On to Brazil....

February 09, 2007

0900

Well folks (by folks I mean all four of you who read this), as Puerto Rico becomes a vague spot on the horizen--really I'm being dramatic, it's pitch black out here--time to make my last post from port of call numero uno.

I went on a "Bike Eco-Adventure" today. It was great to get outside. We biked about eight miles along the coastline, through palm trees and mangroves, and then stopped at the beach for awhile.

All animal cruelty issues aside--this isn't about being critical of another culture, it's about experiencing it--the cock fights were amazing. We went to the fight club of Puerto Rico--Club Gallistico de Puerto Rico, and actually got in for free because we were women (we paid the price later as we were eyed suspsiciously, and in a provocative way, like we had violated the invisible line of what was acceptable for our gender). The fights happen in this astroturf circle type pit, and all the men sit in bleachers around it. The roosters, whose underbellies are red and raw from having their feathers plucked, wear fiberglass talons and are lowered into the pit. Two bouncers take them out of the container they are lowered down in, weigh them and warm them up. They use toy roosters to ruff them up before putting them back into a different plexiglass box without a bottom, which is then raised so they can fight. One match is fifteen minutes long, though none we saw lasted that long. The men throw bets at each other from opposing sides of the arena--something that seems disorganized and chaotic to the foreign eye! They also scream at the roosters--like the birds can understand them!? It's a fight to the death, but the losing bird doesn't always win. More often than not they just fall over into a seizure and the bouncers break their necks. While they fight they don't make noise--which surprised me. They just kind of peck at each others heads and flog one another. At one particularly gruesome point the victorious rooster had it's fiberglass talon stuck in the other--dead--rooster's head. What an experience. Klee and I actually went out to dinner in Old San Juan with Professor Maniates this evening. Prof mentioned to the waiter that we had gone to the cock fights and in return the waiter told us that "la pelleo de gallo" were actually quite dangerous. Because of the way the gamblers haggle at each other in such a disorganized way there tends to be alot of fights... between the men, over the roosters. I guess we were just too naive to worry about that, but no matter.

Dinner was great, Professor Maniates found a great restuarant on a side street. It had alot of character--live music ( a man with a guitar and no microphone, how quaint!) and hand written menus. The waiter made fresh sangria for us and I had plaintans and pork...then we went to La Bombadera, a historic bakery, and had some cookies and coffee--Puerto Rican coffee is great, supposedly one of the Pope's used to have it imported because he adored it so!

As you can probably imagine, what I enjoyed here the most were the simple things; kids playing basketball and baseball in neighborhoods, visible as we drove down the highway, the old men playing chess in their straw hats at Colon Square, hearing music through the open windows of a car, wrought iron balconies and the colors of the stucco, the faces of the people.

Until next time...

Peace Love