...without food, water, or toilet

There’s something odd about writing a travel blog after you’ve comfortably settled into a place for an entire two weeks.

At this point I have a pretty set weekday autopilot: wake up at 6:05 (or 6:15 … or 6:25), catch the boat at 7, work on Cayo until 2:30, come home, and then chill out until bedtime at 10.

Of course, when work consists of strolling around an uninhabited island recording monkeys’ reactions to puppet shows about morality that you perform for them (ask me about it), life is never actually boring.

On the boat:

Big Cay looking down on Small Cay:

And there are plenty of hot tropical attractions here, including natural swimming pools on the outskirts of the rainforest:

…and, in San Juan, statues (this one of San Juan himself):

…Congress:

…and weird spiky things:

Nonetheless, these are just punctuations in my Puerto Rican experience, and traveling requires a critical mass and someone with a car. To defend against the wrath of the hedonic treadmill that makes everyday life in PR just like anywhere else, you need novelty that’s sustainable.

Two weeks in, I’ve found two forms.

First, the people here are great. Most of them are older than I am, a good mix of undergrads, grad students, and post-docs, from all over the place – including Germany, England, Canada, South Africa, Chicago, Dartmouth, Duke, and … Harvard. Whether in CT, PA, or PR, there’s nothing better than kicking back and enjoying good company, especially with new demographics. Even the Harvard people are cool (tolerable)!

Second, routine never comes easy if you’re up for a run down the beach.

Yesterday I decided to go barefoot to Palmas del Mar, a collection of resort villages about 6 miles down coast of Humacao. Having discovered on Wikipedia that there’s a casino in town, I packed fifty-five dollars and a pair of socks.

At high tide, the beach is kind of like New Haven – by now I’ve run it plenty of times, and sans novelty and running partner, you have the noise to keep you company.

You head down the sand, through the woods past the old army base, the mangos, and the reserve, and then a few more miles beside the surf before the beach ends again, at the Rio Humacao. I had run about this far once before, but this time, the river overran its bounds. One of the oddest things I’ve ever seen – the beach literally ended, tapering at a 3-foot cliff atop a murky floodplain. I felt like I was at the edge of a flat world – or on the Oregon Trail, but with no oxen to show for.

Amid quicksand and fear, I resolved that Las Palmas was too good to pass up, and forded.

Past an idyllic grassy lookout:

…a lonely, rusted tank:

…and an abandoned house covered in psychedelic graffiti:

…I arrived on coffee-colored, garbage-less sand, a local paradise for Puerto Rico’s well-to-do:

…fit with water-slides:

…signature golf courses:

…sea turtles:

…and albino dogs:

The bouncer at the casino was a nice guy, but unfortunately you can’t get in with socks alone. When he told me I should go back to my room and get some shoes, I politely nodded, keeping my cover – even on the beach, or on the road, let alone the lobby of the Sheraton resort, I felt like some illegal (and sweaty) rogue from Punta Santiago, the chronic trespasser from Gulliver’s Travels, in a mystical land, with English road signs, clean shaves, starchy Hawaiian shirts, and (no joke) $2.50 soda cans.

The next thing I knew, it was 7:00 p.m., and little time to make it back before early sunset. After a short sprint down the beach, I cut inland across the golf course, hoping to make it to some main road and high-tail it back to Punta. Forty-five minutes later, I was lost on a random fairway in the pitch black, threatening Jurassic Park -esque predatory birds screeching above, and eventually made it back to the clubhouse, out the driveway, and into a (confusingly) gated community. A man and his two daughters were just getting in their car when I asked them how to get back to the resort, where Kelly could pick me up, and not only did they get me a glass of water, they drove me the several miles there, and we had a pleasant conversation about Yale and Michael Jackson!

A fortituous, unexpected end to a bizarre day. This guy would've fit in quite nicely: