An Eighty-Five Dollar Bowl of Raisin Bran

I still have quite a bit to tell from New Zealand, and at some point I need to finish the "Josh in Five Songs" series.  But people want to know about Puerto Rico, and what the people want, the people occasionally get.  So much has happened since I moved to San Juan I could easily have about nine blog posts, but I'll do my best to condense down to one.  Here goes...

 It all seemed so simple.  An overnight flight from Los Angeles to Ft. Lauderdale, an eight-hour wait, then a quick hop over to San Juan.  Couldn't be easier...except it took an hour and a half to get the last five miles from the train station to LAX, and I missed my flight.  The airline lady recommended I attempt to fly standby to Dallas, then again from Dallas to Ft. Lauderdale.  She said if I could make it to Dallas my chances of making my connecting flight to San Juan were pretty good.  So I went for it.  Flying standby is kind of like hitchhiking, except you're gambling on people's incompetence instead of their goodness. 

I made both my flights, and got a good seat on each.  The biggest drawback was getting a pair of one-hour naps rather than the good solid half night's sleep I would have gotten had I made my original flight, but all things considered, I was happy with the way things played out.  My last flight was delayed, but at around 6:30 p.m. my flight touched down in my new home: tropical San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Figuring out the bus system proved an adventure.  First of all, no one at the airport seemed to know where to catch the bus.  By the time I figured it out, the buses were only running incrementally since it was getting late.  I finally caught one, though, and made an uneventful jaunt to my first stop: the Denny's in Isla Verde.  From there, I would catch a different line the rest of the way.

While I waited, four police cars peeled up into the bus lane with their sirens blazing.  I'm not sure what they were doing, but they clearly meant business.  I wandered down to the far end of the bus stop in hopes of catching a glimpse of the bus with as much advance notice as possible.  With the police cars camping in the lane, I didn't think there was any way the bus could pull in, so I simply hoped if the bus driver saw me frantically waving my arms he would stop anyway.  A local sensed my plight and engaged in a lengthy exchange with a police officer holding a really big gun.  After a few minutes, the cop looked at me and grunted.  "He'll make sure you get your bus," explained the local.  Sure enough, the T-5 bus turned a corner, and the policeman raised his semi-automatic rifle and bellowed into the night.  I caught my bus.

Now, all I had to do was identify my stop and walk the final eight blocks to the Palace Hostel, where rest and relaxation awaited me.  There I would meet up with Zack, who would be there with me for my first five full days while I rested up and got a feel for how to run the hostel.  I just had to get there.  Unfortunately, the bus driver didn't recognize my description.  Eventually, a really helpful local named Pablo informed me, "We're getting off here."  The two of us then wandered the streets in the dark, following the sounds of merriment until we found the hostel just before 10:00 p.m.  I could finally relax...

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!

Turns out Zack had the flu pretty bad, so he changed his flight.  He showed me around, then called a taxi to take him to the airport.  In the words of a song from my first RPM release,

"You left and sailed away alone (yeah, alone!)
And now you've got me trapped up on this island with no way to get ho-ooooome."

Worst roommate ever.

I had twelve days to learn to run a hostel by the seat of my pants, with backup coming in the form of Laney and Jamison, a couple with lots of hosteling experience we had lined up to do some work in exchange for free lodging.  But until then, it was just me.

I quickly realized staying in hostels qualifies me to run one about as much as eating a lot qualifies me to be a chef.  Managing a hostel entails at least a dozen different job descriptions, including but not limited to: receptionist, accountant, concierge, bouncer, electrician, plumber, housekeeper, decorator, administrator, and entertainer.  I'm good at maybe a fifth of these.  Add in the late night check-ins, the early morning check-outs, and getting breakfast out every morning...well, if you do the math, it doesn't leave a whole lot of room for sleep.  Here's a sampling of what I get to deal with:

*My first morning, a very polite German fellow emerged from his dorm and asked for new sheets.  Apparently, an unidentified drunk guy had mistaken the German fellow's bed for the latrine during the night.  The poor German fellow awoke to a figure standing over his bed and the sounds of flowing water.

*We only have one door into and out of the hostel: a gate with a single deadbolt.  You have to use a key on both sides of it.  I was taking out the trash on my fourth morning, only to discover that my key would turn but not open the door.  I climbed down off the balcony to have a look at the other side.  Apparently, someone broke a key off inside the lock on the other side, resulting in the rest of us effectively being locked inside.  I should mention it was a holiday. (By the way, Puerto Ricans love their holidays.  Six of my first eleven days here were holidays.)  The landlord wasn't answering his phone.  All the locksmiths were closed for the day---or for good.  It wasn't until option 'Q' on the google map that we found someone who could let us out.  In the meantime, I got to deal with guests thrilled at the prospect of being locked in. 

