went to the gas station Evelyn's uncle
   had suggested we call from. Except the phone was broken. We tried
   another phone and got through. We described where we were and the
   uncle showed up to lead us to his house.
   
   What followed was about as awkward a ninety minutes as I could have
   imagined, though everybody pretended it wasn't awkward at all while
   just hoping it would end soon.
   
   The thing is that we came armed with about five minutes' worth of
   material to say to this family. They had about as much to say to us.
   But after coming such a long way, it was considered required that we
   stay a while and talk. We spoke English and a little Spanish. Evelyn's
   uncle spoke Spanish and a bit of English. The rest of the family spoke
   only Spanish. Much of the conversation was in broken English and
   simple Spanish. After describing the families we were reduced to
   saying things like "This is a nice house" and "Is this hot weather
   typical?" Banal as the conversation was, I think I may have carried
   more than Evelyn since, as she claims, I might be a little better at
   speaking Spanish than she is, if I have her to interpret the response.
   I think the principle is that her vocabulary is a lot broader than
   mine, but I am better at coming up with alternate ways to express the
   same thought and finding one that fits the set of words I know. As the
   uncle pointed out to the family, I do the talking and Evelyn does the
   understanding. After about an hour of chit-chat about all the sports
   trophies in the house and that sort of thing, they invited us to
   dinner, which they had made for just the two of us. (In fact, we sat
   alone in the kitchen.) Rice and beans, plantains, and four chicken
   drumsticks (of which I took one and the rest were left). I have come
   to like rice and beans, the staple dish of Latin America.
   
   We finished eating about 7 PM and though we originally had planned to
   stay until 8 PM, Evelyn said we had to leave so as not to get lost on
   the way back. I took a photo of the family--last one on the roll; I
   hope it comes out (it did)--and we returned to the car. I told the
   uncle, "Ahora mi familia es mas grande."
   
   When we got back to the room we ate one of the mangos, but found it
   underripe and not very good. We left the other mango out. (Oh, there
   is a story connected with the mangos. There were tiny ants in the
   room, mostly on the night stand. We reported the ants. The owner found
   them and said it was the mangos that attracted the ants. This is
   actually fairly impressive if it is true. It means the ants knew there
   would be mangos in the room before I did. And still we never saw an
   ant within four feet of a mango. But the manager said it was the
   mangos that brought the ants. Later he said that the ants were pretty
   much unavoidable in the tropics.)
   
   _September 10, 1992:_ This is our last day in Puerto Rico. Here we are
   across from a beautiful white beach and we haven't gone swimming once.
   We got ourselves a couple of beach towels and went out for an 8 AM
   swim. The water wasn't quite warm enough that you could go in without
   getting used to the cold, but it was nice anyway. In a swimsuit Evelyn
   looks like something out of; FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (and I don't mean
   Burt Lancaster).
   
   The breakfasts have become more meager as the week goes by. This
   morning there is only some bland pound cake and coffee. The last three
   days at breakfast we've talked to the same guy. He's a roofer and
   sider from [39]Maine who's down with his wife. His idea of a good time
   is to sit on the beach, come back, and sun himself. He has some
   interesting things to say about himself. He is an alcoholic who now
   goes around to schools to tell the kids not to drink. He has had
   training in motorcycles for a job that evaporated when he was done
   with training, so he went into roofing. Now he's gotten an offer to
   assemble bikes in Trinidad and he seems pretty excited at the
   prospect.
   
   Well, since we were not able to see the old part of the city two days
   before, we decided to do that today. We had seen the disadvantages of
   taking a car in. We wanted to find out the disadvantages of a bus.
   
   We knew there was a bus stop just a short distance, perhaps a
   ten-minute walk, from the guest house. There were three possible buses
   we could take and they run on a twenty-minute cycle. Well, the first
   disadvantage of the buses is that they _do not_ run on time. We waited
   about thirty minutes before an appropriate bus came along. They did
   seem to have vans come around offering an alternative to the buses and
   going the same routes. I have heard that the same thing is happening
   in [40]New York, where it is illegal. For all I know, it may be
   illegal here also.
   
   The neighborhoods we drove through certainly seemed run-down (lots of
   bars, etc.), but perhaps no worse than parts of [41]New York. You
   would see someone sitting on the curb washing in the water from the
   rain gutter. There were a lot of stores with heavy metal grates to
   prevent people from breaking in. The people are friendly; at least
   some that we ran into were. The buses were 25 cents and once you get
   to Old San Juan, there were shuttles that were free. Evelyn says they
   were paid for by the bus companies, but my guess is that they were
   really paid for by all the expensive shops in the touristy section of
   town where the shuttles run. That would make more sense. Why have the
   urban passengers subsidize the tourist perq?
   
   We happened to come at a bad time. There is an election coming up like
   some other places we have been (such as Southeast Asia). The
   politicians feel impelled to get loudspeaker trucks to extol the
   virtues of their politics. The political trucks seemed particularly
   thick in Old San Juan and followed the shuttle buses. I was a little
   surprised to see that the drivers spoke their message live as opposed
   to having it pre-recorded.
   
   Our first stop on our walking tour was the so-called Pigeon Park. It
   is one park with a view of the bay that hosts thousands of guests
   whenever you arrive, almost all of them pigeons. The park must have
   about four pigeons per square foot. The benches are solid pigeons. I
   saw one pigeon jump on the back of a park bench and chase six pigeons
   off, one after another. Well, I had a gut full of bullies in junior
   high and high school, so when I find one these days I strike a blow
   for the oppressed of the world. I knocked the bully pigeon off his
   perch and let the other pigeons come back. (Is this really what it
   feels like to be a super-hero?)
   
   Our next stop was San Juan Cathedral. It was built in 1521 of mostly
   fairly plain architecture compared to the cathedrals of [42]Europe.
   Its greatest attraction is the grave of Ponce de Leon, who deserves
   some credit for having the greatest respect and care for the rights of
   the indigenous people of all the great mass-murdering pirates that
   [43]Spain sent to the New World. True, he did have hundreds of Indians
   killed for rebelling against the invaders, but generally he opposed
   the out-and-out enslavement of Indians that people like Diego Colon
   tried to bring. (Hey, I warned you I wouldn't have anything friendly
   to say about the Spanish colonization. I look around and see a lot of
   poverty and misery in what by rights should have been a wealthy part
   of the world, but that wealth was stolen by imperial powers--[44]Spain
   foremost among them--and I cannot see a darn thing that the local
   population got back of any value but what is for me the highly dubious
   exception of Catholicism. I cannot conceive of a God who would favor
   the policies of [45]Spain in the New World.)
   
