Walmart Special

April 7

Rented a car yesterday afternoon with two couples and subsequently became intimately familiar with back streets all over south Ponce trying to extricate ourselves from back streets all over south Ponce. Eventually located a Walmart where one couple's acquisitive bent completely filled dinghy to gunwales sans occupants. There are pictures.

Surprised at great number of Puerto Ricans who speak no English. Usually managed to communicate via Spanglish and universal hand gestures (no, not those as we are trying to make friends), but still experienced failure to find Chinese restaurant, lusted after by one of our group, until 1930. Eventually settled for Chinese-ish place with McDonalds level decor. Food was good, but came with French fries?

Walked around Centro Ponce all morning. Mannequins along the street gave an indication where sexual emphasis lies as all were waist down and turned backward. Rows and rows of tight little butterbeans. Very small import given to flat tummies. Even young women have a bulge of loose adipose tissue jiggling around their navels. Suspect empanadillas (traditional breakfast deep fried meat pie) as the reason.

Due to weather, will now skip Isla Caja de Muertos (Coffin Island) to land Salinas tomorrow morning after 0500 start. Wind kicking up Thursday afternoon increases incentive for continued eastward march to assure Puerto del Rey near Fajardo and retrieval of Liz from the delights of San Juan Airport Monday morning.

Jack