Gentle Puerto Rico

The Jones are back from the beautiful island of Puerto Rico. Beautiful, but with interesting politics getting in the way of things, which is the beauty of politics, ain't it. Anyway, here is a pictoral report of our trip:

• With a 24-hour layover in New York, how do a couple of Joneses best spend their time? How about listen to some fine tunes at the 'jazz corner of the world', Birdland. Then, if you're disappointed that you couldn't watch a taping of your favorite late night talk show, why not stroll down Broadway Avenue and see Conan O'brien in his natural habitat! (he's REALLY skinny!) Finish it off with a boat tour of the harbour to witness the amazing lights of the entertainment and financial districts at night, check out the Statue of Liberty (what a significant monument), and be amazed at the bustle of the city that never sleeps. Wake up to a horse-drawn carriage ride through central park, and then hold on to your hat because the cab fare to Newark airport is about to blow you away.
  
• Puerto Rico is a beautiful colony of the U.S. with no power to vote in the US federal election and some fairly significant social issues to contend with. It's a cheap destination for Americans and an expensive one for us. Hard to believe that the same flight could have landed us in the Dominican Republic where our dollar would have been around 10 times the value as it was in PR. But we had 3 days to take it in before the conference started. So, we checked out Old San Juan
  
  
• We took a catamaran to an area with plenty of live coral and we snorkelled the daylights out if the place... and a 5 foot barracuda swam about 3 feet beneath me! Apparently it was harmless, as it hovered around our boat the whole afternoon and our choices were to share the ocean or hang out in the boat. So we shared, and everyone played fair... until we trolled back to the mainland, hoping to barbecue him for supper but he was too smart for our tour guides - he took the bait and swam away!


• and we body surfed in the rip tide (fun but very powerful and pretty daunting at times.)
• Thank you to Floris from Holland who gave us excellent body surfing lessons during our midnight ocean dips!
• The conference was very significant in lots of interesting ways. People are quietly making deep impacts in their countries that are affecting power social change that improves everyone's quality of life. Feel free to ask us - we love blabbering about gentle teaching.