   To make the Cathedral seem like a grander edifice than it actually is,
   it has painted arches around the dome at the top, as if there is
   another floor at the top. The arches are not painted well and probably
   would not fool any but the most credulous and willing to believe.
   Actually, the most striking visual effect is a statue of Mary, set
   back about two feet from a colorful frame. It creates an effect sort
   of like television. In any case, it is a weird look.
   
   Our next stop was Casa Blanca, the home of Ponce de Leon's family and
   at one point the stronghold of the government's treasury. The grounds
   are gardens in the style that [46]Spain borrowed from the Moors. The
   house itself has a somewhat over-priced admission of $2 and shows you
   furniture of the sort you might have seen in the house in classical
   days. I don't know how much is authentic. The treasury was kept in the
   "Chest of Three Keys." The treasury of the government of Puerto Rico
   kept in a single chest. There was a three-key chest just within the
   front door, but it did not look like the original. In pictures I have
   seen of the real Chest of Three Keys; the keyholes looked like the
   digits 1, 2, and 3, except the "3" is backwards. Not so with this
   replication which had somewhat normal-looking keyholes. The walls
   inside the house were as white as the outside and the furniture was a
   dark brown. I remember a little room with three kegs of wine or rum
   and a small statue of a friar to watch over the kegs. The second floor
   of Casa Blanca is now a museum of Indian culture and of the conquest.
   There was a chart of the oceans with the chartmaker's concept of a
   whale. It had the head of a pig and paws with claws. It did spout
   water, but this was obviously a picture of a whale from somebody
   else's description and framed the creature in terms that the artists
   knew how to draw.
   
   We stopped and got a cold drink at a little bodega before continuing.
   It is interesting that I can tell I am dehydrated by how much I can
   restrain myself on the first sip. If regardless of my effort to drink
   slowly, I instinctively drink half the Coke on the first sip, that's
   just my body trying to restore its fluid levels. It's what my body
   needs and there is really no obligation to apologize to Evelyn who
   offered me the sip.
   
   Well, our next stop was El Morro, the fortress stronghold that held
   off the French, Dutch, and English. Even today it is heavily fortified
   with vitamin C (for cannon) and with iron. One of the books said it
   was designed for brute force rather than subtlety like the later San
   Cristobal. Actually they both look like a lot of brick, rock, and
   cannons. El Morro is built on at least five levels connected by ramps
   and stairs, probably more than five levels if you include the
   lighthouse that was built on the top.
   
   The food was prepared on the lowest level, both literally and
   figuratively. The food was kept in something called the "rotten pot"
   where they would throw everything and let it stew until it was dished
   out. Pork, chicken, rice, vegetables--all got stirred together in a
   huge stew with the constituent parts indistinguishable. Rotten meat
   was thrown as often as not. Insects dropping in for their own dinner
   would stay for somebody else's. This was not the golden age of
   military cuisine. Soldiers were worked like horses, fed like pigs, and
   expected to think like oxen. All to protect and enrich the families of
   the hidalgos. Still, they were able to repulse Francis Drake, putting
   that famous cannonball right through his cabin.
   
   It was really tough to get to El Morro since Hurricane Hugo tore up a
   big piece of the plaza that leads to the fort. It is being rebuilt and
   it is pretty tough to get around the construction just to get to and
   from the fort. After the fort we walked around the shopping area of
   Old San Juan (which is a lot more modern looking than it sounds). We
   got a Coke from McDonalds which went down supremely well, thanks to
   the wonders of dehydration. Nothing makes a Coke taste better.
   
   After the short break we shopped for the tchatchka and eventually
   found a one as a "cemi." A cemi is one of the triangular stones the
   Tainos made. This is obviously an imitation but about the right size
   for the tchatchka table. Shopping is a little easier than it might be
   with the currency being the same. Puerto Rico is one of the few places
   we could have gone and used United States currency but would not have
   to hear about the United States election campaign.
   
   Well, following that we went to a bus stop to pick up the bus for
   home. After a forty-minute wait of boredom punctuated by my folding an
   origami dinosaur for a little boy who would otherwise have torn up a
   piece of polyethylene bubble packing and left it on the sidewalk and a
   private garden (all with his mother's tacit approval), the bus still
   hadn't come.
   
   Eventually I decided it was coming time to, as W. C. Fields said,
   "take the bull by the tail and face the situation." Evelyn thought the
   bus terminal was just a short distance away. We moved on and found
   another bus stop, but I didn't trust that one any more than the first.
   There was a tourist information service office nearby and I said we
   should get directions to where the terminal really was. It was a
   couple of blocks away. Just as we got there, a bus arrived we could
   take going back.
   
   Back at the room we freshened up and wrote in our logs for a little
   while. Then we went looking for dinner. We had gotten a recommendation
   for a restaurant called the Metropol and, in spite of seeing it on a
   map from the hotel, we could not find it. So Evelyn got smart and
   called the restaurant for directions. We still couldn't find the
   place. Finally, in a sort of random walk, we did see the restaurant.
   It was good. Evelyn got a Cuban food plate that she claimed was very
   good and which gave every evidence of actually being as good as she
   claimed. I had Cuban black bean soup (very tasty) and camarones
   rellenos con queso. These looked like very fat fried shrimp that were
   surrounded by a layer of a cheese sauce. Very nice. But the funny
   thing was the water situation. I was still very parched from the heat.
   They filled my water glass, then Evelyn's, and mine was already empty.
   They filled it a second time and walked away, and the manager came
   over to point out to the waiter that my water glass was empty. I think
   I drank more than a quart of water at that meal. I am of Slavic
   origins and that means I dehydrate quickly. On the Southeast Asia trip
   it was a standing joke that as soon as I got into sunshine my back was
   soaked.
   
   Anyway, I got a lot of service with a very good meal and tipped very
   generously.
   
   Our last night in Puerto Rico was a pleasure. Back at the room, I ate
   the second mango and wrote in my log while watching Crosby and
   Hardwick in A [47]CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT.
   
   It's probably time to finish my worm's-eye history of Puerto Rico, so
   here is part three.
   
   History of Puerto Rico, Part 3: After the Dutch assault that captured
   San Juan for a month, the island was fortified so that attacks were
   less of a likelihood. Things were quiet for a long time and in the
   1600s the Spanish introduced coffee production so people wouldn't fall
   asleep altogether. The locals got caffeine in their systems, got
   irritable, and in the 1820s the locals began trying occasionally to
   rid themselves of Spanish domination. It didn't work.
   
   In 1868 was one of the biggest rebellions and that same year Isabella
   II abdicated in [48]Spain and the royal rule was replaced by a
   republic. In the years that followed, the newly enlightened [49]Spain
   eliminated slavery and gave Puerto Rico representation in the
   parliament. In the 1880s the people of Puerto Rico started campaigning
   for autonomy which they were finally given in February, 1898. Their
   autonomy lasted ten months. They were invaded by the United States
   during the Spanish-American War and the autonomous country suddenly
   found itself a United States possession.
   
   Well, to make a long story short, slavery eventually got replaced by
   low wages and some autonomy and now Puerto Rico is a "Free Associated
   State" which is a commonwealth and still a possession of the United
   States. There is still a strong independence movement, but being part
   of the United States has its advantages. And that completes the
   thumbnail history.
   
   _September 11, 1992:_ After breakfasting on the last two cans of Goya
   fruit juice, we checked out of the Tres Palmas. While we were driving
   the rented car back to the airport, it started raining very hard.
   
   We dropped off the car and took the shuttle to the air terminal. We
   were going to go to the gate when we felt a gust of hot humid air and
   decided it would be uncomfortable at the gate. We sat on the metal
   platforms in the check-in. Finally we did go to the gate and it was
   hot and very humid.
   
   They had us line up to get aboard a small ATR42 propeller plane. I
   love a small prop plane. I like air turbulence. I like the massage of
   the vibration. There was no air in the plane and I didn't even mind
   that. I did mind that they said because of the rain there would be no
   beverage service. I was looking forward to some orange juice,
   particularly because my cold was acting up. Still, I did enjoy the
   flight.
   
   From the air the Dominican Republic looked a lot like Puerto Rico.
   
   Customs was a bit harder to get through than in the United States.
   They actually had us open our luggage for them to take a quick look at
   the surface. United States customs has not done that in quite a while.
   I guess since I have matured, people just see me and can feel
   character and integrity. Yessir, these days you can just tell I am a
   hell of a guy. Either that, or perhaps they just think this shlump
   couldn't put together a flashlight, much less a drug deal.
   
   We took a cab from the airport to the Hotel Cervantes. (It is so
   called because you might as well sleep in the courtyard and because
   the restaurant has a lot on the menu but doesn't have anything in
   stock. Okay, Don Q fans, come up with your own joke as to why a hotel
   might be named after Cervantes. You might win the pony.)
   
   The road from the airport follows a nice stretch of beach with lots of
   palm trees. There is a different look to Santo Domingo than there was
   to the grungier parts of San Juan. The bad parts of San Juan looked
   like the grungy section of town. In Santo Domingo the look was more of
   poverty than one of just a single bad section. You pass through
   neighborhoods where houses are patched together from wood or
   corrugated steel. It is probably good it does not get too cold here.
   Things didn't look as bad as they did in [50]Romania, or at least
   different, but clearly the standard of living is a lot lower here.
   
   As the cab stopped for a light, a teenager jumped out and started to
   clean the windshield. He must have been pretty desperate to expect
   much of a tip from a cab driver. Actually, he didn't get any tip.
   
   Of course, the fact that there are as many privately owned cars as
   there are may indicate that even here things are a little better than
   in eastern [51]Europe. My comment at the time was that often you would
   see what looked like an accident that nobody got out of alive, then
   the light would change and it would drive off. Actually, it just looks
   like a lot of cars have been in accidents. Many are pieced together
   from unmatching parts. Some will have what looks like homemade sheet
   metal fenders.
   
   There are a lot of motor scooters and while obedience of traffic laws
   is not good among the cars, it is far worse with the scooters. They
   swarm around the traffic in random directions. One made a sharp turn
   in front of our taxi and would have been hit without quick reflexes on
   the driver's part.
   
   There was one place where road work was being done. The workers just
   set logs in the road to mark the spot, then started digging.
   
   We got to the hotel and checked into our room. It was clear that
   unlike at the guest house in San Juan, the air conditioning really did
   cool off our room. This was not a fancy room, but it was sort of the
   quality of a cheap motel room in the United States. Also, it had a
   small refrigerator which we figured would be useful.
   
   The hotel had its own restaurant which purported to be a steak house,
   but that seemed touristy and Evelyn and I are both avoiding red meat
   anyway, so we went out on the street to find a restaurant that would
   have a more regional cuisine.
   
   We found a restaurant that wasn't too touristy. In fact, we were the
   only tourists (there was one other group there). I ordered a pulpo
   dish (octopus). "Pollo," the waiter corrected (chicken). "Pulpo," I
   said, pointing to the menu item. Not many tourists order pulpo
   apparently. Evelyn ordered conch.
   
   After lunch we went to exchange some money. As we were approaching the
   bank it started to rain. As we went inside the sky just opened up. We
   were sort of glad to be inside. By the time we had the paperwork done
   and were at the window getting money the rain was slowing down. When
   we left there was still a mist in the air, but the rain was over all
   in the course of less than ten minutes later. (It is odd to note that
   the symbol for the Dominican Republic peso is the dollar sign [$]. But
   the dollar sign's origin is a narrow "U" superimposed over a wide "S,"
   "U.S." being short for "United States.")
   
   We then got what we needed to visit the Colonial Sector of Santo
   Domingo from our hotel room and set out. We went a few blocks to where
   we could catch a local bus, called a "guagua." There seem to be a real
   variety of types of buses in the Dominican Republic. You occasionally
   see a full-sized bus like you see in the United States, but those are
   actually pretty rare. More common are the kind of bus we got. They are
   actually a model we would use as a school bus. These are public
   transit buses. Since a school bus does not have facilities to collect
   money, somebody stands at the front of the bus to collect fares. This
   man exits the bus when it stops and he stands outside and collects
   from boarding passengers. The scale of the buses goes down to
   mini-vans. These are usually tightly packed with passengers. A man
   stands at the sliding door and yells the destination. I think he also
   collects. It is surprising to see how simple a device will be replaced
   by human labor. Much like in China, human labor is cheap. Rather than
   putting a changeable sign on a bus (or van) to tell the destination,
   they will hire someone to perform the same function.
   
