If you know only one little bit about antennas, radio and radio astronomy, you know that the world's largest radio telescope is in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, a lush, steaming green island in the Caribbean. I had seen it on pictures and on TV, but never thought I would be able to go there, that they would let me in and let me do just about anything I wanted.
| Iberia - Never Again The Baggage Went Home Again Election Day, Riots |
Hatillo Arecibo City The Arecibo Church |
Cars San Juan |
I started my journey in a grand manner, by ripping up an operation wound on my elbow, on a sharp edge of the airliner chair, so I had to enjoy the trip over the Atlantic wearing a bloody shirt. Getting help from the crew was “difficult”. The airline hostesses babbled away with all the Spanish speakers, but they didn't “see” us English speakers, with or without bloody arms. The purser was much more interested in serving hot buns, than putting a bandage on me. Mañana, mañana.
After 11 murderously boring hours in an Airbus (why are the LCD displays used for movies in aircraft always so lousy?) we stopped over in the Dominican Republic, and I found myself in the transit hall. The tobacco smoke was dense, the Havana cigars looked like gun batteries in their show cases, whisky was sold on five litre bottles, and on the old fashioned monitors I saw that the Iberia flight was due from gate 2 in 45 minutes. In the meantime I walked around, watching the aircraft outside. Enormous amounts of workers sat idle on old-fashioned, green, smoking tractors. One was driving around, denting baggage, another one was filling up the plane with drinking water, but forgot to close the drainpipe at the bottom of the plane, so most of the water ran out on the tarmac. Gate 2 felt wrong somehow, so I asked a guard, who said it was gate 4 instead. When I found gate 4, they were boarding already. You better watch it!
After another hour we landed in San Juan in Puerto Rico, only to find our baggage had returned to Madrid. What's the use of big, red baggage tags, if no one looks at them. The bags go straight into one big container, which will be forgotten at the far end of the aircraft.
To the Complaints. There were already six Spanish speaking there before me, complaining of all their might. I don't understand much Spanish, but I understood this much: “...it's the same every time with Iberia” and more, foul language. After complaining for an hour to a slug-like, slow officer, complaining about the bad treatment on board, forcing them to bring me some medical aid by not disclosing the injury was my own fault, I got into a taxi on my way to the hotel. Arecibo City turned out to be far away from the capitol, and the antenna even farther into the jungle.
They were rioting on the motorway. People were hanging out of big cars without mufflers, waving flags, screaming and singing and the riot police was out. Tomorrow was national election day and people were partying in advance. Election days and all Catholic holidays were remove-the-muffler weekends, and mount-the-sirens weekends. Every other teenager could be found under his car, working to remove the exhaust system. They are very fast about it. But the police aren't interested. They also go with the blue lights flashing, sirens wailing and waving flags. The Puerto Ricans know how to party.
I lived at Hotel el Buen Café, and it was really “buen”. Their large, toasted chicken-ham-cheese-cucumber sandwich is one I'll never forget. But I could easily had done without the hole in the floor. When I was shooting that last, tasty picture, they thought I was a health inspector, and asked if there was something wrong with the food. On the contrary.
Perhaps you think that the pictures above are not too interesting, and perhaps you are right. But, start by imagining the steaming heat hitting you the moment you exit the air conditioned hotel, the burning sun, a cold Coke running down your throat, the rumbling of salsa music, and how this affects us chilly Nordic who knows only cold, icy sludge, rain, and polar bears in the streets. Man, we got entire hotels made out of ice! Then, the pictures take on another meaning.
The road up to the observatory was long and winding, and went through the poor interior of Puerto Rico. As a European I was fascinated by all the overhead power lines. The country was quickly electrified under President Roosevelt in the fifties, and no one had time to bury any cables. That's why transformers and cables are all over the place sitting on poles, and a lot of poles. In the cities it looks like lianas in a jungle. It's hardly possible to make a single picture without getting the electric installations, too. And people connect any way they like. A common trick is to rip out the electricity meter, usually sitting outside the houses, and then connect into what's left. Free electricity for sure.
Hatillo was the village closest to the telescope. I came there in the morning. The village seemed completely deserted, like in a SF movie. No people. No music. Siesta. I walked around making photographs without meeting anybody, but they sat behind their shutters and spied at me, and soon I was known all over town as that crazy tourist who went around photographing meaningless tings, such as poles in the middle of the road. They rarely had any tourists. The electrical installations continued to fascinate me. The whole power grid hangs in the air. If someone needed electricity, all he had to do was pull out a few wires and cut in to any convenient overhead cable.
