Culebra, Puerto Rico and the Infinite Joy of Letting Go

Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico, you have drawn yourself into my soul now. I took a long weekend, the last weekend of July, thanks to my amazing cousin who works for an airline and has me listed as her travel companion, making my airfare seriously affordable.

I needed the long weekend. Since joining Steemit in June, my life has turned around. Instead of having to turn to camming, getting naked on screen and touching myself for money, I have not only made a chunk of change Steeming, I’ve landed some lucrative writing and editing gigs. Half of June and nearly all of July I spent hunched over my laptop, editing books on data science and self-help in the workplace, writing articles about sexy celebrity daughters, tutoring college kids through their summer writing courses.

And since I hadn’t seen my best friend @kindstranger and her girlfriend @amyinautumn (another amazing human) in a year-ish, it was time for an epic reunion. Three besties with travel benefits through the same airline, we had not much choice but to find a secluded island in paradise with limited to no cell phone reception to reunite. So we went to Puerto Rico.

I arrived a day before the girls, because I had an extra day off and wanted to check out San Juan before we headed to the smaller island of Culebra. So I found an early morning flight and checked into a hostel by the afternoon, only to meet a posse of weed-smoking wanderlusts (including the manager) who took me to see the street art by night and hang out in the hippest local spots, including an epic drag show which I was too shy to take pics of (I am super unsure of drag show etiquette). The next day, I rolled out of bed early, sweating peacefully—I love the way it feels to sweat. I took a bus to old San Juan and wandered the streets, still sweating, eating empanadas filled with meat, taking pictures of all the colors and cobbles.

Omar (the love of my existence) is a little bit obsessed with Puerto Rico because of former Calle 13 member, now a solo musical artist Residente, who sings about a specific neighborhood of San Juan called La Perla. Wow, La Perla. From old San Juan, it’s just down some stairs, right smack beside the sea. The houses are the brightest colored houses, there is amazing street art everywhere, and this particular Saturday morning, the residents of these beautiful shacks were washing their cars playing salsa music loudly. I could hear the ocean from almost every point of the neighborhood. At the end of my walk, up and down stairs, through a mini public outdoor library of free books, next to the shore I found a cemetery. Cemeteries are like churches because they are filled with all the energy that is brought there by living humans (and maybe the ones that have been laid to rest there too?)

I got poured on for about 10 minutes as I walked up some stairs back into old San Juan, before cruising around the neighborhood of my hostel again to check out the street art in daylight, eat more empanadas, and head to the airport to meet Jess and Amy and take a taxi then a boat to Culebra.

Our initiation to the island was that we couldn’t find any taxis to bring us to the campground where we planned on spending the next three nights. A lovely nurse from San Juan whose name I can’t remember now drove us in his golf cart to the site and told us about the gem we had stumbled upon in Culebra.

In the dark, we set up our tent, laid a blanket in the sand 30 steps away next to the water, and watched shooting stars float across the milky way. In the morning, the heat woke us early, despite being under a cover of jungle next to the beach. Seeing that world of white sand and turquoise sea open up through the trees, nearly empty at such an early hour, another wow. I took a dip immediately. Amy joined me and a light sprinkling of rain came too, pittering on our skin and the glass surface of bright greeny blue where we bathed. MAGIC. This is magic.

It is possible to fall in love with a place, and I fell in love with Flamenco Beach in Culebra, Puerto Rico. The days that followed were filled with everythingness and nothingness. We sunbathed, we planted ourselves in the shade, we swam, we snorkeled, we drank beer and rum and ate empanadas, we drew a bit of a crowd writing poetry on our skin and singing songs, the Bathing Belles with a guitar and ukulele. We skinny dipped at sunset on a hidden beach down the road, we laid under the night sky always.

The resulting Skin on Sundays episode --- my poetry on skin project, if you're interested <3

We let all the pressure that had been building inside of us go, and it felt so easy. Sometimes all it takes is burying yourself in natural beauty with people you love to re-unearth the creativity and inspiration that lives inside of you, to appreciate what is and what you have, to go home feeling rejuvenated and fresh; I can conjure up that first dip into the still Culebra waters at any moment—that fresh.