natural disasters & other big surprises

Esperanza on Halloweeen

A few years back while researching in Chiapas, I recall the look of horror from someone when I mentioned that I was heading on to Tabasco soon. But . . . they've had lots of rain, he stammered. I hadn't read the regional news for a few days, and when I checked it that night it just so happened that the entire state was bathing in the largesse of its overflowing rivers. Without a hydroplane, a visit was impossible, so I took a literal rain check.

Fast forward a few years. Last night I was poking around the tiny Puerto Rican island of Vieques, noticing that waves at the usually placid malecon were cresting and showering passing cars. Stopping to gawk, I commented to a passerby about the spirited Caribbean waters, and he dropped a tidbit about Hurricane Tomas lurking a few hundred miles offshore. You'd think I'd pay attention to these salient details by now. Little kids in Halloween costumes hung over the side of the boardwalk, screaming with mock fear when the whitewater crashed and spritzed them.

After dinner tonight, I stopped by one of the local bars to gather their details for the book. As a reggae cover band droned on, the World Series played without sound, and a handful of rapt patrons texted as they watched the 8th inning of the game. I'm not a sports fan, but I was a San Franciscan far from home without anything better to do, so I pulled up a stool and quickly made friends with an SF couple at the end of the counter. As the bottom of the ninth inning sped up, the spectacle drew me in and I teetered on the edge of my chair. At three balls and two strikes, conversation stopped near the television and eyes leveled without blinking. As the batter struck out, we exhaled to cheer, and the bartender lined up free chichaito shots for his three San Francisco patrons. ¡Salud!

encantada

I'm currently on the ground in Puerto Rico, wilting in the late hurricane season humidity while researching the next Lonely Planet guide to the island. Friends from home keep asking me if I've been snorkeling or swimming, but until the sun's almost down, I'm reluctant to expose my skin to insta-cook.

San Juan was a rush of mushrooming beachfront high-rise condos, concrete streets running between them and a public bus authority that plies the roads but refuses to publish or post route maps. A breezy woman from the tourism office insisted that everyone knew where the buses went so there was no need to produce maps. (Yeah, right.) And that buses went places that tourists didn't want to go anyway. (Um . . . sure.) A desk clerk at the guesthouse confirmed my suspicion that residents were just as perplexed by the dearth of transit information. She'd somehow gotten her hands on a map a few years ago, and she'd kept it like a sacred object. An object that she let me borrow and photocopy, thank you very much.

A few highlights from my time in the capital of Borinquen:

• an invitation to the birthday party of a dapper sexagenarian barfly in Condado
• drinking my first chichaito shot (passion fruit flavored!)
• chatting with a right-on bartender inside a crazy oyster-shaped restaurant
• biking a few miles of the undeveloped Piñones coast on a brakeless bicycle
• finding the coolest live music club in Old San Juan by following rock music down a dark and deserted back alley
• realizing that the best natural foods store in town was right across the street from where I was staying

daily dose of wildlife

Roomy green spaces and unexpected pocket parks quilt San Francisco, and red tail hawks routinely terrorize legions of pigeons. But sometimes I crave truly wild places- expanses without buildings, landscapes with few people, and the rush of encountering large animals that make you feel small.

All the bases got covered during a recent day to the northern tip of Point Reyes. Driving to the trailhead, raptors with stern expressions and never-ending feet perched on wooden fenceposts, staring me down like miniature roadside gargoyles. Majestic tule elk vamped along the bluffs between Tomales Bay and the ocean, trying hard to exude that effortlessly photogenic look. At the tip of Tomales Point, seals bodysurfed angry white swells.

epic day

I dragged my zombie-like self out of bed this morning to gaze at small dots on the ocean's horizon. Granted, these ant-sized figures were careening down raging 40-foot barrels of frothy sea water at Mavericks, one of the scariest big wave surf contests in the world. But if these fools could stand up to tempt death, the least I could do was wake up before 9am and run a brush through my hair.

The presence of ambulances and SUVs full of cops gave the impression that some kind of commotion had recently transpired, and I soon found out rogue waves had just pummeled hundreds of beachside bystanders, sending many to the hospital with broken bones, bloody arms and twitchy stories of near-drowning. From the safer upper bluff, thousands set up blankets and chairs to watch sets of monster tides crest and slap down everything in their paths, and we all sucked breath every time a surfer took the suicide plunge.

thank you, Howard Zinn

Howard Zinn
1922-2010

You will be missed.

cusp of winter

Few things feel as wickedly self-indulgent as blowing off work to ogle the autumnal Sierras. Why yes, I'm supposed to be writing up my reams of tropical Mexico research. I should be tackling a section of steamy jungle every day, chipping off enough guidebook destinations in Chiapas and Tabasco that this project will be tucked away in a drawer before food goes in the oven for Thanksgiving. But ever since my plane home hit the tarmac, I'd been pining to see big mountains the way that people without phone or internet access brood for long distance lovers.
Minimal cajoling produced a willing road trip partner, and we headed toward the north shore of Lake Tahoe, listening to books on tape so her daughter wouldn't implode from the transportation boredom endemic to 7-year-olds. Since visiting for a research trip last summer, I'd been angling for a cohort to overnight at the Sierra Club lodge near Donner Pass. And since the snow was still a few weeks away, we had the whole damn place to ourselves, and we padded around in our PJs like it was our private country home. Any stray nighttime thoughts I had about the sprawling hotel in The Shining I kept to myself, as we built up a fire and busied ourselves with alpine jigsaw puzzles and an addictive journal of shield-your-eyes before-they-fall mountaineering accidents.
I'd also been meaning to explore the abandoned train tunnels and snow sheds just next to Sugar Bowl. Built in the 1860s by Chinese laborers for the Central Pacific Railroad the tunnels were blasted out by hand, with work continuing in the avalanche-prone area even during winter blizzards that stacked snow 18-foot-high. Armed with a headlamp, we dodged long puddles and occasional drips inside two smaller tunnels (7 and 8), but turned back for hot chocolate when the frigid wind blasted us near the 1659-foot Summit Tunnel.

hasta la próxima

At the airport hotel in DF on my last night in Mexico, my stomach was topped off with chocolate and churros, and I was already missing Chiapas.
My bus from San Cristóbal to the Tuxtla airport had descended through the clouds, where an enormous valley sprawled below and green mountains lingered beyond. Along the highway were huipil-clad women tending a herd of goats, and men in straw cowboy hats clearing brush, their pants ballooning over tall green rubber boots.
And it felt hard to leave San Cristobal. I'd finally stashed enough javelin-sized sticks near where I was staying so I could fend off irate territorial geese from all directions. The loudspeakers on water trucks, endlessly advertising ¡AGUA PURA! were starting to sound mildly poetic. Casa del Pan finally had tofu for sale every time I wandered in. The neighborhood dogs that napped along the street I took home seemed to recognize me, merely opening their eyes and stretching instead of jumping up to bark. And my friends' six month-old loved nothing more than slowly tearing the leaves off trees.