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From looking at the map now, my guess is that we ended up on  A bubblegum-pink house holding hands with a banana-yellow
           route 32, a winding, narrow road where we got stuck behind   house, which is standing next to a lilac-purple house that’s
           what we thought was a political-announcement vehicle. (Later   hugging a lime-green house… and so on. To complete this pic-
           we found out that we were following a funeral-announcement   ture postcard perfection, rows of boats, docked directly below
           vehicle. The driver wasn’t espousing his merits as a candidate   each home, bobbed with the waves.
           through his megaphone. He was letting people in the village
           know who had just died and                                                      Since we were there to cover
           where and when the funeral                                                     a sailing event, most of our
           would be held.)                                                                time in Humacao was spent
                                                                                          on or near the water, but we
           It took us twice the amount                                                    did visit another acquain-
           of time to get to Humacao,                                                     tance who lived in a gated
           but we finally arrived at Club                                                 community a few miles away.
           Calla, a gated community                                                       Here I learned that the bird
           where our one-bedroom/one                                                      I heard singing from dusk
           bath condo awaited us. It                                                      until dawn actually was
           wasn’t fancy but it included                                                   a teenie, greenish-brown
           a kitchen stocked with pots,                                                    frog with warty legs and
           pans, dishes and silverware; a                                                 two round-balled toes. This
           countertop eating area; and a                                                  slimy but cute creature is
           small living room with a pull-                                                 called  a  Coqui,  after  the  re-
           out couch, which was a per-                                                     peating tune it sings that
           fect fit for 5-foot-2 me.                                                      sounds like “ko-kee, ko-kee.”
                                                                                          Our host told us that there’s
           The best part of the con-                                                      a saying, “Soy de aqui como el
           do was a little balcony with                                                   coqui” (I’m as Puerto Rican
           entrances off the living room and bedroom where we could   as a coqui), which illustrates that this little guy has been a
           watch the sun setting over the canal. Across from the ve-  cultural symbol of Puerto Rican history for centuries.
           randa, our view also included narrow, attached houses that
           looked like those vacation-poster homes advertising Curaçao:


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