On a train

I love trains. When I went to work for the old PennCentral (later part of Conrail), I was the fourth generation in my family to work for the railroad. If my mother is to be believed (and she is, and since she's no longer with us she's pretty hard to argue with), I was conceived on a train. I have railroads in my blood.

As a special treat, Amy got us discounted tickets on the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railway. After Kennedy's soccer game, we loaded up Titi Amy, Tio Dan, Kennedy, and Kai and headed north for a train ride through the valley.

Things have sure changed in this beautiful valley since that day in 1969 when the seriously polluted Cuyahoga River caught fire, a fire ironically started by a spark from a passing freight train. (That fire by the way was the inspiration for Earth Day.)

The river and the valley have been cleaned up. Hundreds of miles of bike and hiking trails follow old railbeds and the towpath for the old Eire Canal. The CVSR follows the route of the original railroad that helped bring an end to the Eire Canal.

One of the cool things about the CVSR is the Bike 'n Ride option. They have a special car with special attendants so bikers can take their bikes on the train to various trailheads along the route. For $3 you can take the train to whatever trailhead, get off, ride, and either ride back to your car or for $3 more catch the train back. On this Saturday afternoon there were a bunch 'o bikers. I can't imagine how many there will be and how crowded this train will be in a month when all the fall colors are out.

We don't have trains in Puerto Rico anymore. There used to be trains to haul sugar cane and they added passenger service to get people from "la isla" to San Juan. But no more. I miss the sound of trains, the feel of trains. This was a great adventure for me and to share with our grandkids. I absolutely loved it!

Our first game as soccer grandparents

Okay, okay. I know - after many years a soccer parent, coach and referee - I know it's supposed to be all about the kids.

But sometimes it's not all about the kids. Before and after this game, Kennedy's first soccer game, it was all about her. But during the game, on the sideline, it was all about us - the grandparents and parents. It was our first game too.

We yelled more than any of the other parents. We cheered more than the other parents. Amy yelled more instructions to Kennedy than other parents yelled at their kids (we told her she needs to be a coach). It was all very surreal.

Even though I was born about two hundred miles from here, into a world populated by people like the other parents on the sideline, I realized I am more comfortable in, and have more in common with a room full of native Puerto Ricans than I do this crowd of northern Ohioans. I felt out of place. I can only imagine how our son-in-law Miguel feels.

Silent and cold!

We woke up our first morning in Elaine's sister's house to - silence. Total silence.

We are used to waking up to the wind rattling the palm trees outside our bedroom and living room windows, the sound of the ocean, the sound of birds, the sound of Jazz thumping his tail and rattling the door to hs cage.

The absolute silence was a bit unnerving.

And honestly, the cold is a bit unnerving too. I've been wearing jeans and a fleece shirt ever since we got here. I haven't been n temperatures this cold (mid-50s) in seven years.

Ignorance is everywhere

We were moving quickly and and ran into a nearby Burger King to grab a quick sandwich (not a burger, by the way).

Somehow in the course of the transaction Elaine mentioned to the person behind the counter that we are here visiting from Puerto Rico. The counter-person said, "Oh, are you missionaries to the poor natives down there?"

WTF??!!!

Elaine really wanted to go educate the poor fellow but we didn't really have time. We talked about it and brainstormed possible responses. Our best one was, "No. We're missionaries from Puerto Rico here to help ignorant norteamericanos.

In the end we decided to leave it alone, that this particular reeducation task was just more than we could take on.

El Coqui and TSA

A bag of El Coqui coffee was almost our undoing with TSA in San Juan. Our bag went through the scanner and the agent said, "I have to look in this bag."

Ok.

She rooted through the case and pulled out our foil bag of El Coqui, a gift for Elaine's sister. They rescanned the bag. Turns out it was something else they saw, a game for the kids. But it was the El Coqui they took out. Fortunately, after sniffing the bag to make sure it was really coffee, they gave it back to us.

Hey! It's all fun and games until TSA starts taking your stuff.

Musical chairs on the airplane

Sunset over the Atlantic

Because of an online error, when our flights were booked, we wound up on different flights. Elaine was scheduled to fly out of Mayaques at 10:00 and out of San Juan at 1:00. I was scheduled to fly out of Mayaguez at 1:30 and out of San Juan at 3:00. We would then meet in Miami for the flight to Cleveland.

The "station agent" in Mayaguez was very nice and said, "Sure you cn both get on the early flight." So we got to fly to San Juan together. When we got to San Juan, the flight Elaine was overbooked and they were asking for volunteers to tak the next flight (the one I was booked on). So Elaine got bunmped and got a $300 voucher. So now we were on the same flight to Miami but seated in different rows.