The village ended abruptly and the countryside commenced (in 10 metres) and I got down on the completely deserted beach. The picture against the light is nice and you can see the mist flying in from the sea. But it is salt spray. It attaches to cars, bolts and everything else made from metal, and slowly disintegrates it.
Finally, I actually found some friendly people to talk to, at Lelo's local (Leeloo?).
As I understood it, it was the local ambulance drivers in for a couple of beers and a few drinks. Lelo's was no more than a hole in the wall, four tables, wobbly chairs and a dog running around people's legs. I had a few beers, too, was offered a few more and we soon started talking. When I started making this macro shot of a cold beer can, they understood I was but a crazy tourist. More people started coming in, and soon the domino table was out. Domino is very popular in Puerto Rico. You can see Lelo himself in the background, leaning against what was probably the whole selection of beverages. The salsa rumbled from the jukebox and spirits were rising. When it was time for me to go, the night was black outisde.
I finished everything with a visit to the church. Protestants like me usually like a little more decorations on the walls, the Spanish Catholic style is a little bare. The most eye-catching decorations were large, swinging fans. A stray dog was guarding outside.
Someone came rushing out, asking me why I was taking pictures. Was I a cop? When he understood I was only a tourist, whose aim in life was to photograph, he warned me not to shoot in the other direction because there were drug dealers there. I made a picture of this house anyway. Nice, with moonshine and sodium light. I was probably lucky he hadn't decided on killing me that very instant, because he said he was a Marine Corps soldier. He actually spoke English without Spanish accent and seemed to have some knowledge about Europe.
Arecibo City wasn't as dead as Hatillo, but anyway a strange city to walk around in for a European. There was one shopping street where things looked fairly normal, but the only four streets away the houses were falling apart. On the "High Street" there were American supermarkets with everything in them, but only 200 metres away were older shops with dirty concrete floors, dark lighting, half-empty shelves and nothing in the refrigerators.
There were moderns restaurants, McDonalds'ish, yet a few streets away the were dark beer bars with earthen floor, some thin, wobbly tables in one corner and all the liquor in one small shelf, liable to fall down any moment. The contrasts between rich and poor were in other words enormous, and very visible. A funny thing, though, were all the colours. They are not like us, dedicated to dull grey, instead they dare to use a lot of different colours. I went around, trying to find all the interesting stuff. In your mind, try to do away with the “electric jungle”.
The houses around the church in the main square were well kept and had about the same colour. The church was itself rather dark inside, but with the aid of technology I have pulled out the altar-piece, definitively worthy of better display. Stained glass was not very common, and I found very few of them. But it beats me why the Catholics must have their dead ones in glass jars, hanging around in the church. You can see more of the scene outside, among the panoramas.
There seems to be three flavours of cars in Puerto Rico. 1) New and shiny, 2) smashed up and 3) wrecks. Cars are expensive, as are repairs, and people seem to hang on to their cars until they fall apart. Damages that would immediately result in a driving ban in Sweden, was no big deal here. I took a walk around the square and took pictures of what was parked.
The heavy, tropical corrosion and the salt from the Atlantic Ocean make it impossible to leave metal objects outside. They will just disappear. There are lots of wrecked cars along the roadsides, but they are not just a little rusty, like in Sweden, they are completely, 100% red! From information I had, they do disappear within three years!
If you are familiar with the Riven computer game, perhaps the pictures above seem familiar. Everything is a little old-looking, like the 30's in Germany, but still looking fully operational. It is not a synthetic world, but the Spanish fortress El Morro in the Old Town of San Juan. The boxy old, grey hut had some connection with the fire brigade, but certainly looked like it came from some computer game.
The Old Town is classy. All of a sudden, looking up at facade I was struck by the thought: “Man, they do build nice houses!!” An absolutely blinding white house against a smashing dark blue sky, a perfect picture. The last picture shows the exterior of the Hooters (!) restaurant.
As the day was so hot, my interest was mostly directed towards fountains. The last picture shows the memorial over Cristobal Colon, a stranger, until you hear the English name: Christopher Columbus, landing in San Juan when he thought he had discovered India.
16 dollars later, cheated on the taxi price, I found myself at the airport, of course cheated on half the VAT refund too, ready to return to civilisation. You can say a lot about Puerto Rico, both negative and positive, but what made me most happy was the total absence of bad rock and pop music. They didn't pump you with lousy pop all the time. Instead, everywhere, in shops and rumbling out of cars was refreshing salsa - with orchestras that could play for real - and no monotonous, talentless synthesizer marauders.
