Puerto Rico (Part II)
Noise. Big, honking car stereos that go thump, wumpa, wumpa, thump and can be heard from half a mile away. This is what I think about most when I think about Puerto Rico.
Puerto Rico is the loudest place on earth. You won’t find that in any fact book. But you’ll read it on the internet thanks to this blog and Google. Everywhere we went on the island it was the same. Music blaring from cars. It was as if a politician campaigned on the slogan “vote for me, I’ll put a subwoofer in every trunk” and then delivered on his promise. At times, the entire island felt like it was vibrating from the bass response of half a million cars. A constant 3.0 on the Richter scale. If Puerto Rico were ever to have a real earthquake, the Governor would have to make an emergency appeal to her citizens to turn off their car stereos and stand very still so the geologists could get an accurate reading.
On the one-hour drive from San Juan to Luquillo where we would be staying, I don’t think we were ever out of earshot from the pulsing beat of Latin music. I have to admit that at first it was refreshing. Back home this thumping would be associated with rap and hip-hop. At least the music here has rhythm and heart. On a decent sound system, at a reasonable volume, I would even say that it sounded pretty nice.
Even the crappiest of cars we encountered in Puerto Rico were equipped with subwoofers. It was humorous to pull up alongside an old rust bucket at a traffic light and look over to see the guy’s (and it was always guys) rearview mirror shivering from the sound waves. Sometimes, the deep, rolling waves would rattle the metal in the car’s doors like a woodpecker on a tin roof. The sound was total shit, but it was loud and loud seems to matter here.
Our condo was beautiful. Eight stories up looking out over spectacular blue-green water where the Atlantic Ocean presses up against the Caribbean Sea. Ocean waves gently crash against the shore and fill the air with the soothing sound of thump, wumpa, wumpa, thump…Wait a second. That’s not the ocean. That the biggest fucking sound system I have ever heard.
The beach in front of our condo building was public and there was a small access road that we did not know was there. I looked out to see cars parked along the road. I looked closer and saw an old Volkswagen Micro bus. It has been retrofitted to squeeze as many speakers inside as possible. The doors and windows of this beast were open and the owner along with many of his friends was partying under palm trees at the edge of the beach.
And party they did until 3 a.m. There is no escaping these long wavelengths of sound. Deep bass penetrates your bones. We tried putting pillows over our heads. We closed the windows and turned on the air conditioners. Nothing worked. As I lay there wide-awake, robbed of my chance to fall asleep to the peaceful sound of surf, my appreciation of Latin music from earlier in the day was gone. I was no longer amused. I had all kinds of nasty thoughts. The most satisfying one involved paint balloons. Lobbed from the dark facade of a 20-story condo building they would never see it coming and have no idea where it came from. Nothing says, “fuck you, party’s over,” like a dousing of fluorescent orange paint.
In the morning we were exhausted from all of our travels and lack of sleep, but it was quiet and the view was even more beautiful now that the clouds had lifted and the sun was playing off of the water. We had breakfast looking out at this:
We started to rejuvenate. We were heartened again.
But not for long.
To be continued one more time…
Tomorrow: Sunburn, parrots, pod people and casinos