When a got to my seat, there was a woman siting in it.She was obviously sitting with her family and her young child. She said, "would you take my window seat so I can stay here?" Of course! No problem! So I started back to my new seat and Elaine started for hers. A man stood up and offer his seat so we could sit together.

We ended up sitting together in totally different seats than we were assigned on on flight we we'nt supposed to be on together. And we got $300 for our trouble!

Cool.

Flying out of Mayaquez

Mayaguez airport a little airport with pretensions.

We decided to fly out of Mayaquez airport this time. It's a bit less money than flying out of Aguadilla but without the hassles of driving to San Juan. And it's a lot easier to get someone to take you to Mayaquez than it is to ask someone to drive to San Juan.

There is literally none of the usual airport security in Mayaquez. A quick glance (if that) at an ID. No TSA. No scanners or X-rays or metal detectors. No taking your shoes or your belt off. No unpacking (then repacking) all your myriad electronic devices. Just a nice guy who comes out to get you when it's time to go because you're sitting outside on the bench in the sunshine.

When we got to Mayaquez, we were actually booked on two different flights, Elaine at 10:00 and me at like 1:30. The same nice guy put us both on the earlier flight. Not that that was any big problem: there were only three other passengers. But then it was a tiny plane.

From Mayaquez it's a short 35-minute flight, mostly along the coast, to San Juan. In San Juan, it's back to travelers' reality, TSA. dragging luggage through the airport to the check-in counter and all that.

All said and done, I don't think we'll fly out of Mayaguez again though. It was an experience, an adventure, but I don't think it saved us much time or hassle. I would still rather fly out of Aguadilla even with the middle-of-the night departures and arrivals. We can usually find someone who will pick up our car so we don't have to pay to park at the airport and then drop it off the night we come home.

 This the VIP  lounge in the Mayaguez airport.

We gathered at the beach...

A bunch of friends - some in body, some in spirit - gathered at Playa Borinquen last night for a surprise community farewell to Elaine before she heads off on her new adventure.

What new adventure, you ask?

Elaine leaves next week for two weeks visiting kids and grandkids. Then she leaves for the island of St. Lucia for three months. She is going to be the SLP (speech-language pathologist) for an NGO center that is the only provider of therapy services for children on the island.

St. Lucia is a tiny island (only  239 sq mi, compared with just over 3,500 sq mi in Puerto Rico) down the West Indies island chain 472 miles (760 km), about an hour-and-a-half flying time, southeast of Puerto Rico.

We will miss her tons (especially me). But this great new adventure is something that speaks to her heart so I am so happy she has this opportunity. May Navidad come soon, though! LOL

R.I.P., David

Later today David Pfaff's friends will gather with his wife Liane at his home in Carmel, California, to remember and celebrate David's life. Although we can't be there in body, we want Liane and Stanley and Charlie and Tito (and David's neighbor Clint Eastwood) to know we are there with them in spirit.

This Medalla is for David. Thank you for everything you gave to us and to this world. Rest in peace.

Elaine's first eagle ray

Elaine saw her first spotted eagle ray yesterday. We were snorkeling with some off-the-island friends at Wishing Well. This little guy - it was a juvenile - swam around us for quite a while.

I tried to upload a video of the ray but blogspot was having none of it. So the video is over on Youtube. You can also click on the photo. It is a link to the video also.

Chris and Heather's wedding

Our friends (through our breakfast club partners Courtney and Christine) Chris and Heather got married on the beach at Shacks yesterday. The reception was at Villa Shacks, our friend Mark's place on the beach.

I don't normally photograph weddings. They are a pain. With one exception I only do photographs for friends and the photos are my wedding gift to the bride and groom. This is one of my favorites of Chris and Heather. They haven't seen any of the photos yet. I hope they like them.

Spot the frogfish

While frogfish are unusual anywhere, the longlure frogfish is the most common. Like this little guy they tend to hide among like-colored sponges, relying on really effective camouflage for protection. They rarely move unless they are disturbed and a difficult to spot unless they move. They are usually found in water between 10 and 60 feet. This guy was at about 12 feet.

My good friend and favorite dive buddy Darryl is really good at finding things like this. Once he found this guy he looked around and found another one nearby. Since they don't move much, we've gone to the same spot and found them several times.

Which brings up a question: Did these guys just get here or have they been here a long time and we just haven't seen them. We dive this particular site pretty often but we usually drop straight to about 25-30 feet. It is possible these guys just arrived a week or so ago. It is equally possible they've been here a while and we just cluelessly swam right  past them.

But now that we know they are there, they are a regular "stop" on our dives at this site.

