first hour in pr

On the plane, my seatmate, an old woman with heavily manicured nails, each fingertip topped with a raised plastic flower and rhinestone sparkes, asked if it was my first time visiting the island. She said, "Bienvenidos. You are going to see a beautiful land."...
I stepped out of the airport into the 80 degree sunshine. Somehow, Pati found me, even though I still didn't have her cell phone number. We saw Mary through the glass window and waved excitedly. Having had no idea what to expect of my future housemate, I was relieved to see that her only baggage was a dingy hiking backpack just like mine. We smiled and hugged, and hopped into the backseat of Pati's friend Pedro's car. She knew him from Bread and Puppet. After shifting around a pair of stilts that jutted out from the trunk into the backseat, we settled in. They talked in rapid spanish, once in a while translating a sentence or two here and there, as we stared out the windows, taking in the scenery with wide eyes, not believing the palm trees and incredible warmth. We drove to Viejo San Juan, the most touristy part of the metro area, to have lunch at a place called El Jibarito's. I've heard jibaro translated various ways, as farmer, worker of the land, hillbilly, mountain person...more on that later. I ordered chicken, arroz con habichuelas, and amarillos, sweet yellow plantains.
We talked about the economic crisis... "Finally its happening! This time it wasn't Che, it wasn't Fidel, believe me, man, we really tried...This time, they are bringing themselves down!" Pedro ordered flan for the four of us to split for dessert. It came topped with a frilly swirl of whipped cream and a bright red mereschino cherry on top. He poked at the whipped cream with his fork, a disappointed expression on his face. "The cook, she worked hard to make this flan taste good. It doesn't need this shit on top. What an insult." He scraped the whipped cream and the cherry off the flan, into a corner of the plate. "This whipped cream, this is because of el turismo," he said in disgust.