The flight itself was quite anti-climactic (except for maybe one overly friendly flight attendant), but once we were off the plane, the excitement certainly began to build. At first Avanti couldn’t find the receipt for her baggage claim, then we discovered that the car rental desk was deserted and learned that we had to take a shuttle to a remote location to pick up our car after many long moments of panic and despair. After finally getting our car rental in order, we assumed things would get easier. Wrong. It was 1am when we first began our epic adventure from Aguadilla to our humble beach house in Rincón, a journey that should have taken us somewhere around a half an hour. Naturally, we found that our GPS was loco, leading us down dead end streets and getting us lost in a maze of unlit, remote residential houses. To make a (very) long story short, with the help of un hombre simpático from the Courtyard Marriot, we found our way home by 3am, exhausted and feeling somewhat stranded.
In the morning, we began our exploration of the area. In no time, we found a grocery store, other small shops in the area, 1,000 fast food chains, and the beach. Though I digress, the ocean water was warmer than the Puerto Rican air, and the hotels and tourists were plenty. Maybe life would be good, we thought.
Yesterday we began our experience in the Mayagüez Migrant Health Center, where we met some Puerto Rican medical students who helped to make us feel at home. One lunch at Rincomini and a tour of the local highway later, we were (somewhat) more confident that we could get ourselves to and from the clinic each day. Our first shot at navigating to the clinic took an hour and a half….it should have taken 25 minutes. Though the day was short, we learned from the staff in the laboratorio and the farmacia. We were introduced to the entire clinic, and everyone was more friendly than we could have asked for.
Today we were with the doctors. Learning Spanish is slow and at times frustrating, but is already picking up. Surprisingly, nearly everyone speaks English, which is making it somewhat more challenging to learn the language since the locals switch to English when they sense confusion rather than let you struggle through it. I’m working on fighting the urge to use English myself, though we'll see how well that works.
As for the food – we’ve gotten our hands on some comida creolla (local Creole food) and tried some arroz con gandules, tostones (fried plantains), and some of the local seafood which is amazing. The doctors recommended that we try empanadillas con carrucho (a type of empanada filled with the fish from inside of a Conch shell). We spent some time exploring the area and tried a place called Kaplash (Splash, in spanish), where we had empanadillas con carrucho, camerones, langosta, y pollo (empanadillas with conch fish, shrimp, lobster, and chicken.) By far, the carrucho/conch was the best – definitely something new but delicious. Also on the menu was empanadilla de tiburón (shark.) The plan is to return to Kaplash, which is only 5 minutes from our house, and try the shark!
So that has been our adventure so far in a conch shell (bad joke, I know.) We’re off from clinic for the weekend, so hopefully we will find something amusing to keep us busy for the next two days – stay tuned for more adventures, plus pictures! I somewhat cheated in this post by adding a picture of our house and beach from google maps, but it's late and I'm spent, so I thought I could get away with it. There will be more exciting photos though, sin duda.
¡Adios, amigos, y hasta pronto!
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