5k Color Run

Ola Lola's was closed Sunday so we could take our entire crew plus Suzanne, Alex, Brian and Carrina to the Breast Cancer 5k Color Run in San Juan. This is the crew after 3 miles of sweating and running through clouds of  color thrown at us and dumped on us. We all had a great time for a great cause. Despite our best efforts, most of us still have color to wear to work today.

The crew is already talking about signing up for the 5k Zombie Run.

A non-dive

We tried to dive outside at Shacks yesterday with four inexperienced divers. It was pretty rough and wavy and visibility was terrible following a couple of torrential downpours Thursday night. We all swam out to Blue Hole where we decided it wasn't safe to continue, that with the poor visibility it would be very difficult to stay together. At some of our dive sites - Crashboat or Natural, for example - if the group gets separated, it pretty easy to surface and find your way back to shore. The outside at Shacks isn't like that. If you're on the outside and don't know the very specific ways back in, you're in trouble. So we abandoned that dive and swam back in, .

Because it was Friday morning and I had to be ready to open Ola Lola's, my time and options were limited. Instead of diving I came back and cut grass. Darryl and the others went to Natural and Crashboat and had two great dives with 60 - 70 foot visibility. Sometimes Mother Ocean just plays with your head.

My next shot at diving will probably be Monday. Here's hoping for cleaner waters.

Swimming horses

Saturday morning, when I came back from running our usual pre-opening errands, Elaine and Marie were off riding KTJ and Zip. Since KTJ has a sore leg and/or hoof, I thought they just went to the beach. Chocolate looked so forlorn, I decided to join them. Thinking I was just going to the beach to swim - not really for a ride. I couldn't find the nylon hackamore I usually use with Choco (turns out Elaine had it on KTJ) so I just grabbed a  halter with a lead rope attached to both sides and a bareback pad. I mounted up and took off for the beach.

For a lot of people - our good friend Sam, for example - this is no big deal. For me it's HUGE!

Elaine and Marie were riding back toward home as I came over the dune. Elaine was so shocked to see me on Choco, bareback, and with just a halter she almost fell off KTJ.

So I've raised my own bar. Yesterday when we took KTJ, Chocolate and Zip for a dip in the ocean - always always always a fun adventure - I rode Choco bareback and just a halter.

I'm having fun with it but holy cats am I sore! You use your legs very differently when riding bareback than you do with a saddle. And Chocolate has a terrible bareback back. And then there is that whole guy anatomy thing. Trotting with no saddle and stirrups to help post is probably banned by some Geneva convention as a form of torture.

But it was fun and I will do it again.



I added a little twist to the adventure.

Colicing horse

I got my first experience with a colicing horse last night.

Colic in a horse is any kind of abdominal pain, frequently caused by either a blockage or a twist in the horse's gastrointestinal tract. Literally, horses can get their bowels in a twist. In mild cases it can go away on its own. Severe cases require surgery and can be fatal.

Yesterday afternoon Chocolate started showing the signs: laying down, rolling - really, thrashing around on the ground - getting up but laying back down or rolling again right away. The "usual" treatment is to walk the horse, not let them lie down, and get oil (vegetable or mineral oil) into the gut. Elaine started both of those and called the vet.

A shot of muscle relaxer and a mineral oil "flush" later and we hoped he was on his way back. But later in evening he started rolling again, still in discomfort. So, we started walking him. Because we didn't want to walk him anywhere there was grass for him to get at, we had to walk him on the pavement. Since it was late by then and dark, we couldn't safely use the road. The solution was walking up and down our neighbor's long driveway. Back and forth, up and down. We logged several miles (literally!) walking the 1/8 mile driveway.

Finally, about 4:00 am Elaine felt confident enough to come to bed. By this morning Chocolate was still feeling the effects of the colic, the muscle relaxers and the anesthetic (for the mineral oil flush) but was much much better.

Colic can be caused by many things. We think his was caused but eating sand, which is fairly common among horses how eat where the ground is dry and sandy. Basically, they ingest sand while they are grazing. The sand doesn't pass through their systems easily and settles to the bottom. It can actually weigh down their stomach and intestines until a blockage is formed. The solution - aside from not letting them eat where there is sand - is a monthly "sandblast" with psylium seed husk. There are commercial products, one of which is called "Sandblaster," but psylium is the active ingredient in Metamucil.

Choco is doing fine now, back to his old cantankerous self. It was a scary night though.

Another reef

Almost lost in the Great Manatee Adventure was the fact that we dove the reef in downtown Aguadilla on Saturday.

We've been on this reef before but not very often. It starts off at about 35-40 feet and then drops to about 80 feet on the outside. It's also a big long reef. We''re not really sure where it ends.

