The Great Ganesha

We are in sunny Puerto Rico this week. I’m chairing a session at a conference here (and giving a talk). We got here on Sunday and had a little, shall we say, “adventure” on the way to our hotel.

Having recently been introduced to the wonders of the navigational GPS, we decided to get one for our rental car. You know – so we wouldn’t get lost. So we got off our eleven hour red-eye and mentally prepared ourselves for just enough energy to pick up the car, drive to the hotel, eat something and crash.

Puerto Rico, it seems, operates on Indian Standard Time. After finishing the paperwork for the car, we had to wait another twenty or twenty-five minutes in tropical heat,for our car to show up. Ok, fine. We’re used to that. We then get into the air-conditioned goodness of the car interior and program the GPS to take us to the hotel. The hotel is well-known and pretty huge, so it’s already in the database, and we really just have to click a few buttons. Then we sit back, relax and let the wonders of technology take us to our destination. Please note, we are so confident that we don’t even bother to buy a map.

Now, I was told the hotel is around forty-five minutes or so away from the airport. After driving for that long, we see no sign of the hotel. But we see the ocean, and we think that it’ll be there soon. Then an hour goes by… an hour and ten minutes. Finally, the GPS tells us to take an exit. Yes, we think, we’re finally there! But when the thing tells us to drive for another half an hour, we begin to get suspicious and pull over. The hotel information is on my wife’s laptop and, for some reason, only that .pdf file won’t open.

So at this point, we are hungry, tired and at a seedy gas station in the middle of an island in the Caribbean, with no clue where we are, and nowhere to call. We are seriously contemplating writing “HELP” in large letters with rocks in the hopes that a plane will pass by. Then we remembered that the guy at the rental car place had said that there is an Avis desk at our hotel. And had also given us the number. So we buy a map from the gas station and call that number.

The sales rep is this gentle lady who seems extremely perturbed when we tell her where we are. It’s no wonder. We were practically at other end of the island, diagonally! Take a look – see where it says “NOT the hotel (Ponce)”? That’s where we ended up (Ponce is the name of the city where we were).

It turns out that GPS units are good for navigating around the island – except to our hotel. There’s some malfunction which takes people to the other end of the island when you enter the hotel address. See, this only vindicates my theory that there is an external conspiracy to thwart my progress.

Anyhow, a Subway sandwich (our first authentic Puerto Rican meal, by the way), a couple of hours of driving and a lot of resolve later, we are *finally* at our hotel. I missed an entire session at the conference, and the schmoozing at the welcome reception. But I’d say it was worth it – I got something to write about and a tour of Puerto Rico. That’s full paisa vasooli.

Oh yeah, and take a look at the rain-forest view from our room.

We get the ocean view when we look the other way. More pics to come as I get time to post them.

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