Blog of San Juan Puerto Rico.

"THE DAY HAS COME"

Now what seemed like many moons ago is finally here sitting at the the terminal looking out at my plane eyes half shut starbucks in my hand, I see many different faces waiting to board to the right of me a young mother with a newborn child, then a couple holding hands laughing made me smile. thoughts raced through my head maybe the lady in front of me in the coffee line I might see again in San Juan as I walk around the city, or maybe she is the cashier that takes my money when I go into a store to buy something, some faces look tired others show joy, excitement me though I didnt sleep well but I look at this as a challenge in my life explore whats a head of me open my wings maybe even relax alittle who knows I just want that one picture that says it all whether I get it here or not I will find a way to find peace I'll board this plane with determination the time has come and all that awaits is a sunny skie warm waters and smiling faces, hello San Juan I am John so nice to see you.

 

 

"FLIGHT THERE"

 

Ha Ha! If Starbucks cappuccino doesn't wake you up, then the guy sitting by the window in my row will. There he sits,, wearing pink tennis shoes and Cookie Monster PJ's! Am I now so old that I wonder how adults travel wearing their PJ's? lol For the flight to San Juan I kick back, watching a little VH1 classic videos. "Wham" in concert in China. lol ...I then flip over to "Life of Pi", while eating some blue chips. Sorry, I really thought it was the name of the chips. The damn things were as blue as the sky I was flying in!

When the plane finally landed, I asked the baggage handler where to stand for the bus. Do you want to guess what happened? Yep he sent me to the wrong spot. So I watched the bus zoom by me as I frantically tried waving it down. I guess that means another 35 minutes standing in the heat. Yeah PUERTO RICO!!! Forty minutes later, and with a huge thirst for a cold beer, I watched a young woman kiss her man goodbye as tears rolled down her face. It saddens me to the point that my own tears built up in my eyes. No worries mate....oh wait..... wrong country! Anyway, I'm on the bus and off I go.

 

 

BUS RIDE TO HOSTEL AND CHECK IN

Does one ever know what it's like standing in the heat watching your bus go by? Let's fast forward and I am now on the bus. You'd think that is simple, right? Just follow directions given, and so what if the last time you were on a bus was about 30 moons ago? And so what if you're in Puerto Rico and not downtown Tampa? It's only a bus John. How hard can it be? The first bus was a piece of cake. It actually made me start feeling pretty good about myself. The next bus was a whole different story! Imagine 30 fish crammed into a can that holds 5.... lol... It felt like 100 people on the bus, with their arms up in the air, body odor, and then there's me, holding 3 bags of luggage. I swear I looked like the puppy in the window begging someone, "Help me get out of here!" (insert puppie face here) I think I stepped on more toes and bumped into more boobs in 25 minutes then I have in my whole 47 years on this planet! ... lol....I stood in awe counting all the McDonalds, Taco Bells, and Burger Kings. There's more here than we have back in Florida!
I finally get to my stop and my arm feels like it's fallen off. What appears before my tired eyes? The mural of the lizard that I saw online. (insert) I knew I was close to my hostel by then.

How my bus ride was for 25 minutes.

 

how I felt in the bus

This was the Mural on the wall walking to my Hostel

 

I guess if looks could kill, I might have been dead with the looks I got walking down back streets to my hostel. Scott, a friendly face met me at the front door and explained everything about the hostel to me. With key in hand, a quick stop to pee and off I was to old San Juan.

 

Where I stayed for 3 days

"Journey to the Old City"
So, what have we learned so far? Bus service is a means to get around and streets are crowded. I sat on the bus, excited to finally be heading to the old city. I'll be honest here. I will always speak my mind. The trip from the hostel to Old San Juan felt like the battle torn desert and city of Iraq. There are more restaurants in one city block of San Juan than a three square mile area of Tampa.

I was stunned when we went through a section of San Juan. Buildings looked like bombs had dropped on them and graffiti and murals as far as the eye can see!

 

There are 1000's of Murals on the walls of run down building in San Juan

 

This is one of many places you see on your trip to Old San Juan

Believe it or not people live in these still, they just put sheets over the windows and doors.

