Guus Bosman

Friday morning I left from San Juan to New York. The plane left at 7:30 o'clock so I got up really early. My alarm went at 5.15, and so did my cellphone and the wake-up call: I didn't to miss this flight.

There was a new machine at security in the airport, an Ionscan Sentinel II. It looks like a typical airport metal detector but it uses an new technology called Ion Mobility Spectrometry (IMS). This performs a chemical analysis and identifies a "fingerprint" of a target substance, such as explosives or narcotics.

You step in the machine for a few seconds, and it blows small plufs of air to you, Then the gate at the other side opens and you can leave. Someone in front of me got surprised by the pluffs of air and the screener guy laughed at her.

The moving side walk to the Starbucks terminal seems to have been fixed, but apparently they don't switch them on very early in the morning. I was glad to see that Starbucks was open already.

The plane was not as full as the afternoon flights that I usually take when I leave. I worked on the plane, and had some time to refresh my Spanish lessons. I arrived at 11:00 o'clock in JFK and took a bus to Manhattan. Originally I thought to leave the bus at Penn Station, but when I had to transfer at the Grand Central Terminal I realized that our hotel was very close and I walked to there.

Saturday morning Rosa picked us up at 7.00 o'clock. Rick and Rosa had invited us to spent a weekend in their cottage, in Reedsville, Virginia.

Reedsville is located about 140 mile from Arlington, and we were ready for a long drive. On a weekend like this (it was Labor Day weekend) there is usually a lot of traffic, but the traffic was very smooth.

The day before we left there had been rumours that the gas supply would be reduced, and gas station across Maryland and Virginia would be closed. This was not true, but it probably scared a lot of drivers away from making long road trips. Gas prices have gone up quite dramatically the last weeks, up to $3,50 a gallon.

We had a smooth ride, and stopped at the same gas station as we did on our way to Williamsburg a few months ago. We were the three of us in the car, but we had quite some luggage so the car was fully packed.

Puerto Rico has a distinct cuisine, which reminds of the Cuban kitchen.

One thing that strikes me as odd is that the food there seems so unhealthy. There is so much fruit on the island, but in most local restaurants the food seems to be suspiciously void of vitamines. Fried plantain, fried chicken breast, fried potatoes and sometimes even fried bread...

As a general rule I try not to eat the real Puerto Rican food to often, and I always have some fruit in my room to compensate for the non-optimal cuisine. Don't get me wrong, it's delicious food, but with all the oranges, mangos and other fresh fruit you'd imagine a more vitamine rich diet. One of the recipes I enjoy a lot is pechuga in a small restaurant near our customer's office, con arroz congri i pikante. Whenever we're in Puerto Rico we often go to that place for lunch.

Yeah, that wasn't such a good idea to buy my ticket last minute: when I arrived at the airport very early in the morning I was selected for extra security checks.

I've had suh checks before. Especially if you're a guy traveling alone, with a one-way ticket, bought very early before the flight departs, they always catch you and print a "SSSS" ticket: extra checks. I've had such checks before, but not at 5.45 o'clock and it didn't make me very happy. First I couldn't check in at the curb, second my bag had to be scanned. Turns out the scanning machine was broken so they did a manual check of my bag that took ages.

So when I arrived at the gate I had no time to get either Starbucks or breakfast... not good. I had a middle seat, sandwiched between two friendly but large people... not the best flight I've ever had.

It's good to be here, making much better progress than ever possible remotely. Tomorrow there is a deadline for my document, so there's quite some work to be done.

Another bright note: the tropical storm Emily is not affecting the island and is passing it far south. The Dutch islands of Bonaire, Curacao and Aruba will be affected though.

Monday morning we woke up early, and at 9 am a small van came to pick us up for a tour to the rainforest in Puerto Rico. It's the only real rainforest in the US National Forest System, and neither Sasha or I had ever been in a rainforest. The name of the forest is El Yunque, and it's located at the east side of the island. Rain coming from the Atlantic Ocean first hits the island's mountain rim so there the most rain falls, forming the conditions for a tropical rainforest.

There are no large mammals in the rainforest. Puerto Rico started as a vulcanic island, so it never had any physical connection with the main land. There are some interesting exotic elements in the forest: humans brought over bamboo trees from Asia (to reduce erosing near the roads in the forest), and there are a lot of small pink flowers that are originally from Africa.

A national symbol of Puerto Rico is the coqui, a little frog that makes a very characteristic sound, more like a bird than a frag.

We spent about three hours in the rainforest and a visitors center, a very interesting morning. Later the tour guide brought us to a local shop in the forest, where they served "authentic Puerto Rican food". When we looked at the menu and how the place looked liked and smelled, we decided that it would probably be better to try authentic Puerto Rican found in a less "authentic" restaurant.

Pictures from our tour in El Yunque.

Saturday night Sasha and I visited "the Waterclub", a bar on top of a hotel at the beach here in Isla Verde.

The style of the hotel is very futuristic, with blue lights and a lot of water decorations everywhere. The elevator doesn't have a roof so you can see the internal working of the machines; pretty neat I found.

We stayed out in the city till late and we had a really nice evening.

My planes leaves in two hours. The hotel is very nearby the airport, but I still want to have a lot of time on the airport so I'll leave in about 30 minutes.

Really looking forward to see Sasha again; it's been a lot of fun here but being together is just better. Next week I'll probably go back to Puerto Rico again.

The popular local music here is called "Reggaeton".

It's a very danceable and happy music with a Carribbean rythm, I like it a lot. It's probably for the best that I don't understand the lyrics -- they tend to be rather explicit.

Listing to Reggaeton FM online.

Sunday we visited the El Morro fort in downtown San Juan. The weather was excellent and it's a beautiful location so we took a lot of pictures.

When we arrived there, a kite-contest was going one, hundreds of kites were in the air. The fort is located on a corner of the island and there was a lot of wind so the area around the fort is great for kites. The sun was shining strong.

See the pictures.

Saturday afternoon last week Sasha and I went to Old San Juan again. It's a beautiful city, and of course it was much better to walk around now than Friday night when it was raining. We walked around the harbor, and on the city walls that were erected by the Spanish rulers of the island, and spent a long time just walking around and relaxing.

We had dinner in a great tapas bar. Puerto Rico, of course, has been a colony of Spain for over 400 years, so the cuisine and the culture are an interesting mixture of native Puerto Rican and Spanish elements.

The place we went to is called "La Cocina del Fraile", and next to a great parma ham, we had some very nice local dishes. We were sitting in a very small garden behind the building, where there was room for only four or five tables, very cosy.