   We were on the school-bus style bus. The bus was filled but people
   made room for each of Evelyn and me so we could each squeeze in as the
   third person on a two-person seat. The people seemed moderately
   friendly. At least they made space for us. It was only a short ride to
   the Colonial Sector. Like San Juan, Santo Domingo has preserved its
   older part of the city by packing around it an upscale shopping area
   that scares off the locals. Not as fancy, you understand, since Santo
   Domingo does not have the affluence of San Juan. The Dominican
   Republic has a sort of mystique built around how good things are in
   Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico has done things right and is getting the
   tourism, it is thought locally.
   
   Santo Domingo has its tourist area, but it is as bad as parts of Egypt
   were in one sense. That is that the locals see you as a bag of coins
   with two feet. Speaking of two feet, that is just about how far you
   can walk without someone asking you if you want a taxi, begging for
   coins, offering to shine your shoes, trying to sell you jewelry, etc.,
   etc. I wanted to get myself a button that said, "NO! Gracias."
   
   Well, it was quite a struggle getting through this mob, but we did.
   
   Just as we were near the Cathedral of Santa Maria the Minor, it
   started to rain and someone near the Cathedral started gesturing to us
   to come in. I had a bad feeling about that. Sure enough, there were a
   bunch of street hawkers by the door. We went in. This is one of three
   or four holy places where Christopher Columbus is buried. How can he
   be buried in so many different places? Well, that is the power of
   faith and tourism. He is also buried in Seville and Havana. Back when
   I lived in Dayton, [52]Ohio, a church down the street claimed they had
   him too. How would he have gotten to Dayton? Where the faith is strong
   enough, all things are possible. The chapel that had the alleged
   Columbus remains had a guard with a hard hat posted in front, but
   without a gun.
   
   That leads me to a digression. The only country I remember visiting
   with more guns obvious than the Dominican Republic is Israel. The
   military drives jeeps with mounted machine guns. A private house is
   either poor or guarded by a man at the end of the driveway. And the
   man, of course, has an automatic rifle. There are lots and lots of
   guns on the streets. There are also lots of political buildings of
   various parties. There is apparently a Marxist party here. I remember
   when the idea that a country like the Dominican Republic would go
   Marxist would scare the heck out of the United States State
   Department. It just doesn't seem to be all that scary a prospect
   anymore. The fear of communism being exported is now a lot smaller.
   And nobody is going to give Cuba or the Dominican Republic nuclear
   missiles anymore, nor would they be likely to want them.
   
   This sort of reminds me that when we were in San Juan we saw on
   television an account of the Cuban missile crisis. I am rather hoping
   that history will come to re-evaluate this event. For most of the
   history of the Soviet Union, I am not very sympathetic to them. And I
   do like John F. Kennedy for the most part. But in the so-called "Cuban
   missile crisis" the villain was Kennedy. It is one of those rare
   instances when the Communists were in the right. Why did Cuba want
   nuclear missiles? Because they were always very nervous about having
   the world's strongest military power ninety miles from their shore,
   and even closer they had a naval base belonging to it right on their
   island. This is very scary to Cuba at the best of times. But what does
   Kennedy do? He lets the CIA sponsor and aid a military invasion of
   Cuba! Cuba is then faced with the question of what it is going to do
   if the United States decides to invade again in strength with all our
   power and a foothold already on the island. If I were Castro, I'd want
   nuclear missiles too. I don't think anyone really begrudges Israel
   nuclear missiles in very similar circumstances. The crisis ended only
   when Kennedy promised that Cuba would have no more need of nuclear
   missiles. Somehow most accounts of the "crisis" seem to ignore the Bay
   of Pigs as being the real source of the crisis. As a president, when
   Kennedy was good he was quite good, and when he was bad he was as bad
   as any president we have ever had. His cowboy antics could well have
   caused a nuclear war.
   
   But I digress.
   
   The Cathedral was completed in 1540, a long building with fifteen
   chapels. For the most part it seemed a dark and brooding Gothic
   building on the inside, Spanish on the outside.
   
   On leaving the Cathedral we found ourselves saddled with a man
   insisting that he was a government guide told to guide tourists
   around. We tried everything we could to rid ourselves of this pest,
   but he insisted on steering us around and giving us terse descriptions
   of what we were passing. In between, he did things like ask our
   religion, as if it was his business. When we told him we were not
   Christian, he said it doesn't matter--we all pray to the same God. He
   was quite broad-minded, or at least forgiving. He tried to convince us
   we must move to a more expensive hotel here in the Colonial Sector. It
   would be more convenient and safer. He was shocked that we had taken a
   public bus rather than a taxi. We must spend more money in Santo
   Domingo, he told us. "After all," he said sagely, "you have to spend
   money to make money."
   
   He complained that not enough Americans were coming to the Dominican
   Republic for the 500th Anniversary of the Columbus discovery. In fact,
   the Dominican Republic has marginally more claim to the tourists than,
   say, Puerto Rico. Columbus came to the island of Hispaniola in 1492,
   at the end of his first voyage. Hispaniola is now about one-third
   Haiti and two-thirds Dominican Republic. Columbus did not visit Puerto
   Rico until his second voyage, in 1493. But first of all, I don't know
   that all that many Americans feel all that much love for Columbus and
   very few intend to visit the Caribbean to celebrate the
   quincentennial. Those who do visit the Dominican Republic will find
   only a few buildings of historical interest to them. And to get to
   these buildings you had to pass the gauntlet of street hawkers and
   beggars. The Dominican Republic has little to offer tourists and is
   expecting a big turnout that I suspect they neither deserve nor will
   get.
   
   Among other sights we saw was the old Jesuit convent built in the 18th
   Century, when the philosophy of the Jesuits, as expressed by the
   French Jesuit Guillaume Raynal, was: "The order of the Jesuits is a
   sword whose handle is at Rome and whose point is everywhere." We
   followed on to the Chapel of Our Lady of Remedies. I wonder who she
   was and what remedies she offered. We saw a sundial, the first in the
   New World, built from 1751 to 1760. It was not operating as it was a
   cloudy day. Next we saw the crown jewel of Santo Domingo, the Viceroy
   Palace of Diego Colon. Yes, the same Diego Colon so anxious to enslave
   the local population has a palace dating to 1510. It was the home of
   Columbus's son Diego and the seat of the Spanish court in the New
   World. We were whisked by too fast to go in.
   
