A Peek at Life as a Natic

Don’t forget to check out our photo gallery for pictures of our first day in Puerto Rico at pictures.neilnatic.com or here.  Note that each day has its own album in the gallery.

Well, we tried to do updates from Puerto Rico daily, but there was no internet access to do so from so you will just have to read them all at once :crackup:

On Thursday morning we headed out to catch our flight into San Juan. It was a little longer than I had hoped the flight would be but it will do. I just had to read two full magazines to keep me occupied. Without them I would have gone insane.
When we landed in San Juan, we headed straight to the rental car place to pick up our van. While my dad was filling out paperwork, I noticed that there was a Ducati de San Juan right next door! Me and Dan headed in there and took a look at the bikes on the show room floor including the limited edition, $42,000 1099R. :drool: After we got done drooling over the street and race bikes I picked up a Ducati de Puerto Rico t-shirt. The guy there was really nice. I asked him if there were any tracks in PR and he said yes but they are closed for maintenance but he comes to the states often including Road Atlanta. I never would have thought that there would be any race tracks in PR. Especially with the heat and humidity.

After we got the van we went over to (Castillo de San Cristobal) which is a fort that was used to protect the island during times of war. It was insane! The fort was quite large and was very nice. It is really crazy to see how well it was built especially since it was done so long ago.  We have plenty of pics in the gallery for you to check out.

After the fort we wanted to go out for some authentic Puerto Rican food and were told to go to Café de Puerto Rico right in San Juan up the road from the fort. Me and Dan decided to try out the local beer so we asked when they had and they mentioned that they only had one domestic beer; Medallia Light. This must translate to Bud Light in Spanish. :puke: For our meals, we had some delicious carne cebollas y arroz con frijoles (onion steak with rice and beans) and added sides of maduros and mofongo. Almost everyone ordered the same thing with the exception of Chris who ordered the all authentic fried chicken tenders and french fries. :crackup: Alisha was in heaven… She was ready to abandon Atlanta and move to PR.  She would also have to abandon her diet :crackup:

After we ate, we all headed back to the car for the long trek from San Juan to Moca… almost 2 hours long :( to head over to my grandfather’s house.  What a journey! We quickly noticed that the government does not scan the license plates for English curses. We saw a plate of a Puerto Rican that read: FAG 519. We also saw a DCK ### and Susan and Hershey spotted a FUK ###. I will be damned to ride around with FAG on my license plate unless I was proud to be one. :crackup: We found that all of the cops ride with their flashing lights on at all times. It is so weird to see them cruising around with their lights on with no desire to pull anyone over at all. In addition to that, they have a LOT of cops. Everywhere you look there is another. If they want to pull you over they will use their siren with it to let you know. We also found the Puerto Ricans drive like any other island… INSANE! They don’t give a shit who or what is where. They are very aggressive but it works well for them. We did not see a wreck at all.

The suburbs of PR are very unlike ours. Even in the sticks (Moca :crackup: ) there are little stores and stuff everywhere. While this is true, there are no larger stores that we typically have around such as Target etc. It is all still tiny mom and pop shops everywhere. When you do go in them you find that the store has as much as home depot (minus the appliances and lumber) but in the same square footage as a Publix Pharmacy! There is stuff EVERYWHERE. Every square inch of those walls/shelving is in full use.

The road that leads to my grandfather’s house is like nothing I have ever seen before. This mountain road is extremely steep and only wide enough to fit one car at a time but manage to have traffic in both directions!!! The cars go flying up and down at ridiculous speeds and don’t even bother to stay on their side of the road. As a matter of fact, they make it a point to act like they are in an Indy car race and do an outside-inside-outside turning strategy on you while you are on your way in the opposite direction. You see your life flash before your eyes each time you go up or down it!

When we got to my grandfather’s house we took a little walk around the property. He showed us his many banana, plantain, coconut trees, and where the mango trees where nearby. It was really cool to see these plants just growing everywhere and we spend a crap ton of money to buy them in the States. They just pick them right off the tree and eat them. We would drive under a mango tree and just see them ALL OVER the floor. It was crazy. We were running precious mangos over

Well the day was filled with great things, but we were staying in the sticks so it came with some negatives. The largest negative: NO AC!!! The second largest negative: NO HOT WATER!!! The third largest negative: NO INTERNET OR CABLE!!! Talk about culture shock!! Thankfully it was no very hot during the day or night so we were not dying at night. We also have a solution in place for the no hot water situation….and no we will not be heating water over the stove. Do we look Hispanic!?!! :crackup: … but it is slightly ghetto :crackup: