Sapphire

My Puerto Rican adventure began on April 13th. My flight left at 5:20 (AM) the next day, but I decided to get a head start, check my luggage and then sleep until 4 or so in the morning. Well, I didn't get to the airport around 11 and ended up leaving my guide papers and everything that would have been useful in my dad's car. Apparently, the airport checkin desks close at 22:00 so I couldn't check my luggage, but I did (after a hassle) manage to get the self-checkin-in kiosk to cough up a boarding pass. I decided not to check my baggage, since, well there was no around who could check the baggage for me. So I spent the next six hours wandering the CMH airport. I ended up getting harassed by a custodian, who is a despicable, despicable man since he's a wt:Pittsburgh Steelers fan. Around 4:30 TSA finally permitted people to enter the boarding area and I caught my flight and landed in Charollete and waited for my connecting flight.

I give props to the managers at the Charolette airport for several reasons:

1. They have the anti-bacterial waterless gel in restrooms. I'm obsessive about washing my hands, but often airports use a type of soap that dries up my hands so severely that my hands begin to burn and turn bright red. Thanks to the soap at CMH my hands were already bright red.
2. They have a piano for travellers to play. This was awesome because if you've been waiting in an aiport for six hours already, plus an hour flying and you hear someone jamming on the piano it's awesome and will relax you.

Anyhow, I finally land in SJU at 11 (AM). Since my guides were left in the car I headed over to the tourism company's office and got directions to the hotel: Take C-45 to Isla Verde, then A-5 to Old Town, then B-21 to the hotel. Buses cost 75 cents a ride, so this was supposed to be a breeze. They even gave me a map to figure out where I was. I caught the C-45 and compared the distance from the airport to the Isla Verde stop, but the cartographer did a horrible job in describing distances so I ended up missing the stop and headed out quite a distance from SJU and ended up in a town with buildings standing up, only by the grace of God. These things were decrepite, missing roofs and doors. Along the way the bus repeatedly broke down, but it would start up and we'd be on our way. Finally the bus is pulling into the final stop and is about to turn around and head back to SJU when it breaks down and gives up for good. I spent the next hour waiting at the bus stop for another bus to arrive.  As we waited I noticed chickens were running around loose.  This somewhat bothered me and all I could think was H5N1.  Finally, another bus arrive and half-an-hour later I was back where I was supposed to be.  The A-5 showed shortly there after, but they wouldn't accept a single USD so I couldn't get on the bus.  I wandered around and finally gave up hope someone would trade me quarters so I started walking toward the hotel, which was much further than I had anticipated.  After about half an hour I covered quite a distance, but was getting annoyed with forks-in-the-road and out of the corner of my eye I caught  taxi driver looking back to see if I'd wave him down, so I did.

I finally arrived at the hotel, where I was supposed to meet Evan, Maj, Amita and Jani, but as it was now nearly 3 PM they had left for the meet up spot.  I had the receptionist find the restaurant's address, call a cab, and headed over there and finally met up with everyone.  It took three hours longer than anticipated, but I finally managed to the first Wikitravel Collaboration Confabulation (a.k.a. "Get-together").

The moral of the story:  Spend the extra cash and take a taxi, otherwise you'll meet a bunch of H5N1 disease ridden chickens in a suburb of San Juan.