   I was less than pleased with our guide, who was somewhat disappointed
   in his $8 tip.
   
   After that we walked around by ourselves. We very nearly went back to
   the Colon Palace, but saw too many hawkers milling around it. We
   decided not to try to enter. Eventually we took a cab back to the
   hotel, walked about six blocks to the nearest grocery, picked up some
   fruit juice, some cheese, and crackers. That was dinner.
   
   _September 12, 1992:_ This was Saturday morning in Santo Domingo. We
   decided that for breakfast we'd go to the restaurant in the hotel. It
   was nearly empty. I ordered French toast; Evelyn ordered a local dish
   call "mang'," made from plantains. The food took a long time to come;
   somehow where there is a guaranteed gratuity by law the service is
   just not very good. When the food came, probably forty-five minutes
   later, the French toast was something strange. It was grill-fried
   toast made without egg and served with a sticky, half-empty bottle of
   Aunt Jemima syrup.
   
   Evelyn had assumed her dish would be made of sweet plantains. It
   wasn't. It was sort of like mashed potatoes, a sort of light green
   color with oil and rings of raw onion on the top. I generally like
   local cuisine, but this really appealed to neither Evelyn nor me.
   
   After breakfast we set out for a park that had several museums. It
   occurred to me for the first time that the Dominican Republic looked a
   lot like the last place that Hannibal Lecter was seen. If you look at
   the final scene of the film THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS you get a very
   good feel for what the Dominican Republic looks like once you get away
   from the tourist areas. Some areas are a little more built-up, but
   there's a lot of the feel of that final scene. I should check to see
   where that was filmed.
   
   The walk to the museums was longer than we'd initially thought. It
   turns out we'd asked the desk clerk at the hotel to put a dot on the
   map to show where the hotel was. In fact, the clerk apparently did not
   know where the hotel was. It turns out we were considerably nearer to
   the Colonial Sector and further from the museums than we'd thought. So
   it was a long walk in the hot sun. By the time we got there we were
   both hot and dry. There is a big park-like area with the museums
   around a central courtyard. Not a bad place to go, though the museums
   are soon to be relocated to the Lighthouse.
   
   Ah, yes! I should tell you about the Lighthouse. Over Rio de Janeiro
   is a huge statue of Jesus. The Dominican Republic wants to create a
   similar religious wonder of the world. They are building a huge
   government building in the shape of a cross (on the ground, that is;
   the floor plan is a cross like that of a cathedral). It is to be seven
   stories high, so it looks like a huge oblong pyramid. It will house
   government buildings and museums. And it will shine into the sky an
   immense cross. I think you will be able to tell it is a cross only
   from the air unless there is a cloud cover overhead to be illuminated.
   I think the way it works is that there are spotlights or searchlights
   at intervals along the cross-shaped building, so they really make a
   connect-the-dots cross rather than a solid cross. That's a guess; it
   was not explained to me how the thing was really supposed to work.
   
   In one sense, it is not working at all. There were riots by the
   faithless of Santo Domingo who wanted to see this tax money spent
   instead for something more of this world and less of the next. We saw
   women carrying water to houses that probably do not have running water
   and it is this sort of temporal discomfort that they wish to see the
   money alleviate. They have a shocking lack of spiritual values, I
   guess. I am sure most right-thinking Catholics recognize the need for
   the great spiritual comfort that a crux gigawattus can provide. And
   the rest are due for a "rood awakening." Actually, about 95% of the
   Dominican Republic is Catholic, so it is easy to see where this idea
   gets its support. But it is scary to see a country this poor spending
   so much on something so surreal.
   
   The Museum of Dominican History and Geography was closed so we went
   instead to the Museum of the Dominican Man. It was not open yet, so I
   got some pictures of the statues in front. In the right rear and left
   there were statues of a black slave and of an Indian. And in front of
   the two of them in the center was the statue of a Catholic priest
   holding a cross in front of him. Of all the visitors to the island,
   which type gets highest billing? The whites with Catholicism.
   
   I guess the difference between the Museum of History and the Museum of
   the Dominican Man is that they cover the same subject matter, but from
   a different viewpoint. The history museum part would probably concern
   itself with Columbus and the government and in general officialdom.
   Dominican Man shows more everyday life. It deals with festivals and
   customs. The most interesting section is on the pre-Columbian religion
   and customs. As in Puerto Rico, the Indians were Tainos and there was
   also a display here of cemis, the triangular stones that the Tainos
   carved. There were instruments that they used for smoking rituals and
   sticks they used to cause themselves to vomit before the smoking
   ceremony. And there were demonic masks.
   
   There was more on the Indian culture than on the African culture. For
   that mostly they had things like shackles and bonds. The Africans left
   a large part of their culture behind in Africa. There was nothing of
   [53]European culture in the Museum of the Dominican Man. That,
   presumably, was over in the history museum. Perhaps this is a subtle
   (or not so subtle) political statement, having one museum of the
   [54]European culture, and another for blacks and Indians. And in
   front of the museum for blacks and Indians there are statues of a
   black and an Indian being led by a Catholic priest with a cross. In
   the four-story building there were only two floors of exhibits.
   
   Following this, we visited the Natural History Museum. As natural
   history museums go, this is a rather minor one. They have a set of
   stuffed animals, some in dioramas, some not. They had a stuffed lion
   who looked too lean somehow and who had a comical expression on his
   face. They had a large fat fish, not a coelacanth but looking like
   something similar, forged in plaster or fiberglass.
   
   Each of four floors is built around an open space three stories high
   in the center. There they have the skeletons of two whales. Perhaps
   because they don't have the horizontal space to display the whales,
   they have been mounted here in the position of diving, actually a
   fairly clever idea and one I have not seen elsewhere.
   
   Well, that was that. Now our lack of planning started to catch up with
   us. We'd come to the Dominican Republic mostly to find Evelyn's uncle.
   This one spoke no English at all. Her uncle in Puerto Rico spoke some
   English and the visit was awkward. The uncle in the Dominican Republic
   spoke no English. This visit would be even more awkward. Well, we sort
   of changed our minds on this second visit. But then that left us with
   the question of what to do with our remaining day and a half.
   