There is a lot to see on this reef. Unlike most of the places we dive, almost nobody dives there so it's not kicked and stomped on. The bad thing is visibility has never been good when we've been there. We think it's at least partly because the reef is in Aguadilla bay. Rio Culebrinas empties into the south side of the bay. We think a lot of the stuff that gets washed out from the river kind of gets trapped over this reef. We're hoping the visibility gets better after the rainy season.

I think I got my first nitrogen "hit" - a bit of decompression sickness - after this dive. Because of the nature of most of our dive profiles, we usually come to the surface slowly as part of the dive. We rarely do free ascents from depth in open water. One of the divers on this dive used a lot of air and we were forced to surface earlier than planned. I got myself a little messed up and surfaced much faster than I planned - or was good. Later Saturday evening I had some pretty uncomfortable vertigo, which is caused by a disturbance in the inner ear. We can't conclusively say it was decompression sickness but everything points to it.

Interestingly, we'd planned to dive at Crashboat  the next morning - the dive that turned into the Great Manatee Adventure. I almost didn't go because I was still feeling a little weird. As soon as I got down in the water, all the symptoms went away. Hmmm.

So, something learned and something to practice. Once in a while, just for the hell of it, I need to do a free ascent 'cause I don't want to feel like that again.

Meanwhile, on our second dive

After the manatee hug dive we went to Natural for a second dive. The manatee was a tough acto to follow but the second dive was very cool also.

First, because we had two new divers along, we stayed shallow and turned south instead of north as we usually do. We were over a part of the reef we very rarely see.

Just as we were about to turn back toward "home," the water started to darken. It was exactly like what happens when storm clouds roll in across a clear blue sky. At first we thought something had been released and was clouding the water. And then this huge swarm of mackerel scad went streaming by us. Again, we've seen big schools of scad before but nothing like this. It was just awesome.

Yep, this is why we dive.

I got a hug

We dove at Crashboat today with a couple of new divers. I've been lucky enough to dive with manatee several times but never anything like this.

Some Department of Natural Resources people standing around on the beach told us there was a manatee swimming nearby and they thought she was sick. There were a gazillion divers (okay, probably really only 50 or 60 - seriously!) and boats in the water so we figured any manatee was long gone.

Wrong. She (we think it's a she) was still there, hanging around one of the piers.

Through a quirky series of events Darryl had my dive camera and I didn't have one. As you can see in the video, I was swimming around her, just to get a better look. As she started forward, I was just trying to get out of her way. I swam up a bit to give her room. She followed me up and reached out and hugged my leg with her flippers!

It was a very gentle hug. She let go and swam on toward some other divers and the surface.

I was a little freaked out but not really scared (okay, a little - it's hard to tell what a 1200-pound woman wants). but like I said, she was very gentle. Mostly, I wasn't sure how to act so as not to upset or freak her out. At any rate, it was all good - a truly close encounter of the animal kind. After all, this - observing and interacting with other creatures - is really why we dive.

By the way, feel free to share this or any of our blogs with your friends. Thanks.

Yesterday at Crashboat

We had a short but very nice dive with two brand new divers yesterday.

The big school of juvenile goatfish is still there. We've seen big schools of mackerel scad and evern Atlantic spadefish, but I've never seen this many goatfish. Pretty cool!

TS Chantal

  

Tuesday night we had our first brush with a tropical storm of this hurricane season. Chantal scooted past well south of la isla. The winds picked up a bit and we had a little rain but nothing like the 3-8 inches they were predicting at one point. We are grateful for that!

The satellite photo above was taken about 5:00 pm Wednesday, more that 12 hours after Chantal passed us. We still have some lingering clouds but what is left of the storm is now over Haiti.

So what do you do when you're waiting for a storm? Don't know about you but we went scuba diving yesterday morning. 

 

Crashboat is always one of our "fishiest" dive sites with more of more kinds of fish than just about anywhere else but yesterday was crazy even by Crashboat standards. Most striking was this huge school of goatfish. Plus we saw lots of sergeantmajors, a scrawled cowfish, several trunkfish, an Atlantic spadefish, a baby drum, and and and 

Speaking of sergeantmajors, a couple of weeks ago we were diving a Crashboat. The night before I scraped my head, which is a pretty common occurrence. The scrape left a little ridge of skin loose on top of my head. While hanging out with a gazillion sergeantmajors under the pier, I felt this weird something on top of my head, like I was being munched on. At first it kinda freaked me out but I realized a sergeantmajor was eating that little ridge of loose skin. I started to laugh. I laughed so hard I spit out my regulator - not the first time that's happened either. I tried to thank the sergeantmajor for cleaning up my wound but by the time I turned around, he/she had disappeared into the crowd.

