Punta v. Palmas... Hmm...

I am moving today. J

I like the place I’m in now, but due to some confusion at the CPRC about booking us lodgings, the rentals got mixed up, so now I have to switch places for the rest of the summer. I will be moving from where I am now to just down the street above the Post Office and across from the dock. It should be a nice change, and I’ll be moving to a second-floor place with a balcony, which must be deemed an advantage. Only problem? It’s farther from the office (and Internet). Pooh. Ah well, I’ll post pictures as soon as it stops raining.

I have been really enjoying my first few days living by myself. I sort of underestimated the pleasure to be had in cooking for myself, doing what I want when I want, and organizing things the way I like. I think that by moving to this new place, I’ll be able to completely set things up the way I like, and it might just be the making of the summer. The only downside to single living that I can see so far is when there is a bug, you have to deal with it yourself. I learned that the hard way. Eep!

Speaking of the past few days, Friday was a lot of fun. I spent the morning on Cayo running subjects, which went alright. I started the day running Opposite Rope conditions, which involves presenting apples, which are tied to 3ft long ropes, to the monkeys. Unfortunately, this proves to be a test of your reflexes as well as their instincts because if you are not on top of your game, they steal away with your ropes and force you to chase them into thick brush to get them back. Sadly, I was rudely shown how off my game I was: two monkeys ganged up on me and approached both ropes at the same time, each stealing a rope and running off in opposite directions. This is not ideal. I ended up losing one of the ropes in the woods and couldn’t track it down, so mid-morning I had to switch conditions. Now I have to make another piece of rope. Ehn. Not a fan.

Anyway, I took a half-day Friday because Tara, Alli, and Sasha offered to split the costs of a rental car for two days with me (~$10/day/person) in order to take a trip out of Punta (always necessary). So around 12:30, I met up with the girls and waited for the rental car guy to pick us up. (It is like Enterprise Rent-a-Car, “We’ll pick you up!”)

Once in the car, we went to some clothing places. We all had things we forgot or needed. For example, I was ill informed about the time we spend on the island, so I came down with one pair of shorts and no nice clothes – not even a skirt or a dress. (For Doreen’s party, I had to borrow a dress from Sasha. Thank goodness we were the same size.)  We then headed to Walmart to pick up other necessities and rounded out the afternoon excursion with a trip to Ralph’s, the big Humacao supermarket. I stocked up on more fruit and veggies. (By the way, I made a new food discovery: the Newton Fruit Crisp 100 Calorie Bar thingies make a great dessert.) 

Once we had delivered our things at home and cleaned up, we headed out for the evening. We made reservations at a little Asian restaurant in Palmas del Mar called Blue Hawaii. Palmas del Mar is a combination between a resort and a gated community. You pass through guarded gates to get in and all the buildings are white and uniform. However, the place is huge. It has its own shopping center, fitness center, street after street of condos, a giant lake with lit fountains in the middle, and a police force/security. It took us at least 10 minutes after driving through the gates to get to the restaurant on the other side of town. All of this makes it very difficult to know what to make of Palmas. I mean, it has its name presented like a city on the highway exit signs, but it isn’t really a city, is it? It is a strange place and certainly a very different place from Punta.

You get the same feeling passing into Palmas as you get when you enter a resort in any Caribbean locale, discomfort and relief.  Discomfort because you have just witnessed the true state of life there, and you feel as if you are lying to yourself and are over-privileged. But also relief because always feeling guilty about your good lot in life can be exhausting and because feigning ignorance and being pampered for a while is really not the worst thing in the world.  I don’t know about you, but this is how I feel, and this is certainly how I felt the other night. I have been living in Punta, which is far from third-world but also far from Upper East Side NYC, and after being somewhat marooned there, there was definitely a sense of relief that I was going some place where dressing up and ordering sushi and buying nice wine, cheese, and olive oil was not out of the realm of possibility. Call me spoiled, but it was nice. The uniformity of the place was notable and ridiculous, though, and I actually enjoyed arriving back in Punta later that night with the multicolored facades and varying architecture, no matter how grungy it can be.

We had a relaxing and easy time at dinner. The food was delicious, which was sort of a surprise, but Frommer’s did tell us it was the best Chinese in the region. That probably isn’t a hard title to achieve, but I should have trusted Frommer nonetheless. Good on ya mate. Later we went out and got ice cream, then drove back to Punta, and had Pink Martinis at Tara and Alli’s. Scratch that. I should not say Pink Martinis. I should say, alcoholic Capri Sun because the product is essentially the same. Apparently, some genius realized he could prepackage cocktails, such as pink martinis (a vodka cranberry, essentially), mojitos, and margaritas, in Capri Sun-type packages. These are then be frozen or refrigerated and pulled out and transported wherever. Genius. I wish they sold them in the states. It was so… college. Ha. They were actually pretty good, but by that time at night, I was tired from work. So after I finished mine, the girls escorted me home, and I called it a night.  All in all, a good day.

So, now I have related my recent events and need to go contact my new landlord somehow. I will keep you updated.

Much love,

B

P.S. – I finished The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and loved it. It is a short and quick book, interesting, and deceptively informative. I would suggest this to anyone, looking for a light summer read. I also read Straight Up and Dirty by Stephanie Klein, which is a relationship-focused memoir. I found it sarcastic and easy, but self-indulgent. A good beach choice, but no more. Now, I am reading Water for Elephants, a real book. Huzzah!