“This curious world,” Thoreau wrote, “is more wonderful than convenient,” and his phrases got here to me as I amassed my climbing boots and helmet, laxatives and Dramamine, batteries, child wipes and protection cloth cabinet of neon orange. After just about a 12 months of bureaucratic tribulations, I used to be in spite of everything going to Mona. The two most well liked excursion firms by no means wrote me again, so I deliberate the go back and forth with Jaime Zamora, a contract information who were exploring the island for greater than 40 years. But it used to be higher this manner. I favored the purity of his hobby and his disdain for establishments. Instead of a web page or brochure, he directed me to a non-public Facebook workforce the place he maintained a meticulous archive of outdated maps, information clippings and private pictures of artifacts he discovered at the island: a creamy conch shell with a hollow drilled thru it, the decorative handles of a damaged urn.
In December, the celebrities abruptly aligned: Our lets in had been authorized, the seas calmed and we pulled a group in combination. I crossed Midtown with money in my coat to twine to a ship captain named Mikey. My buddies Ramón and Javier got here thru; so did my good friend Elisa. Our photographer, Chris, would convey his spouse, Andrea. Jaime recruited some outdated comrades: Chito, Manuel and Charlito, the prepare dinner. The ecologist Hector Quintero, referred to as Quique, signed on and advised we would possibly invite Tony Nieves, who had lately retired from 33 years as Mona Island’s director. Finally, Jaime texted to mention the moon can be complete for our discuss with: “In one week,” he promised, “your magic will begin to shine.”
The boats arrived on the pier in Joyuda, at the western shore of Puerto Rico, close to break of day. We had been relieved to find that the ocean used to be quiet: “plancha’o,” the captain mentioned, like an ironed sheet, best this gracious a few times a 12 months. He warned me to not get the incorrect impact: “Mona no es así.” Still, I may just really feel it once we crossed into the Mona Passage right kind, the place the waters of the Atlantic and the Caribbean come in combination in a cauldron of treacherous crosscurrents. The prow started to leap around the waves, in order that we needed to brace arduous in opposition to the railing to stay our tailbones from bruising. I spotted I had by no means been this as regards to the water for this lengthy — I all the time approached Puerto Rico from above — and I attempted to consider the primary individuals who got here this manner, rowing and not using a land in sight, looking the sky for congregations of clouds, the signal of inexperienced issues respiring.
Over the remaining a number of years, I’d been unlearning the usual narrative about precolonial historical past. In Puerto Rico, the Department of Education nonetheless promotes the drained narrative that the individuals who greeted Columbus had been easy and docile, with a rudimentary tradition. But Reniel Rodríguez, an archaeologist, instructed me that the new analysis may be very transparent: The migrants who left Central America and the Amazon basin to populate our archipelago had been nice mariners, just like the Polynesians, navigating through stars and currents and wind patterns. Over generations of migration, they shaped multiethnic polities and maintained huge business networks: jade from Guatemala, gold and copper alloys from Colombia, jaguar’s tooth from continental jungles. None of those fabrics arrived by chance. As we bumped alongside, I puzzled what it used to be love to convey, say, a passel of guinea pigs from Colombia to Puerto Rico within the backside of a large canoe.