   Evelyn suggested that we go to some of the fancy hotels and see if
   they had local tours for sale. Well, we went and the hotels were
   indeed posh and the prices on the day tours were even posher. Neither
   of us wanted to spend what these tours would have cost. I suggested
   that we steal one of the tours. Well, it isn't really stealing. It is
   just taking their suggestion for sights to visit. We just provide our
   own transportation. In this case, we'd rent a car. It was getting hot
   in the afternoon sun. So we returned to our room to formulate plans.
   On the television we watched the second half of SOME LIKE IT HOT and
   all of BIG BUSINESS. We chose some sights outside of the city to visit
   the next day. Then we went out to see if we could lease a car. There
   was a branch of Budget Rentals nearby. The guy behind the desk was
   clearly _not_ Dominican. At least he talked like a native from the
   United States. When he found out what we wanted the car for, he told
   us that a taxi would be both easier and cheaper. So that was decided
   upon. Nice of him.
   
   Okay, so we'd take a taxi the next day. For today we decided to walk
   back to the Colonial sector. We went and found it fewer blocks than
   we'd expected. This was now Saturday early evening. There were fewer
   people bent on getting to tourists.
   
   We didn't actually walk into the Colonial Sector but on the streets
   surrounding it. The street blocks seem to have one long building a
   block long but are in fact houses set right against each other. The
   color of the building changes as you go from house to house, but there
   does not look to be a noticeable seam on the first floor. Of course,
   some will be one story, some two. Those that are two stories will have
   iron balconies on the second floor. There will be some people in the
   houses, but to escape the heat most of the people will be out of the
   houses and on the streets. This is a society with a strong social life
   on the sidewalks, not unlike New York in the 1930s, before television
   or air conditioning.
   
   On the sidewalk you see chairs with mothers holding babies. The teens
   are out too, but away from the parents and off on corners.
   
   We stopped in a drugstore not unlike a United States drugstore and
   bought a couple of Spanish-language comic books for a friend who is an
   enthusiast. We got into a line of about eight people to pay and then
   found out we had to go to another counter to get a tally. Evelyn
   didn't understand why they do things that way, since it is less
   efficient for the customers. I think it is because the store does not
   trust the clerks. There is less chance the cashier will intentionally
   overlook an item in return for some money on the side.
   
   It was now getting dark and we started looking for a nice restaurant
   for dinner. We passed quite a few, but this one was closed and that
   one seemed mostly a bar. One that looked nicely quiet and set back
   from the road was called ominously Mesquito (not Mosquito, but even
   so...). We were a little hot and sweaty from the walk, but they
   brought plenty of water. The service was quite good. We started with
   chilled gazpacho. They poured the broth and then let us choose from
   finely diced begetables to add. As a youngster I know that gazpacho is
   something I would not have liked, but I have learned a lot. And this
   was just about the best I ever remember having. I had Shrimp
   Bilbaino--very large shrimp in a garlic sauce. Evelyn had some sort of
   fish soup. In any case, it was very tasty. A good choice for dinner.
   
   After that we walked back to the hotel to read, write, and watch a
   little television. I should probably say something about the history
   of the Dominican Republic. The country makes up the eastern two-thirds
   of the island of Hispaniola. (I am pretty sure this was not the Indian
   name of the island.) About a million Tainos lived here happily in
   1492. Columbus landed on Hispaniola at the very tail end of both his
   first voyage and of the Taino occupation. By about 1542, just fifty
   years later, there were only about five hundred Tainos left on the
   island, but those five hundred were exposed to the Word of the Lord so
   the invasion and the murdering or chasing away of 99.95% of the
   inhabitants was a lot nicer than it initially sounds.
   
   Just as in Puerto Rico, the government was finding out it was using up
   the native population too fast. African slaves were needed to fill the
   gaps and were imported. Also, there were no doubt Spanish
   conservationists who would have become alarmed at the loss of a
   million slaves in fifty years and would have instituted enlightened
   policies for making the slaves last longer. In the 1600s the number of
   French settlers in the west part of the island increased and in 1697
   [55]Spain gave that part of the island to [56]France, and that part
   later became Haiti. In 1822 [57]France decided to take the whole
   island, which they held until 1844 when Juan Pablo Duarte led
   Dominican forces which liberated the east part of the island. For
   seventeen years they had independence, had enough of it, and
   voluntarily returned to the Spanish empire in 1861. They left again
   two years later and were again independent.
   
   In their independence, the Dominican Republic built up a whopping
   foreign debt. A ruthless dictator ruled from 1882 to 1899 but was
   assassinated. Then the debt really started to increase until the
   country declared bankruptcy in 1905. [58]European powers threatened to
   intervene, so to save the Republic Teddy Roosevelt occupied it and set
   up a military government. The country had already been put into a
   customs receivership by the United States, and Marines enforced it
   from 1916 to 1924. The receivership continued until 1941. Raphael
   Trujillo Molina became dictator in 1937. Trujillo made moderate
   improvements in the country, but he suppressed any opposition. In
   1959, exiled Dominicans in Cuba tried to overthrow Trujillo but
   failed. In 1960 the Organization of American States imposed sanctions
   on the Dominican Republic over a little matter of Trujillo trying to
   have the President of Venezuela killed. The United States also broke
   diplomatic relations. In 1961 Trujillo was assassinated. The previous
   year Trujillo had made Joaquin Balaguer nominal president. Balaguer
   turned against the Trujillo family and pushed for democracy. Still he
   was deposed and the governing council introduced a new constitution.
   Free elections in 1962 brought in Juan Bosch as president. In 1963 a
   military coup overthrew Bosch. "Turmoil" is the proper word to
   describe the political situation since. In 1990 deposed President
   Bosch ran against deposed President Balaguer for the new presidency.
   Allegedly Balaguer got 35% of the vote and Bosch 34%, but there were
   claims of election fraud. The situation is very unstable and lots of
   people have guns. But who knows? Maybe things will all work out.
   Anything's possible. Isn't it?
   
   _September 13, 1992:_ This was our last day of vacation. Breakfast was
   cheese and fruit juice from the refrigerator. We went out late morning
   and hailed a cab to see the local sights.
   
