Tuesday we headed to downtown Ponce to see what was available there. It was a cute little town with some old neighborhood streets with older Puerto Rican architecture. We stumbled upon a restaurant called Rincon Argentino—an Argentinean restaurant known for its meat. I got grilled shrimp with rice and beans, since I don’t eat pork or red meat, but it was delicious just the same. And the caramel crepes we shared for dessert were the best thing we’ve eaten on this trip so far (food has generally been a great disappointment). We then made the drive back to San Juan, only [View Full Entry]

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So far this trip is turning out to be a bit more of an adventure than we anticipated, but we’re going with it and having fun regardless. We arrived at San Juan airport Saturday afternoon. It was a bit chaotic and crazy busy, but tolerable—until we had to wait 45 minutes for the Enterprise bus to pick us up. I read that you should only use the big name rental car places to avoid hassles and scams, but a hassle it was. They even gave us a car with no gas in it. But we managed to get a car and [View Full Entry]

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In flight again. Aaahh…. Travel truly does make me happy. My blood pressure has already dropped and my mood has increased. I have a feeling of excitement in my life again. This time it’s off to Puerto Rico with Ken for a week of Latino adventure, beaches, maybe some scuba diving, and lots of local food and markets. I have even been brushing up on my Spanish for the past couple of weeks so I can try to use it again (ever since leaving Hartford I find I have little use for it anymore). And after knowing so many Puerto Ricans [View Full Entry]

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Saturday night we all headed to a restaurant overlooking the water on Granville Island called Sandbar. There was quite a group of us—A. and L., L’s brother-in-law and his partner, a few of A’s friends. But I didn’t feel at all like the odd person out—they were all incredibly friendly and fun to be around. I only ordered a few tapas, but the food was delicious. We ended up inching our way onto a table in the upstairs bar occupied by three guys because the wait for a table on the patio was a good two hours. One of the guys [View Full Entry]

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My time in Vancouver so far has felt very much like a relaxed episode of Sex and the City. L. and I spent yesterday morning getting massages that A. treated us to while she ran errands. Then we shopped at little boutiques and vintage stores. My massage was given by a Chinese woman. She worked her butt off trying to get my shoulders, neck and back to relax and kept asking if she was hurting me because she was putting so much pressure on them. Today I’m so sore I feel as if I spent yesterday doing a major upper body [View Full Entry]

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For the second day in a row I am up at 6am, wide awake after just5-6 hours of sleep. Gotta love jet lag! My first full day in Vancouver was very enjoyable. A. and I grabbed a vegetarian/vegan breakfast at a little café called Naam and then spent the rest of the morning walking along the beach, which looked a lot like Cape Town. Not quite as picturesque, but definitely resembled the South African coast with the beach and the mountains in the background. Beautiful, nonetheless. The weather was a perfect mid-70s. We then stocked up on fresh produce and such [View Full Entry]

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It’s been a while, but here I am in the air again bound for a foreign destination. This time it is Vancouver, Canada. Not too exotic compared to some of my other travels, but definitely a place that has been on my “to see” list for a long time. I am staying with A., a flight attendant who found my blog when doing some research online for her own trip to Nepal. We became e-mail pals, and then when she stopped in Kathmandu for a few days prior to a trek through the Himalayas, I showed her around a bit. She [View Full Entry]

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Today was more of the same—Delft with Maggie and Mitchell’s Plain with Waseema and Moegisen. This time he/she was wearing jeans and a woman’s embroidered blue shirt. While in Mitchell’s Plain, we drove past a large house, and Derek asked us to stop. It was a rehab center for drug addicts. One of the guys staying there came out and got in the car with us. Again, Derek seemed to enlist random people to help us pick out a few shebeens. I was absolutely exhausted when we got home, and even took a nap. But I went back to the apartments [View Full Entry]

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We went back to Delft today to try to mark all of the shebeens in a couple more sectors with Maggie’s help in guiding. One of the first places where we stopped had a tiny ambulance and a police car parked out front, and a bunch of people were gathered around. Maggie got out to talk to them and reported that a man had been stabbed in the shebeen only a few minutes before. We saw him walk out with the assistance of others, blood stains on his button down shirt. He slowly climbed into the back of the ambulance as [View Full Entry]

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The last couple of days were spent mapping—driving around Delft and Mitchell’s Plain with people from the communities who could point out the shebeens and drug houses. We discovered that the best way to get our job done is to find people who know the neighborhoods well. In Mitchell’s Plain we have Waseema, who was a social worker of some sort and knows many of the sectors well. We’ve got a system going now—the community person guides us, J. drives, either B. or I mark the points on the GPS, and the research assistants take notes on the points. In Delft [View Full Entry]

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