Today was relatively easy. We went to Ponce. The people of Ponce and Puerto Rico in general seem to have a lot of pride in the things that happened in Ponce. Apparently it was a big center for the baseball in Puerto Rico, seeing many famous baseball players including Roberto Clemente.

The first place we visited was a mansion built by a wealthy Spanish family that owned a sugar farm (I think) and a huge rum distillery. That was pretty cool. While I was there I got a small guitar key chain and two sample bottles of rum (today's picture). The one on the right is a citrus rum, and the other one has coffee in it. Neither one is very strong; only 80 and 60 proof respectively. That's really fine by me, though, since I've never tried rum before, and only got these out of curiosity. To be honest, I have no high expectations for these. I'm told that rum is a bit of an acquired taste, like most alcoholic beverages, and I have no interest in acquiring a taste for something like that. I just don't want to miss out on a potentially delectable treat. Those who know me know that I will try anything at least once.

After the tour of the mansion, I went to a nearby Japanese-style garden. It was much smaller than I had hoped, and in really lacked the character of a real Japanese botanical garden. It was nice, though, and the shade there was very relaxing.

My group also visited a watchtower in the shape of a giant cross. The view was really nice, but overall it left no real impression on me; a very emphatic 'Meh!'

Next we had lunch at a local fast food chain called The Taco Maker. Awesome creativity there. 10 points to Gryffindor. The food was very good and I enjoyed a very filling meal for just under $5. Really not bad. I wish they had locations nearer to my regular hangouts.

We went on a tour of downtown Ponce by trolley with a couple of stops on the way. We deboarded the trolley for a closer look at a sports museum (really more of a baseball museum, but there was at least one boxer featured there) and a graveyard. The graveyard was cooler, since most of the graves were destroyed. There were exposed human remains (no skulls that I saw) and tombs that opened into a small cave about four feet deep and were filled with about a foot of water. Just looking in made you feel like Indiana Jones.

I really didn't pay much attention to the tour. I spent most of the time discussing martial arts with my friend Stephen S. from Louisiana. He has never formally studied it, but has been interested in it for a long time. Despite his lack of real contact with combat training, he has a very savvy approach to the many fakes out there. All those "Destroy your opponents with this proven method!" books were recognized as being the unpractical nonsense they are. We had a lively conversation lasting about an hour and a half, which was basically the entire tour. We even had a quick sparring session in the back corner of the graveyard, though we never actually sparred for real. Mostly I just demonstrated Jeet Kune Do philosophy in action.

We spent about an hour walking around the central plaza in Ponce looking for good souvenirs, but I saw nothing worth buying there. I hope to grab some coffee tomorrow, but I think I ran out of time for that. We shall see how that goes.

An update on my cellphone: the person who sold me the Samsung phone has agreed to refund me my money if I ship him the phone. I won't really miss it, but I did really like it. It's a pity it fell apart. I will ship it to him on Monday once I arrive in Georgia.

I will be staying at the home of Phil and Kasia B. in Georgia for a week, and then ride back with them to my home in Mississippi on the 17th. Hopefully my new phone (which should have arrived at my home today) will be shipped to Georgia to join me there by Tuesday.

Finally, to all you who have been sending me emails to say how wonderful my blog is: please feel free to leave a comment by clicking on the "X comments" button beneath my post.