Day 5: Yuck

So my cell phone is toast. Unfortunately, I have progressed to the point of being completely dependent upon my cell in order to communicate with the outside world. I need to be able to talk with my family and friends. I need to be able to talk to Amber in case something happens with the cats. I need to be able to get in touch with Yari in case I get lost out in San Juan. I need to call Sara to remind her to cover for me on the first day of class as I'll be flying home that morning. I need to be able to receive a call from the kayaking company who is scheduled to take me out this Saturday. Sadly, as much as I don't want to admit it, I need a working cell phone, and I need it now.

Consequently, today was spent figuring out the island's bus and train system. I ended up taking a bus to the Plaza Las Americas, the largest mall in the Caribbean. When I was looking through the tour guides a few months ago, where was the one place that looked the least enticing? Plaza Las Americas. I mean, who spends a day at the mall on their very first tropical vacation? Unfortunately, it was the closest stop to the Sprint dealership.

It was in and out at the Sprint store, where the kid who helped me spent most of his time texting instead of looking at and/or talking to me. I am now the proud owner of a MotoRazr V3M Red. I don’t like it as much as my old phone, but at least $10 of my purchase goes toward a good cause.

Now, hungry, I searched for food. The only places near the Sprint store were McDonalds and Taco Maker. No thanks. So…where else was there to go, but the mall? The mall. I went to the mall while I was on vacation. Ugh. Still, I was able to get a fairly decent bit of pasta at ¿Qué Pasta! It was a build-your-own pasta type of place with really fresh ingredients. I picked tortellini, red bell peppers, fresh mushrooms, and shrimp in a pesto sauce. The guy sautéed it all for me with a bit of minced garlic and olive oil. Hey, things were looking up!

I figured that as long as I was at the mall (sigh) I might as well try to pick up the third volume of the Leven Thumps series as I had finished the second volume my first night in Culebra. There was a gigantic Borders near the south entrance, and I spent over half an hour trying to find the book I needed. This is not because I don’t know how to work my way around a bookstore…au contraire, I worked for B. Dalton all through high school. It was because their young adult fiction section was a wreck. A wreck. In all my years of working in bookstores, I have never seen anything this chaotic. No alphabetization, one copy of the book in this bay, one copy in another, one copy over in who knows where. It pulled me back to my bookstore days and I was incredibly tempted to begin straightening and alphabetizing like nobody’s business. I decided it was best that I get out as soon as possible.

The details of my return home need not be belabored. Let’s just say that I got on the correct bus, but it went somewhere else, and I ended up at the very end of the line for the San Juan train system. So I took the train from the end of the system to the beginning, then took another bus. Total time from leaving Plaza Las Americas to my arrival back at Da House Hotel? Three hours, which was about two hours longer than it took to get there.

I wanted sushi for dinner, and I wanted it bad. I could only find one sushi restaurant in Old San Juan: Dragonfly. Service was prompt, and both the Coco Lime Tuna Ceviche (seriously tender, fresh pieces of raw tuna with coconut milk, lime juice, cucumber, and palmito) and the Dragon Pegao Roll (king crab, bacon, cream cheese, scallions, and chipotle mayo) were amazing. Not too healthy, but amazing. Hey, I ate at the freaking mall food court for lunch, cut me some slack. G’night.