*A girl came back to the hostel flustered at a traumatizing encounter with a local.  Two days later, said local showed up at the door, adamant that he needed to see her.  I wouldn't let him in.  He left his phone number, and I promised to deliver it.  An hour later, he was back with a different number.  I was less cordial in dismissing him.  A few hours later, he came back distraught that she hadn't called him yet.  I told him to beat it and never come back.  Fortunately he didn't.  If he had, I was going to reacquaint myself with my friend who waved down the T-5 bus for me.

*Taxi drivers don't know where this place is.  They often call trying to find it.  They get mad that I don't speak Spanish.  They get mad that I don't know all the landmarks in the city.  They get mad at the network of one way streets in this neighborhood.  Taxi drivers are angry people here.

It has been nothing short of a dogfight making this hostel functional on my own, between keeping it clean, making sense of the books, and making sure all the guests have what they need.  There would be days I had so much to do I would literally forget to eat.  Seriously, it would be 10:30 at night, and I would realize I hadn't eaten yet.  And yet, through all the blood, sweat, tears, and sleep deprivation, guests keep telling me The Palace is a really awesome hostel.  And they keep coming back for more.

The days dragged on.  On Sunday, January 15, two days before Jamison and Laney would arrive, I started feeling sick.  By the time Monday morning rolled around I didn't want to live.  I woke up with chills, a high fever, nausea, a pounding headache, and absolutely no energy.  Cleanliness and bookkeeping took a hit that day, as I spent as much time as possible in the horizontal position...at least, until I found out the shower was leaking water into one our private rooms.  A beastly Aussie backpacker by the name of Morgan took pity on me and gave me a wedge of frozen watermelon, which was just enough to get me through the day.  Then came Tuesday.  The cavalry arrived.

I would just like to take this opportunity to say that Laney and Jamison are awesome.  They've run hostels before, and all they needed was for me to turn them loose.  I spent the next several days sleeping.  My symptoms faded as time passed, but I remained in a near-constant state of exhaustion.  An hour of cleaning or a walk to the grocery store would leave me wiped out, and I'd be forced to take a nap.

Everything changed Sunday.  My fever broke during the night, and I woke up feeling more energized than I had in a week.  I poured myself a bowl of raisin bran, then stood at the kitchen counter eating, talking with Jamison, and pondering what I was doing lying on the floor.  At least, that's how I remember it.  To hear Jamison tell the tale, there might have been a loss of consciousness, a collapse, a seizure, and some foaming at the mouth as well.  In any case, by the time I realized where I was, Jamison was on the phone with 911.  The ambulance came, and they took me away.

A parade of nurses took my blood pressure.  By that I mean, at least eight different ladies took turns pumping up the thingy around my arm and looking at the numbers.  At first I figured this is just what you do in Puerto Rico if your patient doesn't speak Spanish.  But then they hooked a bunch of electrodes up to me and started doing a bunch of other tests as well.  At last, an English-speaking doctor informed me they were transferring me to the county hospital to do a CT scan.

At county, more nurses took my blood pressure and hooked even more electrodes up to me.  By the way, they don't shave you before they apply adhesives to your body in this place.  They don't care if you're a hairy sasquatch of a man---they just slap it all on.  They hooked me up to an IV, despite my assurances that I would drink whatever they put in front of me, ran some more tests, and did the CT scan.  Good news: no head damage.  Bad news: I have dengue fever.  It's usually not fatal, but there isn't much you can do for treatment other than rest and hydration.  So after thirteen hours, they released me to go back home with instructions to do exactly what I would have done had I never gone to the hospital.  W00t!  The whole thing cost a grand total of eighty-five bucks.

Two days later, I'm still feeling weak but better than I did when I first got sick.  I'm pounding down fluids and letting Jamison and Laney do everything around the hostel.

As I conclude this post, I'm a little disappointed in it.  There are so many stories that could have been really good if I'd been able to write about them as they occurred.  Alas, the productive life takes its toll.

I conclude with the presentation of a Liam Lowe Rockstar Award.  This one goes to Morgan, whose seemingly small gift of a piece of watermelon kept me kicking when all hope seemed lost.  Sometimes, it's the small acts of kindness that make all the difference.  Thanks, Morgan.