I’m always afraid to photograph people, those you don’t know and in open streets. Because it was a lesson learned the hard way.
Ponce is a relatively young vibrant city in the south. We would have loved to spend a night there, but the hotels were a bit expensive (same/little more than San Juan); so we stayed in Rincón and drove through Ponce to get to Guanica. For a while on a hot and muggy afternoon, we played tourists in downtown Ponce; it got uninteresting pretty quickly. We asked in Spanish about the other things to do and a family that was feeding chips to the pigeons in the courtyard of Lady Guadalope’s church (duh!) suggested a trip to the boardwalk.
The Ponce boardwalk is something of a community gathering place for the whole city and we bought some very Caribbean rum and pineapple pumpkin before lazing around. Before I knew it, I was playing with a bunch of kids running and catching each other and I started capturing some cute playful expressions on my camera. We inadvertently started to walk away and had barely crossed 200 feet, when we were stopped by a gruff ‘permissio’ (excuse me) behind us. A policeman, accompanied by a man who was peeping at the DSLR hanging from my neck, proceeded to question us in the purest Spanish. He was starting to worry me a little. The police are never good news; and it is never better if you are in a foreign country. After several failed communication attempts, he made us wait and went to find an English speaking official. They came back with a young policewoman who asked me if she had taken any pictures of this guy’s daughter. It became easy to understand what the point of discussion was. I calmly accepted; she demanded that i delete everything i complied with. They didn’t release us until the angry father did a thorough check of my entire memory card to make sure there were no heads other than ‘P’ and me. Then the matter was resolved and I rushed to refill my pina-colada with relief!
A father’s concern about shoes is understandable: he could turn his daughter’s image into ridiculous content and make money off the internet! But, as a citizen of a free country in a public place, it’s a bit ridiculous to be asked to do what I did. Leave your loved ones at home if you are so picky. Even after googling photography laws in public places, I can’t seem to decide which is better, ethically and professionally. Is it a good idea to voluntarily show your subjects the photographs you have taken to see if they are appreciated or frowned upon? Or just inform everyone in your frame before raising the camera to your eyes and getting bland shots?
But I ramble…
Two more places, Rincón, Adjuntas, deserve to be discussed before concluding the Caribbean side. The surf town of Rincón is just that and some yoga on the beach at 6am that you have to be prepared for. Rincon Inn offers good hostel facilities and a friendly group of longtime travelers whose days are rarely different: surf before it gets too hot in the morning and watch the sun go down with a few cold beers in the evening.
Right in the middle of the mountains of the Cordillera Central is Adjuntas. I had no valid reason for choosing it for an overnight stop; some tense hours of driving on twisty single lane roads to get here. We checked into our sweltering hotel room and decided to have dinner and stay out as much as possible. To our dismay, the word “bohemian” could not have described any other place better; We were truly foreigners in this foreign land! After enduring a few stares from the locals on the highway and central park, we retired to our satin-lined beds in our hotel. A local cafe where we had breakfast the next day, Panaderia Sancho, made up for some of our woes. The heartiest of Puerto Rican baked goods and a hot chocolate for the last morning on this always sunny island!