   Our first stop was just to see--from a distance--the Columbus
   Lighthouse. In a poor country that has serious problems with its
   electrical power, this is at least $70,000,000 worth of building
   intended to light up the sky with a huge cross. We got to the
   Dominican Republic a bit early to see it actually in use. The
   Lighthouse will be inaugurated early in October. The building is a
   huge cross a half-mile from top to bottom lying flat on its back on
   the ground and still seven stories high. They expect the image of the
   cross to be visible from Puerto Rico. The power to run this baby is
   said to be enough so that when it is turned on, local lights dim and
   television pictures get reduced to ribbons. Pretty darn inspirational,
   huh?
   
   According to an article in the [59]NEW YORK TIMES, several foreign
   dignitaries had agreed to be present for the lighting ceremony, but
   have since backed out because of the controversy over the huge cross.
   There are five active and competing socialist parties in the Dominican
   Republic, but they all agree this monument is a huge cross for the
   country to bear. The Pope, who promised to be there for the lighting,
   has announced that his visit will be delayed two days. Local legend
   says that anything connected to Columbus's name will be an unholy
   disaster and the Lighthouse certainly seems to be that.
   
   Our next stop from the tour book was in commemoration of the end of
   pollen season. Tres Ojos de Agua (Three Watery Eyes) is a limestone
   formation. It is a large grotto dissolved out of the ground. You
   basically climb down into a huge sinkhole in the ground and see three
   underground pools (well, actually four--apparently somebody lost count
   at some point). It is claimed one is warm water, one lukewarm, and one
   cold. We didn't actually put a hand in to find out since the pools
   look just a bit scummy. But I am getting ahead of myself. The first
   thing you see as you approach and pay for your ticket is that someone
   attaches himself to you like a polyp claiming to be a government tour
   guide and anxious to show you the site. "I show you _four_ eyes, not
   just three. There is a boat ride. I will pay for the boat ride;
   otherwise you would have to pay." It would be twenty or thirty
   minutes' worth of work. I figure to myself that there is just not that
   much to tell. It is worth maybe 30 or 40 pesos. 40 pesos would be
   about $3.25 considering the exchange we have been getting. However, I
   am fairly sure he has a lot more money in mind. "How much?" "150
   pesos." Nice work if you can get it. There are people with Masters'
   degrees at AT&T who don't get 150 pesos for thirty minutes' work. And
   there are darn few who get it for twenty minutes' work. It is some
   effort, but I shake off the entrepreneur. The boat ride, incidentally,
   is three pesos. Oh, three pesos each.
   
   What we have is a large cavern--well, large by human standards, small
   by cavern standards. Assuming caverns have standards. It is hard to
   think of it as a cavern since most of it is open on top. From ground
   level it appears as two big holes in the ground. Two pools are
   relatively small; two are larger. With the sunlight overhead two of
   the pools are a nice shade of blue. There is a large underground pool
   that is just dark because it does not have open sky over it. There is
   a ferry raft on it and cables for the ferryman to pull his raft back
   and forward. The pull is to the fourth pool which is a sort of grotto.
   Another reason why it is hard to think of this as a cave is that in
   all the sunlit areas there are ferns and tropical plants. There is
   also in the center of it all a stand with postcards.
   
   I had sort of told Evelyn we should go to the Aquarium. Since we were
   basically filling time she agreed. It was a good decision. In fact,
   Evelyn claimed it was the best aquarium she had ever seen. I
   disagreed, pointing out that the Monterey aquarium we'd seen in
   January had a better collection. Okay, she said, this one has the best
   price-performance. That's not right either, since lots of free natural
   history museums have aquaria. There certainly is some metric, however,
   by which this one comes out on top, since it is inexpensive and very
   good. I'd describe it, but it is tough to make an aquarium sound
   exciting. About the most you can say is that its collection is pretty
   good. There is a nice structure where there is a plexiglass tunnel
   right through a large tank. You can see fish swimming over and around
   you.
   
   Just looking at all this blue water makes you feel cooler, though the
   museums and the aquarium are not air-conditioned. When we were done we
   bought ourselves some Pepsis--an action very uncharacteristic of us.
   Somehow we never seem to buy from snack bars at museums or movie
   theaters. If you don't buy it at grocery prices or less and bring it
   with you, you can do without. I think my parents were raised with a
   Depression mentality and passed it on. In spite of what appears to be
   extravagant tours we take (and only two of them really were), we live
   very frugally. But in the Dominican Republic the heat got the best of
   us. We bought two Pepsis. Then we bought a third and took it to
   Miguel, our waiting taxi driver. Miguel's cab was a lot like a lot of
   the cars you see in the Dominican Republic. Come to that, it was a lot
   like the first car of some of the people in my high school--the ones
   with working-class parents. This was a car in which everything
   worked-- at least eventually. (No, the brakes seemed fine.) We had a
   really tough time getting the doors to open. Miguel had to get out and
   come around to open the door. He had a way with the doors. He could
   get them to open. Sometimes on only three or four tries.
   
   Miguel did not know much English so we talked in a combination of
   English and Spanish. He didn't want to talk about politics. We asked
   about the purple houses with the big yellow stars out front and he
   said they _were_ political but suddenly the language barrier got in
   our way. I am pretty sure they are one of the five (count 'em, five)
   different Marxist parties fighting for power. We told Miguel we were
   returning to the United States the next day and he knew we'd want to
   be picked up about 5 AM. That is _the_ flight. I asked if there were
   taxis that early and he said that there were. Then he volunteered to
   be one. We agreed. We were paying Miguel by the hour and he seemed to
   be taking a very roundabout way back to the hotel. My first suspicion
   was that he was going to try to claim another hour. Actually I
   misjudged him. He got us to the hotel about five minutes short of the
   hour. He may have been just giving us our money's worth.
   
   We returned to the room. As evening was coming on we decided to take
   one more walk around the Colonial Sector and then find a place for
   dinner. We found the Colonial sector much quieter on a Sunday
   afternoon. The Alcazar--the house of the son of Columbus-- was closed
   but we could walk around on the city's fortifications. Finally we
   headed back. There were posters on the walls claiming that the Pope
   was the anti-Christ and proving it by showing the numerological
   meaning of the inscription on his crown was 666. Is anyone really
   superstitious enough to care? Well, maybe it is indicative. I got very
   much the feeling that the government thinks things can be made okay
   and the republic will prosper if they can just find the right saint
   and decorate his picture with flowers.
   
