Stranded in San Juan!

[Rosalia]
Puerto Rico,
you lovely island,
island of tropical breezes…
Always the pineapples growing,
always the coffee blossoms blowing...

I have that song (“America”) from West Side Story stuck in my head right now. The song is sung by a group of Puerto Rican immigrants living in NYC, debating the pros and cons of life in both places. In the play, the men wax nostalgic for PR while the women -- led by Anita, my favorite character -- insist on the superiority of their new home. I feel a bit like Anita right now, although it’s no fault of Puerto Rico’s that I’d rather not be here for an extra hour – nor would I particularly like to fly to (and remain in) Boston for an extra three before I can get to New York.

There’s nothing quite like landing at a strange airport, and, as you rush to make your connecting flight, being abruptly informed that that flight has been canceled. (This is almost invariably done without explanation, typically in a tone that implies that it’s partially your fault for blithely assuming the plane ticket you purchased would actually work). After standing in line for what felt like an interminably long time (and let me tell you, the people behind and in front of me were getting pretty restless), I was reassigned to a flight path that will take me to Logan Airport in Boston – my old stomping grounds.

I mentioned in a previous post how in an odd way I really enjoy airports, and this trip has reminded me how I also like watching the flight attendants do the safety demo before takeoff for each flight. (No, I really can’t explain that one.) When I was younger, my absolute favorite parts of any flight were takeoff, for the swooping sensation in your stomach as the ground tilted away, and the flight itself, the duration of which I would spend pasted to the window, my mind fashioning dragons and castles and thrones and whole cumulus kingdoms from the cloudscape outside. These days, I have to admit that the flight – both takeoff and during – are one of my least favorite parts of the whole experience. I guess some of the glamour of watching the world outside has faded, while the bodily stresses of a dry cabin, cramped quarters, and changing pressures as we ascend and descend have become more focal.

I mention this only to say that flying over the Caribbean was one of the more exciting window-watching opportunities in recent Kelly history, as we flew over several small islands ringed with turquoise, the delicate tracery of off-shore coral reefs visible via gradations in the ocean’s blue. Barbados, I was interested to learn during my stay, is rather like Long Island in that its underlying geography differs from that of its immediate neighbors. Though most of New York is characterized by granite and sandstone bedrock, Long Island is essentially a giant sandbar, dredged up from the ocean floor by one of the last receding glaciers of the Ice Age. Similarly, Barbados’s substructure is formed from coral, and the bits of rock that assert themselves from beneath the dirt and grass in the fields are pitted with the trademark striations of coral, while most of its Caribbean neighbors are volcanic islands, their bedrock formed from cooling lava. One of the islands we flew over on the way from Barbados to Puerto Rico (St. Martin?) had a huge dormant volcano on its eastern (?) shore, the tell-tale ridges of some ancient lava flow visible from the air, though now covered with a dense forest of palm trees.

At any rate, I’m still stuck here in San Juan for a while. I managed to finagle a free lunch voucher from American Airlines (never hurts to ask!) and am now whiling away the hours reading The Race Against Time, an extraordinary book about the HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa that everyone should read. Click the links in this sentence to read more about the author, Stephen Lewis, and the humanitarian crisis.

[Anita]
Puerto Rico,
you ugly island,
island of tropic diseases...
Always the hurricanes blowing,
always the population growing,
and the money owing...
and the babies crying…
and the bullets flying...
…I like the island Manhattan!