Fourth of July at Shacks Beach

 

For the past few years I've gone out to KAP one of our beaches on the Fourth of July. This year, rather than fight the madness that is Jobos on a holiday, I decided to check out "our" beach at Shacks. Judging by the number of cars driving by Ola Lola's and parking on the side of the road, I expected a lot of people at Shacks.

From the ground it looked crowded. But from the kite, not so much. Still you may never have seen this many people at Shacks at one time. And honestly, that's one of the things we like about our beach: even on a holiday, when the beach is "crowded," there is still plenty of room. There aren't so many umbrellas you can't get through or so many blankets and towels you can't move without stepping on someone's "camp."

You can see more from this set on our Flickr page

SCUBA and snorkeling

It's been a strange summer for weather. The trade winds have been howling like it's wintertime. Seriously, the winds have been like January and February when the kitesurfers come out. The local kitesurfers are loving it!

All that wind has kept the North Shore pretty churned up. It's only been in the last week that we've really been able to snorkel and dive here on the north side. We finally got to got to the outside at
Shacks for the first time in months!

We're making the most of the opportunity.

Mega-moon (not)

My kinda half-hearted attempt to photograph this week's "mega-moon" wasn't very successful. I did a much better job capturing this full-moon-like brain coral while snorkeling on our reef.

Super low tides

 

I'm guessing it's because of it is the summer solstice and the "super full moon" this week. Whatever the reason(s), we are having super super low tides. Coral heads that are never visible are sticking up out of the water. 

These beachrock formations are usually at least partially covered with water. Compare the photo above, taken at low tide yesterday with this one, taken ten days ago.

 

This is the same beachrock formation it "normally" appears. 

I have KAPped this stretch of beach many times in our years here, partly to capture just such changes in the beach. The sand fills in and washes out different areas of the beach. For example, sometimes the tide pool is just behind (to the left of) that dominant beachrock in the center foreground. Now, as you can see, sand has filled that in and the pool has "moved" west beyond the next rock. 

The sand moves a lot at other beaches as well. Right now, one of our favorite dive sites, Natural, and one of our favorite snorkel sites, Wishing Well, have lots of sand pushed into the beach. We like that. It makes getting in and out easy. When the sand washes out, the exposed rocks are much trickier to navigate, especially in full SCUBA gear.

 

Sunset

Sunset tonight was absolutely stunning!

Fathers' Day (and my birthday)

 

Yesterday we celebrated Fathers' Day and my birthday by hosting the first-ever Ola Lola's Cigar Lounge.

Working with our friend Wilo from the Cigar Chalet we had a fine selection of hand-rolled Puerto Rican cigars to go with a special selection of craft beers and artisanal rum, bourbon and tequila.

Of course there was cake and a bit of celebration. If anyone is wondering, I started my 63rd trip around the sun - I turned 62.

Thanks to everyone who came out and joined us. It was a lot of fun. Special thanks to Wilo from Cigar Chalet, our own Pepe who helped set up the event, Pepe and Albert who did their absolute best to keep me from working on my birthday, and of course to mi querida, mi dushi, mi amor, Elane, first just for being here and second for always making my life a party.

More KAP

After more tweaking I think I finally have my KAP rig tuned the way I want it. I took in out yesterday afternoon. to try it out.

The wind was really blowing hard and gusty so the kite and the camera were bouncing quite a bit. The rig itself actually worked well. I'm also still learning the new camera, what it "sees," angle of view, etc. I only got a few photos I was happy with out of this session.

Now that the rig is working again, there are more places I want to KAP other than just here on the beach at Shacks and Bajuras. However, one of the things I'm trying to do here on "our" beach is document the shifting sands. The beach moves all the time, sometimes filling in one part of the tide pool, sometimes revealing other parts. It is an endless and fascinating process, something I keep trying to capture. That's part of why I go back to our beach over and over.

That, and the fact that it is so convenient.

Flowers in our garden

Summer is always a quieter time at Ola Lola's.

It's been a weird summer so far. It seems business is a bit slower than past summer, not just at Ola Lola's but everywhere. There really hasn't been any summer surf but it's been very windy, like January/February-when-the-kite-surfers-are-here kind of windy. In fact a few kiters have come back for a week or a long weekend just to catch some of the wind.

All this wind has the ocean pretty choppy, especially here on the north side. Around the corner at Crashboat, Natural, Rompeolas, etc., the afternoon rains make visibility iffy. So diving
has been spotty so far this summer. There are a couple of new places we want to dive - Playa Pastillo and the Wall at Rincon - but we're waiting for it to settle down and hopefully clear up a bit.

All that said, it's still beautiful. And Ola Lola's is a garden bar. Here are a few treats from our garden.

Check back

If you looked at the last two posts, Monday adventure part 2 especially, and they seemed incomplete, it's because they were incomplete. Either by my error or through something in the blogger software, both were published before I was ready. Take a moment to check back and read the completed versions.

Thanks! And thanks for reading!

Desecheo dive

 

I have been jonesing for a Desecheo dive. I finally got a fix on Sunday.

Desecheo is a small, uninhabited island about 14 miles off the west coast of Puerto Rico. There are several things that make diving Desecheo different from our usual dives.

First, obviously, it is a boat dive - you need a boat to get there. All of our local dives are shore dives where we just drive to a site and walk in right from the shore.

Then there is the water itself. On the boat ride out you can tell when you cross from the Atlantic into the Caribbean. It is almost as if someone drew a line in the ocean. The water turns from green to blue, a deep deep sapphire blue.

And the visibility: 

On an okay day at Desecheo the visibility is 70 or 80 feet. On a good day it's over a hundred feet.It was okay on Sunday.

Finally, there is the sea life. Because the entire island and the surrounding waters are a protected wildlife area, the reef and the fish are healthy. There are more fish and especially bigger fish. Since they can't be caught or speared, they live to grow to their full size. Since people can't just drive to the island, the reefs don't get trampled on. 

As boat dives go, Desecheo is a good one for me. Mostly of the anchorages are on the lee (protected) side of the island. I get seasick and sitting around on a corkscrewing boat getting ready for the first dive or between dives in just miserable for me. I love having the boat anchored in lee of the island.

There are a number of different dive sites around the island and Sunday we got to dive a couple of sites I've not been to before. The last area, close to the island, was through channels and canyons in the coral reef. At one point, swimming into one of the canyons, we swam over the wreckage of a Navy PT boat. I didn't even know there was a wreck out there!

Every so often I just have to do a Desecheo dive. I hope the next one will be sooner rather than later.

The rest of the photos are up on our Flickr page if you'd like to have a look.

Monday adventure, part 2

The second part of our Monday adventure was to find a place to eat, a place preferably near the water and preferably a place we hadn't been to before.

Just south of Rincon on Carr. 115 we found a relatively new place on the hill over the water called Picoteo (which means "pecking" or "snacking" in Spanish). The view over the ocean is fabulous, the beer is frosty cold. The food is hit-or-miss which jives with the online reviews.

I had arañitas con pollo criollo  (chicken in a local sauce served in cups of fried shredded plantain). The salsa criollo was some of the best I've had anywhere on the island, nice layers of flavor without any one  flavor overpowering the others. Unfortunately, the arañitas were overcooked. They should be light and crispy and they were a bit hard.

Elaine had the nachos con salsa verde y charasco (nachos with greens sauce and skirt steak). Again, these were among the best nachos we've had here. The salsa verde was excellent. Someone put some thought into it; it was not salsa verde straight out of a jar (or if it was, it was a very different jar than everybody else uses).

Overall, I like Picoteo better than some of the other watering holes in and near Rincon. We will go back.

We hoped to have time to snorkel at Playa Steps again but we had to get back to Ola Lola's. This was a Monday-workday adventure. Steps will just have to wait for another day.

Monday adventures

Any time Elaine says "Be up early. We're going on an adventure." I'm all about it. So bright and early Monday morning we were on the road, headed south on Carr. 2 toward Mayaquez. Then past Mayaquez. Past Hormiqueros and past the turn-off for La Parquera. Past the turn-off to Guanica. We are farther down Carr. 2 than I've ever been.

"Take the next exit and turn left."

We're in Yauco, which is a big coffee growing region so I'm thinking "hmmm - coffee plantatation?"

"Nope. Turn right! Turn right!"

Suddenly, there it is - Volkylandia! It doesn't look like much from the outside, except for that blue VW Beetle up on the post. Inside, it is the largest privately owned Volkswagon museum in the world.

We got there early on a holiday and we're the first ones there.  That turned out to be a good thing for us. Israel and his wife speak mostly Spanish so having a "private" tour was helpful.We could  work with Israel to understand. I'm sure we missed some of it but we did understand a lot.

Even with the language issue, Israel's passion for his cars is unmistakable. He started this collection about six years ago, a collection that includes things I didn't even know VW made. He has an original VW van ambulance, the VW "Thing" that was Tom Cruise's character's getaway car in the film "Valkyrie," and a commandeered "Thing" in U.S. Army green from the post-war occupation.  The original VW van fire truck from one of the Puerto Rican municipios (I don't remember which one). The pump pulls out through the side door of the van and is powered by - what else? - a VW engine. There is an amphibious VW and a very limited edition four-wheel drive VW. A custom-built miniature Hummer dropped on to a Beetle chassis makes a Humbug., There is a 1973 Beetle just like the one I used to own except mine was orange. And, there is the last VW built, from Mexico.

If you're a Beetle lover like I am, it's pretty amazing and wonderful. The visit did make me want a Bug all over again. Dumbest thing Volkswagon ever did was getting rid of the Beetle. Sorry - the New Bug is only slightly better than New Coke. Although, Israel does have a New Beetle body dropped on an old Beetle chassis. There just isn't much you can't do with those things!

You can see them on Facebook.

Occurrences, common and uncommon

Two common occurrences in my life: One, I bash into something and scrape my poor unprotected head. Two, I go SCUBA diving.

The two came together in a freaky, uncommon but ultimately comical way the other day. First, I leaned over and bashed my head on a shelf, leaving a scrape and a little tiny flap of skin. The next morning I went diving at Crashboat. The sergeant-major fish are everywhere under the piers. They are beautiful and one of the reasons I like to dive at Crashboat. Occasionally, these little guys get curious and sometimes even a bit aggressive.

On this particular dive the little flap of skin on my scraped head proved too much temptation. I was hanging out under the pier, maybe even taking this photo, and I felt this nibbling on the top of my head. It freaked me out until I realized it was a sergeant-major cleaning my head, removing that little flap of scraped skin. It was weird and not altogether unpleasant. It was better than cutting that little flap off the next time when I shaved my head later in the day.

Just another strange moment underwater. 

Now, our daily afternoon thundershower is building over the mountains and the electricity is doing its daily unstable thing so I'm off and shutting down the computer.

A mini-adventure

Yesterday we had a mini-adventure: we took our friend Lourdes snorkeling at Montones. It was her first time snorkeling ever and our first time at Montones.

Like most people she was a little freaked out by the sticking her face in the water and breathing through a tube. But also like most people, she was fascinated by what she was underwater. I think she'll be back for more.

There was one sad note to our little adventure:

People ask us why we cut up the plastic "rings" that hold cans of Medalla or Coor's Light. Many people have seen pictures of fish or turtles or ducks or geese that have been caught in these rings. Some people think they don't need to worry about it because that is something that happens "somewhere else." This is a palmeta we found in the tide pool at Montones while snorkeling. THIS is why we cut those rings! Those things injure animals HERE, not "somewhere else!" You can see how this poor guy's dorsal fin is pinned to his body and useless. The ring is also cutting into his back and belly.

If you buy beer or soft drinks that come in those rings, please cut or break the rings and throw them in the trash. DO NOT leave them on our beaches. 

End of current rant.

A bit more about David

Before I do anything else I want to thank Charlie and Stanley Paserell, Tito Lopez and Robin Donnenberg for coming to Ola Lola's Monday night to share the news about David and to celebrate his life.

Charlie said, "There is no other place. Ola Lola's was such an important place to David. There just isn't another place we could go to celebrate him."

We are truly and deeply honored.

Goodbye, David

This world lost a great and wonderful spirit and we lost a great friend this weekend: David Pfaff passed away in his sleep on Saturday. Our thoughts and love go out to his wife Liane and their family.

David was the course architect at Royal Isabela. He introduced us to owners (and now good friends) Stanley and Charlie Pasarell and Royal Isabela general manager Tito Lopez. Because of David, Ola Lola's is a regular stop for the Royal Isabela "gang" and their friends.

David also designed Ola Lola's.

Elaine and I were talking about changes we needed and wanted to make to Ola Lola's. One afternoon David was sitting at the bar and I said, "I know what you do and I know who you work for. I know there is no way on god's green earth I can afford you. But...we need to make some changes. I have an idea but I don't like it and I've gotten stuck on it. I need somebody to kick me in the butt and get me out of this box I've put myself in."

David said, "Let me think about it."

A couple of days later he came back with some rolled up paper under his arm. He said, "I'll show you this under one condition. When you build it, it has to have foot rails. A proper bar has to have foot rails." With my promise, he unrolled the concept drawings that a year or so later became the present Ola Lola's.

David loved to stand at the the little angled window so the foot rail under that window is "THE David Pfaff Foot Rail.

David was brilliant, incredibly talented, fun, funny and a wonderful great friend. For all his many talents as a designer and artist, his greatest talent was his ability to bring people together. We miss David when he's just off island. I can't imagine how much more we'll miss him now.

David was a regular reader of this blog, one of if not the first "follower." When I went more than a few days without a new post, I would send me an email chiding me, prodding me.

I wish he were home in Carmel reading this now.

Sunday morning adventures

What a great Sunday morning adventure!

Our morning started with an early swim with Chocolate and KTJ. Taking the horses swimming is always a great way to start the day. 