 

"Old San Juan"

thing is for sure: If you take someone who loves history (i.e. me) I will be in awe with what I learn and see. Although there is a trolley that takes you around the city free, today I decided to be the tourist and walk. Wow! Okay, note to self: Walking in 90 degree heat is NOT recommended! After walking about a mile, I came to the west side of the city where it's been said you must see the sunset. (we will see). The wall that is built around this city amazed me! I cannot even imagine the labor that went into this in the late 1600's. Men used cattle to pull dirt and rocks to build this wall. It was built to protect the city from attacks by sea. Here it is, 400 years later and I'm strolling down the walkway. The breeze of the sea blows through my hair, a fine mist hits my face just enough to cool me down as I push on to learn about a city in a city. What I try to picture while walking this three mile journey is how a wall like this was built. It reminded me of the wall around the city of Yugoslavia

So much history is part of this city and one

I had to laugh for a minute. If you can just picture this: imagine standing on a side wall, a masive wall, in front of you that stretches miles. All around you are stray cats and hundreds of abandoned kites stuck to the wall. It seems this must be the popular place to let your cat run free and launch your kite until you're bored!

My first chance at eating was a little out of the way Mexican Restaurant. I wolfed down the food and drank three Cokes. Geeesh, you would think I had never eaten. Perhaps all this walking built up a huge appetite in me.

I walked the blue cobblestone streets and funny how some seemed so narrow that cars couldn't fit through. Here I sit in Starbucks, sipping an iced coffee watching it pour. I think about the homeless guys I saw laying in corners or about how I accidently ventured into an unsafe area that I had even been warned about: La Perla.

This is the wall around the city of Old San Juan

 

This is one of about 100 kites stuck to the fort wall

This is one of many stray cats that walk around the wall as the story goes many years ago the spanish brought cats to Puerto Rico to get rid of millions of rats on the Island, The cats still stay and they now have their own place to live and call home.

 

La Perla:

How do people survive there? It's like a small area that is outcast from the rest of Old San Juan. Some homes have pieces of their roofs missing, windows are boarded up like the people have the plague and are shunned. I have to ask, how can a city be so beautiful and so ugly at the same time? As I stare out the window at Starbucks I long to see more of this mysterious, yet intriguing place. Where will my journey take me? I've walked on the dirt that soldiers fought to protect hudnreds of years ago. Maybe I'll come back for a marguarita and a sunset. For now I long to jump into the ocean, feel the water on my face and live life as I know it. Lesson for the Day: "Find your love in life. You are given one chance. Do all you can to be happy and may the ocean's breeze grace your face. For if tomorrow never comes, I loved all today."

 

I was told to stay away from La Perla Honestly I didnt know I was down there, I saw some things that caught my eyes and well it led me to this place, I didn't feel welcomed there and by the looks I was getting I might of become fish bait. What you see in front of you is the type of homes these people lived it, This was one of the better ones. Some people used billboards and stop signs to patch holes in roofs and sides of homes.

 

"Funny Story"

Sometimes as a photographer you go places you might feel very uncomfortable with. Today was such the case with me. I really did want to walk through the "bad" area just so I could capture wall murals. What if I said a pig and a goat crossed the road? Would I be lying just to make a story up? Nope. As my camera focused, my ear heard a sound like no other. You know the billy goat sound and a pig sounding out "Oink, oink". Literally thinking I'm mind traveling to the movie I watched on the plane, "Life of Pi", I couldn't help but laugh until a tear ran down my cheek. How was it possible? Who cares because it brought laughter to a face that had had a dreary day. Things like this have no answers, but if you evr ask me why the pig and goat crossed the road, I might reply "To get to their apartment complex".

 

 

 

Ask me sometime to tell you this story its better said during a party with a few cold ones lol.

 

Night's End

Closing the night off seemed strange, lying in bed I felt like I was back in Pennsylvania. I heard birds, dogs barking, people yelling....someone please remind me that I am on vacation, right? Maybe next time I'll try Fiji. "Buenos nachos amigos. A los que enviar todo el amor depuerto Rico."

What Lies Ahead
So I laid in my bed last night, and stared at the bottom of the top bunk. Funny huh? I'm sleeping in a bunk bed. I really tried to talk myself into going to the Rain Forest but it seemed like a lot of money for a taxi to take me there. When I woke up this morning I had ocean breeze on my mind. Really, how can one go wrong picking the ocean...right?

The beach I longed to relax on

 

I needed SEX ON THE BEACH opps not this pic lol

This one will have to do for now lol.

Each day I've made it a point to help you. If you choose to go to San Juan, Puerto Rico, this is your lesson: You can stay at a hostel very cheaply however the downside is you have to be the early bird. Here, our hostel has six women and two men. We all share two rooms and one shower. So, get up and like I was taught in the Navy, you got seven minutes to SSS....and that my friends is slang for shit, shower and shave! Trust me, you do NOT want grumpy young women pounding on the bathroom door saying "Get your old ass out of there; I've got makeup to put on"!

