We are safely home from Puerto Rico. One of the reasons we went was because it is "part of America". As it happens, that is on paper only. The culture is very different than the mainland. Where we were English was not widely spoken. Poverty makes life pretty dismal. The people I ran into were not particularly warm or friendly. One thing which I found extremely upsetting was seeing stray animals all over the place. Flea bitten, skinny cats were numerous. We even saw a few cows wandering down public roadways with no owner in sight. The most upsetting thing was to see really sick homeless dogs limping around. Mange seems to be widespread, so these poor creatures were really suffering. I spoke to a native Puerto Rican and she said very little effort is made by the government or private agencies to help animals. Pretty sad.
I had a chance to wander through a grocery store. It was interesting to note the different products needed in a tropical climate. Cookies and crackers come either in a sealed tin or in small one-serving packets. A candy bar that I tried had nutella-type chocolate on the inside of a wafer-type exterior. This arrangement is needed so the chocolate doesn't melt in the heat. An entire aisle of the store was devoted to large jugs of corn oil. Paradoxically, scattered throughout the store were products with large placards about controlling diabetes.
Anyhoo... I loved the beach:
Even looking up was pretty:
I saw a little wildlife:
I have a few more days left of Spring break and I'm hoping to get a few projects completed.
Hope you enjoy the rest of your break. The beach sounds lovely, but the rest, not so much. Somehow it seems important to know the whole of a country, though, and not just the touristy stuff on the shoreline.
Posted by: barbara | April 15, 2009 at 06:36 PM