Coquí Radar: Day on the beach

As of today, I've stayed in Puerto Rico for three months. And only yesterday I burned my back for the first time! Like most Finnish people, my skin is almost as white as milk so I'm surprised it took three months to burn properly. But yesterday was also the first time (ever!) when I've stayed on a beach for 6-7 hours straight, so I guess I deserved that...

The beach was pretty amazing; it was in Cabo Rojo, in Southwestern part of the island. I went there with the summer students, their coordinator, and another observatory employee, Lucy, with her friends/family. Lucy has there a cabin where we stayed at. The beach is available only for people with jeeps or rovers that can handle the rockiest "road" I've ever seen; a hilly, winding, unpaved path that's bulldozed by some locals every once in a while. With a regular car you're guaranteed to get stuck. Nevertheless, if you don't get there by 11 am on vacation days, finding a spot can be challenging. The beach is a long, white sand dream beach with clear turquoise water and trees to provide shade. Families take food, barbecues, coolers full of ice and refreshments, music, and some people even take jet skis, kayaks and boats. They put chairs and sun shades into the water and sit there the whole day.

Before 10 am the beach is perfectly tranquil...

... while by 2 pm it's a full beach party!

There were tiny crabs inside sea shells crawling in the sand

So some of us went there to reserve a spot as early as 9:30am. We went swimming, barbecued hot dogs and relaxed. In the afternoon a friend of Lucy brought there a motorboat (in the middle picture above) and we got to a few-mile-long boat ride to Boquerón and back. The boat jumped through the waves like a galloping horse. A moment like that, feeling the warmth of the sun, cooling splashes of sea water, and the excitement of the speeding boat gave me the feeling of how lucky one must be to be able to do things like that and makes, at least me, really grateful for that.

On Thursday 30th of June, the Asteroid Day was celebrated to spread awareness of the asteroid research done to, for example, prevent asteroids impacting the Earth and find out how the Solar System was formed. I was asked to give a live stream interview about asteroid research we do at the Arecibo Observatory as one part of a series of interviews with some of the other asteroid researchers around the world (me mainly because I was the only member of the planetary radar group on the island on that day). However, the organizers encountered unexpected technical issues only a while before my interview was due so it had to be cancelled. They tried to reschedule it for the next morning but with too short a notice for us.

Instead, a TV reporter (completely separate from the Asteroid Day) came around on Friday noon to interview some scientists of the observatory about how we compare to the new Chinese telescope FAST, the construction of which was finished yesterday. I and Robert talked to the TV group, but later on the same day found out that they're actually tightly affiliated with Chinese and that the interview would be aired in China as well as the USA. Unfortunately, NASA employees are not allowed to discuss science with the Chinese, so when Ed turned up later that day, after a short discussion we decided to withdraw the interview before it would be aired. Seems like it's not the time for my TV nor Internet stardom yet...

The mid-summer weekend (this year 24th-26th of June) is traditionally celebrated in Finland with saunas, bonfires, sausage, summer cottages, mosquitoes, and swimming in freezing lakes or the Baltic Sea, just because it's definitely a sign of weakness if you haven't "lost the winter coat" by mid-summer ("losing the winter coat" means swimming for the first time after the last winter). And of course booze. After the mid-summer the news always report how many people drowned because they went swimming drunk.

This year I of course missed most of that, as the only saunas around are cars that have been standing in the sun without the A/C on, and the sea water's always warm. A bonfire probably wouldn't have been a good idea either. Many houses are more or less like summer cottages, though, and there sure is a lot of mosquitoes. As for the booze, we (Linda, I & Ben, one of the summer students) visited the largest rum distillery in the world: the Bacardí factory. We took the mixology tour, which takes you through the factory with a guide and finishes with a mixology class where you can learn to make Cuba libre, Daiquiri, and Mojito. It was relatively expensive (~$50) but the price includes four alcoholic drinks and the entertaining guided tour so we left happy.