I made it finally to Rent The Bicycle. Being so early, I made laps around the condo complex. I had security guards making bets as to when I'd fall over from heat exhaustion! Four laps and thirty minutes later, Nancy, a young thirty something owner and I are laughing our little asses off. Seems in the twenty two plus years she has lived here she has never seen a pig and a goat cross the road. We had a good laugh about that before I set out to bike the shorelines in search of that amazing photograph.

My plan was to bike across the bridge to Condonce. It's said the beaches and buildings are a dead ringer for Miami. Because I say it like it is, yeah..maybe...after a solid day of bombing. Really nothing to see...I did watch a man apply his brakes to hard on his bicycle and flip head over heels over the handlebars. Then I stepped into Starbucks for water. Hey, how does $4.02 for a bottle of water sound to you? Honestly, I felt I was wasting time and I left there feeling disappointed and lighter in the wallet. Then to top it all off, on the way back to Old San Juan there was a guy on the side of the road selling water for $1. they must see us Americans from a mile away! I turned my bike back in early as you can only go up and down the same street a few times before everyone points at you and says , "He's lost".

I think the highlight of my day came when I visited the Capitol Building. Okay I might be pushing the envelope a little bit. But having two large piles of trash sitting on the steps of the Capitol Building makes for bad photography, or the street cleaner that magically leaves trash cans in front of the statue I'm taking pictures of.

So speaking of statues, what U.S. presidents have their statues on the walk across the street from the Capitol Building? It is said the presidents there once visited Puerto Rico and admired it so much that they, the government of Puerto Rico constructed life size statues of those presidents. Which ones do you see? Gerald Ford, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Barack O'Bama. Who is missing? Bill Clinton. Apparently on his visit to Puerto Rico he had an affair with a Puerto Rican postal worker so his name is never mentioned around here. Just kidding of course, but it wouldn't surprise me. I do give them credit. They do like our presidents!

Our President in Old San Juan across the street from Capital Building.

Another Fort

This afternoon I decided to go see the fort that I missed yesterday. I missed it because, apparently an ice cream cone was more important for $3 than a tour of the old battle torn fort. I am so impressed with the history behind the fort. For example, the US Army built a fort on top of the fort. They used it during WWII so the lookouts could watch for U-Boats, the German wrecking machines. And how about during the war in the 1800's tunnels were used so soldiers could get around without the enemy seeing them? They even set explosives in the first tunnel to detonate it if the enemy made it's way into that first tunnel.

My view of the ocean from part of the fort, was so impressed with the history behind this

Paco, Resident Iguana

Today I reconfirmed just how stupid humans are. I met the resident fort pet, Paco. Paco is a 2 1/2 foot iguana and the cutest thing ever. I saw a young kid, maybe in his early teens, swinging Paco by his tail in the air. I was so mad I screamed at this kid to put him down! His friends stood by and laughed.I don't know if it was the fire in my eyes or my fist shaped like a hammer but either way, he put him down. Thirty people standing there and it took me, and none of them, to say "you're a stupid kid"! After the incident with Paco, I felt the day was a wash. I mean after all, what person in their right mind grabs an iguana and swings it around by it's tail?

 

Back at the Hostel (again....)

I'm sitting here at the Hostel, relaxing and watching as new faces come in. And I'm thinking, at this time tomorrow I'll be boarding my plane to go home, to America. I'm laughing (but only in my mind...not out loud) as there is a young woman who just ate four Twinkie and drank a bottle of water. Now she's eating spicy chips and it's burning her mouth.

 

 Is it any wonder my three days here is like a drama/comedy movie? I sit back and say (with my best Spanish accent) "Necesito que hagas el ridiculo de su auto. ¿estas histo? Grandes" Good night from San Juan

 

The Final Day

Hey, 3AM comes early, especially when you go to bed at 11PM. By no means do I want you to think this is the norm for me. I honetly had a hard time sleeping. Why you ask? Hmm....could it be the black and white mutt that barked throughout the night, who belongs to our very loud-mouthed neighbor, or maybe the 20 plus cats meow, meow, meowing? Then of course you can't rule out the room of five other adults all tossing and turning in their chorus of snores. Whichever one it is, I'm wide awake now. But here's the icing on the cake: I actually laid awake all that time having to pee so bad. But I worried that I would wake someone up if I got up. Yes, I know that's wrong, and yes, I didn't rest and relax as I had planned to. Maybe laying in the bunk dreaming of Fiji and tiki huts over the water was my way of saying someday you'll find peace and happiness.