After the swim, we headed south for Rincon, planning to have breakfast at La Rosa Ingles - The English Rose. Perched on the edge of one of Rincon's mountains, The English Rose affords a spectacular view and offers a "proper" English breakfast right here in the middle of a (former) Spanish colony.

We drove up the "hill," a drive that rivals any up in the mountains in the center of the island, only to find The English Rose is closed from the middle of May until the second week of June. (Smart people! May is a terribly slow month here for everybody.) We "oooh-ed" and "aaahhhhh-ed" at the view, bemoaned the fact they were closed (the more so because we were really hungry) and headed back down the mountain to the second stop on our adventure.

Straight across Carr. 115 from the road up to The English Rose is the entrance to one of Rincon's best-known surf sites. Officially the beach is called Playa Steps but the surfers all know it as Tres Palmas or just "Tres."

There is a little side-of-the-road trailer at Steps so we fed our hunger with fresh tuna, chicken and pork pinchos.

When the ocean is flat and no waves, Steps is a popular family swimming beach. It is almost exactly in the middle of a Marine Reserve that runs from the beach and marina at Black Eagle in the south to Playa Marias in the north.

We've heard for years that the elkhorn coral in this area is just incredible but neither of us was prepared for what we saw. Here at Shacks ("our" beach at Ola Lola's) we have elkhorn coral the size of dinner tables. At Steps the elkhorn are the size of apartment complexes. Huge, sprawling, and they just keep going, side by side, one after another. Visibility was particularly good so these huge coral colonies loomed in front of us and beside us as we swam. Elaine saw a turtle and we followed biggest parrot fish we've seen in Puerto Rico. It was amazing!

We couldn't help wondering if Shacks might look like this if we and others had successfully created a marine reserve here. A group of us propose it and tried several years ago. There was a lot of support - as long as it didn't infringe on "my" activity, whatever that activity happened to be.

After more than an hour in the water, we headed up to Playa Marias and Calypso, one of our favorite Rincon watering holes. After a couple ice cold beers and a plate of mediocre nachos, we ran into a couple of artist friends who introduced us to a new artist friend. Jay is from the Virgin Islands and paints on coffee bean bags.

Unfortunately, the only photo from this adventure is the one above, Jay's painting of a tortuga , which now hangs proudly at Ola Lola's. That's because yours truly took off on an adventure without checking to see if the camera battery was charged. I guess it's obvious that it was not. So I swam around for an hour with a non-working camera. Ah, well. That's as good an excuse I can think of to go back.

Stay tuned for Rincon Adventure II!

A celebrity in our midst

Maybe if we had a TV or I ever watched TV, I might have recognized her. At least one of our other guests did. But we don't watch TV so I didn't recognize Megan Boone.

Megan was on the island celebrating her birthday with friends. Last night, while she was savoring our homemade bread pudding, she got a phone call telling her NBC picked up her new show, "Blacklist." She will star with James Spader.

It's not her first starring role. She's appeared in other TV shows like Law and Order, Los Angeles, Cold Case, Blue Bloods and films including Sex in the City 2. Watch for her this fall.

We're please for Megan and happy we got to share her celebration. Thanks, Megan and friends, for coming to Ola Lola's. And congratulations! (BTW, Megan is from Michigan.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan_Boone

Washing clothes in the rainy season

The rainy season has begun here. This past week it rained every day. That meant we had two kinds of clothes: wet, because we washed them and hung them out to "dry" and then it rained, and dirty, because there's no point in washing them because we can't dry them anyway.

This morning sun was shining and a breeze was blowing. Our solar clothes dryer was working again! We quickly washed the remaining dirty clothes and got them and the thrice-rain-soft-rinsed clothes out on the line. Everything got dry before the this afternoon's round of showers.

When I was a child, we didn't have a clothes dryer. They were a rarity then. I remember my mother hanging our clothes on lines stretched across our backyard. In the winter she hung them on lines running back and forth across our basement. Every time I hang clothes on the line to dry, I think of her. And miss her a littel more than I usually do.

Congratulations, Josh and Sonia

Yesterday we got to share Josh and Sonia's wedding with their friends and family. Sonia's family is from Isabela and Josh's family is mostly from Colorado. They had a beautiful wedding on the beach in front of Villa Montaña (with whales playing in the ocean behind them!) on Friday. We hosted an "afterglow" gathering before their friends and family started drifting back to their homes and their other realities. It was a wonderful party with a fabulous group of people.

Thank you, Josh and Sonia, for sharing your special time here in Puerto Rico with us.

The swell continues

This swell, unusual for this late in the season, continues to hang on. It's making for some great surfing for the locals and some great photos for me. This was is from yesterday at Middles.