Travel: Day 1 - Puerto Rico - From snow to riches!

One of the advantages of teaching at a small liberal arts institution is the freedom to design and offer courses that are close to your heart. In January 2011, I was fortunate enough to lead a group of 6 students through the world of Tropical Ecology. Apart from not being in the right ecosystem, Nebraska in the winter is definitely not the place to have field trips about Tropical Ecology. Consequently, one portion of the course involved a 10-day trip to Puerto Rico where we got to see for ourselves all the things we talked about in the classroom.

This is a travelogue of our adventures together, the sights we saw, the things we did, and the lessons we learned.

At 2 in the morning I received a text from Andrew J, wondering whether the snowstorm that was hitting the Midwest would let us even leave Omaha. I looked out the window and saw nothing but whiteness. Our original plan was to leave for the airport at 7:30am. I quickly factored in the weather and told everyone to assemble by 6:15am instead. By 5:30am I was at the University's motor pool trying to jump-start the van that would take us to the airport. (Naturally it picked that day to die). Luckily, the head of Maintenance also believes in an early start and, a hasty truck ride later, we were able to requisition another van for the trip.

The ride from the University to the airport is normally a 45 minute one. That day it took us an hour and a half. We slip-slided our way, more than drove, to the airport. Finally, we reached the airport in time to leisurely stroll to the check-in counter, pick up our boarding passes and stop for the obligatory before-the-trip group photo.

(Miranda Beran 2011)

The distance from the ticket counter to the escalators that take us to the terminal floor is about 25 feet. In that short distance AJ managed to lose his boarding pass. A frantic 10 minute search and retracing of our steps did not produce it, so we obtained duplicate boarding passes. All of us exchanged looks, mostly of trepidation...was this a harbinger of things to come? (Rather than make you wait for 10 days of travel blogging, let me reveal the answer: no, the lost boarding pass was about the worst of the AJ-related travel incidents!)

Of the 7 people on the trip (including I), only 3 had flown regularly enough to not consider a plane ride to be a novelty. Of the remaining 4, three had flown a couple of times and one, Miranda B, had never even been to an airport, let alone fly in one. I gave her the window seat and a laundry list of items to "prepare" for once on the plane. She seemed more worried than usual and concerned about what the plan ride would be like.

It did not help matters when the pilot calmly announced that because of the snowstorm, ice had collected on the wings of the plane and they would need to be de-iced before we flew. "Is that a bad thing?" asked an apprehensive Miranda. It did not stop her from taking numerous photos of the de-icing operation, though.

(Miranda Beran 2011)

Once the de-cing was done, we were ready to fly but not before Sami W dryly remarked, "I had heard that we should never eat yellow snow. Now I can add green snow to that."

(Miranda Beran 2011)

We had three hours to spare before catching our connecting flight to Chicago and the landscape as we flew overhead did not seem too inviting. The airport, however, is almost as big as a city and within minutes everyone was having a fun time gawking at the storefronts even as we made our way from one terminal to another. Along the way, I walked into a wall, or so it seemed to the rest of the party until they saw that it was really an interactive TV screen. We re-christened it The Giant iPad, and spent a few minutes admiring it and wondering whether this was the next step in television.

(Miranda Beran 2011)

The flight to San Juan was a 4-hour one, enlivened right after departure by a view of my favorite skyline in the world. Even at a distance, the distinctive skyline, framed by Lake Michigan to the east, brought back a host of wonderful memories.

(C.S. Manish 2011)

Soon, however, dusk fell and most of us slept, excluding Miranda who looked out the window the whole way. The flight into San Juan took us across the Old and downtown parts of the city and we landed at 10pm San Juan time, tired but excited for the adventures the next 9 days would bring.

(C.S. Manish 2011)