Vieques seemed to have a moderate sized gringo ex-pat community. One of the transplants we got to chat with a bit had relocated from Key West a couple years ago when it became too commercial and overrun. She was looking for the next undiscovered, extremely laid back tropical home, and found it in Isabel II, the larger of the two towns on the island. She was friendly and forthcoming about a number of things, but had surprisingly little knowledge of the culture of her
adopted home. As we sat at her sidewalk cafe, a young man rode by on one of the distinctive Paso Fino horses that roam the island in various states of domestication (or not), with their exagerated, quick, high step. One of my companions thought there might be a name for that step, so we asked our friendly hostess, who seemed quite befuddled and told us it was the horseshoes that made the sound. It was apparent that she wasn't in Vieques for the native culture, and hadn't bothered to study up for her hospitality role.By contrast, my travel companion Z found a fairly comprehensive history book of the island (post-Columbus), read it on the beach one day, and became an excellent resource for the group - able to provide, for example, context for the military bunkers we drove by as we looked in vain for a remote beach.
I have other ex-pat friends who immerse themselves in the culture of their adopted home countries, and act as one-woman tourism offices, ethnographers and cultural attaches. I just can't imagine moving to a new place and not being remotely curious about the differences.
Then again, I also don''t understand staffing the tourism office with a non-English speaker who doesn't know whether hiking Mt. Pirata is safe and acceptable (the guidebook said to ask, as the rules governing access to the former military property are ever changing). But hey, it was too hot to hike anyway!
More later about the trip...
*except for the depleted uranium left from years of Navy occupation, testing and war games.
1 comment:
I hear you on the "not knowing anything about where you live." I had the occasion to meet an American couple in Costa Rica in a little beach bar. Turns out they'd been coming for six months out of the year for five years, and were just building a house. They heard me ask the waiter for something, and were like, oh! you speak Spanish! that's something we've been meaning to do.
What motivates this type of people? It's certainly not love of their fellow man, who they don't even know!
keep writing! Always likeable!
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