I actually started my morning off again at Denny's. My waiter from the prevous day greeted me again and I had my meal in served before I could sign onto the internet. wow...talk about friendly service!

yummy 2 days of eating this and get this it only cost me freaken $18 people I dont get it San Juan is run down yet I pay $20 a meal to eat at places there.

Today's mission, if I choose to accept it, is to travel to Plaza Las Americas, simply known as the largest mall in all of the Carribean. Those friends that know me, know I love to shop. So after standing at the wrong bus for almost an hour...oh and thanks to all you friendly bus drivers telling me to wait....my bus will come. I have got to stop here and do a public service announcement:
"If you're traveling in San Juan and you're using public transportation (bus) be aware of two things: Don't be shy about being very close to someone because they cram you in like little tiny fish in a really small sardine can. Be aware that your face can end up in someone else's armpit during quick stops. However, if you're small you may end up having your forehead smack a nutsack. So let me warn you, use underarm deodorant. During the 40 minute ride today my finger stroked the wig of an 80 year old. Not sure but the smile on her face told me I was massaging her wig really good!

A mall is a mall, right? Wrong! Let me just say this: if you love to shop, if you have the body for some of the latest trends that Puerto Rico offers, then I suggest you purchase a plane ticket and plan to shop all day long. Remember that old expression, "Like a kid in a candy store"?. Here they offer the best of everything. There was a minimum of 50 plus stores just for women and the latest styles. I cut my trip to the mall short as I felt my time had come to head home.

 

This mall is better then any mall we have in Florida.

 

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

As a travel photographer you must be prepared. This was my first time traveling with the goal in mind to capture the award winning shot. My thoughts leading up to this trip was pure bliss. In my mind I envisioned palm trees swaying, the sound of the ocean crashing onto the shore, little kids playing in the sand, beautiful people all oiled up waiting to have Life Magazine pictures taken. If all of this sounds too good to be true, then it is. My mind thought one thing but as the bus drove me through San Juan my jaw dropped in disbelief. What happened I ask myself? Did I board the wrong plane? For six months I dreamed of this day.

Yet a real culture shock was setting in really fast. My dreams soon appeared to be a nightmare. Driving through the streets all I see is a city stricken with poverty, building with graffiti, spray paint all over trash lined streets. I wasn't sure if I was in tropical paradise or a war zone. Sure, I knew the area I would be staying in wasn't upscale. I was on a photographer's budget, not a broker. But what I was witnessing was something many of us never have or will have experienced in our lifetime. Was it at that moment that all dreams of a hammock and cold beer flashing away from my eyes that reality set in and my mind's thoughts turned to anger. I felt like I was being cheated. I wanted pleasure, and rest and relaxation.

another beautiful wall mural

It's sad, but honestly I wasn't ready for this. San Juan wasn't all I expected. A pure letdown in my eyes. Way to much filth and waste. To many things decimated, and the city was an eyesore in my opinion. It was as if my love for adventure now led me to hate where I ended up. Old San Juan lacked the appeal as well, but what it did offer was a richness in history. The city itself had so much to offer with what had gone on in the past.

Even the beaches of Condona were not cracked up to what I was told. After listeing to one say to me, "If you love the glitz and glamour of Miami, then Condona will appeal to you". Again, minus all the run down buildings, torn up roads and businesses for sale, you have a resort town lacking appeal. It's sad that as much as I tried to see positive in this, all that came to me was negativity. I did the best I could with the hand that was dealt.

Looking Back
I sit on the plane staring out the window and every once in a while a smile comes to my face. I think about the friends I made on this journey, the people I made laugh, and all that I learned. I see clouds out my window and when the plane touches down I may kiss the ground I call home. I will be more thankful for the life I live. I will share my journey through words and pictures. I have learned that Puerto Rico is a country of proud people although they do not live the luxury and have what we have. We can all take a lesson in life from them. Here is a small island with proud and honorable people. It's not fair to say Puerto Rico is bad just because of one city. We have that right here in the U.S.A. I most like to think, though the island is small the hearts of Puerto Ricans are big. My journey brought me home, but I hope a part of me stayed behind because when you have people with the belief life is good, then you truly are blessed.

As a photographer I didn't capture that one magic photo. But as a person I learned that this island has its own magic. I'll return some day maybe even to a small island off the coast of Puerto Rico. Maybe it's there I"ll write a novel. Until then, I leave you with this thought: Until my toes touch your sand again, Puerto Rico you will be forever in my heart.

 

 

 

This is the Captain speaking we want to thank you for flying JetBlue the temp outside in Lovely Tampa Florida is 91 enjoy your stay here in Florida.
Story written by Photographer John Bowman
www.AMomentoftimePhotography.com