A Small Place-Chapter 1

As a local we see things in a different way. The beauty of our own place might seem kind of irrelevant to us. I think that the only way to really appreciate things is to need them. For example a person from the mid United States might think of the beach as a wonder of the world, but for a local it might only be another normal day in what others think is paradise.Puerto Rico is not that far away from from Antigua, we have almost the same geography, we have a big tourist market as well and people sometime feel the same way about tourist and sometimes worst.

Like Antigua the first thing you see when you come to the island is the Airport but slightly different for people from the United States. Unlike Antigua, Puerto Rico, for being a territory of the United States has an easier way to come in. US citizens have no need to go through customs or anything like that, they just unload the airplane and keep walking to the outside without doing any lines at all. Once you come out of the Airport facility is pretty much the same deal as Antigua, you have crazy hungry taxi drivers waiting for some “gringo” as we call them to jump inside and try to charge them an excessive amount for a short ride. When you jump into that taxi you will probably ride for about five to ten miles to the hotel strip and you don’t get to see that much of the real face of the island. Tourist just go through the nice and clean streets with beautiful gardens on the side of the road and where the government have removed any sing of economic struggle like for example beggars, they used to be all around the area but in recent years the government of the capital decided to “relocate” them.

It is really frustrating to see people being cheated from the reality of the place they are visiting, many times it seems like it is all perfect but that is only because they don't have to read the news paper everyday or watch the late night news. By the same time Tourists enjoy themselves we have people in the streets killing each other, we have some others begging for some food or money. Way inside where that tourist will never get into we have families living in a single bedroom house that can nearly fit the four of them. Families that have to rationed food so that they have something on their table every day. That is the real face of my island, that is the real face of any other place in the world where you are a tourist. As a tourist you will only see what the government had money to embellish for you to see but the reality is that what you see is about a ten percent of the country the other ninety percent remains abandoned and unseen.