Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
It was spitting rain when we landed in San Juan.
This was a bit of a downer—we always feel a little cheated when we arrive in Puerto
Rico in less than blazingly sunny weather.
But at least it was hot.
After an interminable wait at the Hertz office we set off for the port town of Fajardo
where we were planning to spend the night before taking the ferry to Vieques the next morn-
ing. During our few short hours on the island we would take a second look at our house with
Armando and meet with our new property manager. Afterwards, we'd take the ferry back to
Fajardo, where our closing was scheduled for eleven the following morning.
Yes, it was a lot to cram into three days but we were nearly out of vacation time for the
year.
We got lost more than once—I don't think we'll ever again mistake the Spanish word
east (
este
) for west (
oeste
). At dusk, with our cell phones certifiably moribund, we were
standing at a pay phone in Fajardo in the rain, having circled the town for more than an hour
in a futile effort to locate the
Fajardo Inn
.
Forty-five minutes later we were sitting in the hotel's cozy bar sipping cocktails, strug-
gling gamely against the sheer exotic strangeness of the act we were about to commit.
“Are we out of our minds?” Michael asked more than once.
“Yes,” I answered the first time; “maybe,” the second; “absolutely not,” the third.
The more I drank, the more convinced I became that we'd made a good decision.
“Alcohol-induced certainty isn't necessarily the most reliable indicator of truth,” Mi-
chael commented sagely.
I hate it when he's sage.
☼ ☼ ☼
I lived on Nantucket for three years in the early '90s.
When I first moved to the island I couldn't believe how much I loved the place. It was
crisp and fresh and beautiful. I met great people and I had a decent job, in a drop-out sort of
way, as a concierge at a wildly expensive hotel.
And yet every summer, after I'd been in residence no more than six weeks, I was sud-
denly seized with what the locals call “rock fever,” meaning that I was desperate to get off
the island, if only for a day or two.
And then I did what everyone else did unless they were rich enough to fire up the family
jet and fly to Paris for a long weekend.
I got on the ferry and took a day-trip to Hyannis. I did a little shopping, I saw a movie, I
ate dinner at a chain restaurant—in other words, I spent the day doing what most Americans
do at least twice a week.
It was fun for eight or ten hours and then I couldn't wait to get back on the boat and
return to the glorious, rarefied atmosphere I had been completely fed up with the day before.
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