   I asked Evelyn what she would do if she were running the country. Her
   response was that she would say the Virgin Mary appeared to her and
   said that everybody should have no more than two children. I then
   thought about my own question for the first time and said I would
   claim the Virgin Mary appeared to me and told me God wanted everyone
   to know as much as they possibly could about technology, mathematics,
   and science. The entrance requirements for Heaven are the same as for
   M.I.T.
   
   Actually I was a bit disappointed in Evelyn's response. There is the
   pessimistic and the optimistic strategy for the future. The pessimist
   approach is to say we have to do everything we can to preserve what we
   have. Stop using up resources so fast because there won't be more
   coming along. Having so many kids is what is hurting the Dominican
   Republic by Evelyn's estimation. Mine is that the country is looking
   in the wrong direction. They have to be aggressive and intelligent.
   Countries like Korea and Singapore that are putting a lot of effort
   into learning about technology and setting up computer networks going
   into every home are going to have the best chance in the future. The
   two-children thing is a good idea but it is way down on my list of
   good ideas for the Dominican Republic.
   
   Well, we walked a ways and did not really find another good restaurant
   for dinner. We were covering much the same territory that we had the
   night before. Evelyn thought that one of the restaurants we'd rejected
   yesterday would be a good choice today. But on closer examination we
   decided we had good reason to reject each of them the previous night.
   Then I remembered we passed a restaurant somehow named for Don
   Quixote. I didn't remember the exact name. We found the place and it
   was open. I didn't think it was particularly good, however. We both
   ordered gazpacho, but it turned out they had enough only for one. I
   decided to be the nice guy and let them switch me to French onion
   soup, which was okay but nothing all that great (or is it "grate"?). I
   had paella. It was weird paella. There was no rice at all, more like a
   broiled seafood platter with potatoes than rice. Not all that tasty
   either. Evelyn had squid with black rice and found it also not all
   that good. The previous night's dinner was far better.
   
   Back at the room it was work on logs and watch a little television and
   early to bed so we'd be up for our 5 AM cab.
   
   _September 14, 1992:_ I actually work up a bit early. At about ten
   minutes to five we'd finished off the remaining orange juice and were
   out of the room and headed downstairs. There was somebody else
   checking out ahead of us and the clerk was going over his bill with
   great concentration. In fact, he seemed to be giving the bill all the
   slow consideration of a problem in algebraic topology. Now admittedly
   this was probably a complex bill since it was for the leader of a tour
   group but also it seemed to get darn little action from the clerk. He
   would stare at a page for two or three minutes straight, then punch
   something up on the computer, then maybe staple some pages together,
   then he might use a calculator to add up some figures on the computer
   screen. I swear we must have been there twenty-five minutes. Finally I
   went out to tell Miguel, who'd been waiting patiently, that we would
   be out shortly. Our own bill took about three minutes. Then we were on
   our way to the airport. Miguel sort of pretended not to notice red
   lights. At 5:30 AM I guess no light is really red in spite of what it
   looks like to a gringo. We still made it to the airport in plenty of
   time. We had carefully planned to have just enough left for the cab
   with a generous tip and for Evelyn to get coffee at the airport. And
   just at the curb somebody grabbed the luggage and insisted on taking
   for us. We kept telling him we wanted to take our own and had spent
   our money and could not pay him. It made no difference. We could not
   shake him. He followed us in and all the way to security trying to
   grab our bags and carry them for us. We kept fighting him and telling
   him we did not have money. "Pay me in American," he suggested. At this
   point we had only twenties. We were not going to pay him $20 for
   lifting our bags once or twice over our protests. Evelyn didn't want
   to give up her coffee money either. So the guy got nothing and I
   suppose that bothered me a little. Coffee turned out to be expensive
   and Evelyn had just about enough.
   
   We flew to the San Juan airport and went through customs. It was
   basically a wave-through. A newspaper told us a second hurricane had
   hit [60]Hawaii that we hadn't heard about. It was an hour or so in the
   San Juan airport, but it seemed a lot fancier than it had seemed days
   before. We got home in time to pick up our mail and still get in an
   hour or two catching up at work.
   
   Final comments about the trip? Well, we visited two islands that were
   for much of their history since 1492 controlled by rather callous and
   exploitative governments. We can complain about what George Bush has
   done over the last four years, but at least he was trying to please
   the country. It sounds corny, but one thing that travel teaches you is
   that the United States Constitution is a darn intelligent document
   which has meant a big difference in how we live today. Puerto Rico and
   the Dominican Republic are two places ratherly thoroughly plundered by
   [61]Spain and to some extent by the United States later. The rulers
   did not have to be responsible to the ruled. And conditions are very
   different there as a result.
   
  THE END
  
     _________________________________________________________________
                                      
   

References

[1]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/
[2]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/caribbean/
[3]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/north_america/usa/massachusetts/
[4]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/spain/
[5]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/spain/
[6]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/spain/
[7]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/spain/
[8]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/spain/
[9]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/spain/
[10]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/north_america/usa/florida/
[11]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/north_america/usa/new_york/
[12]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/spain/
[13]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/greece/
[14]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/north_america/usa/massachusetts/
[15]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/north_america/usa/new_york/
[16]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/north_america/usa/massachusetts/
[17]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/north_america/usa/massachusetts/
[18]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/uk/
[19]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/spain/
[20]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/spain/
[21]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/spain/
[22]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/spain/
[23]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/spain/
[24]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/spain/
[25]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/spain/
[26]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/north_america/usa/florida/
[27]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/spain/
[28]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/spain/
[29]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/
[30]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/uk/
[31]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/spain/
[32]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/spain/
[33]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/uk/
[34]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/spain/
[35]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/uk/
[36]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/spain/
[37]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/spain/
[38]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/north_america/usa/florida/
[39]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/north_america/usa/maine/
[40]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/north_america/usa/new_york/
[41]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/north_america/usa/new_york/
[42]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/
[43]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/spain/
[44]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/spain/
[45]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/spain/
[46]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/spain/
[47]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/north_america/usa/connecticut/
[48]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/spain/
[49]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/spain/
[50]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/romania/
[51]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/
[52]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/north_america/usa/ohio/
[53]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/
[54]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/
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[56]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/france/
[57]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/france/
[58]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/
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[60]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/north_america/usa/hawaii/
[61]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/europe/spain/
[62]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/
[63]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/
[64]http://www.solutions.net/rec-travel/caribbean/