This is from the Christmas season, 2002. We wanted someplace exotic that we wouldn’t need to have passports and visas for. So for Americans that’s Hawai’i and Peurto Rico (I assume Guam too, but that was too far). Since it was Christmas time, San Juan International Airport plays some of the cheesiest holiday music on earth. Los Angeles International is runner-up.
Nullius in Verba 
Looks like a fantastic place for a holiday – wonderfully lush. I particularly liked 1010020 for the way the light hits the leaves.
To a Briton it sounds odd to not have a passport as, despite the beauty and diversity of our own landscapes, the climate often inspires us to leave the country! I guess the vastness of the USA means you don’t have to leave ‘home’ to find the weather you’re after.
K
Puerto Rico is a US territory (rather like Wales I should think). No passport necessary. No currency exchange. Everyone speaks Spanish, so it feels quite exotic. We went at Christmas time so it was cold in the higher latitudes; but in PR it was the high 70’s and low 80’s (F) which would be about 24-30 C.
Mary and I are in a minority of Americans that even have passports. Until recently we Americans didn’t need a passport to travel into Canada or Mexico.
30 degrees at Christmas sounds good to me! On a family holiday to the US back in the 1970s my Dad decided to take us on a day trip out of Texas into Mexico and we had trouble getting back in. Despite being holders of beautiful blue British passports containing the words ‘Her Brittanic Majesty … requests and requires…allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hinderance…’ etc, etc, the folk at Texan border control took some convincing that my brother in his souvenir sombrero was not a little Mexican boy trying to smuggle himself in.
I’ve never had that kind of trouble in Wales…
K
Ah yes, we Americanos de Norte have had much the same problem returning from Mexico. Expecting literacy from some of our US border guards is… well, let’s just say that they don’t read Joyce or Keats. No doubt Brittanic Majesty threw them off.
Do you really need passports to go to Wales? I thought that was only in Jasper Fforde novels.
Sorry, Norm; my flippancy has misled you. Brits don’t need passports to get in and out of Wales. Yet. However if you drive in on the motorway from London, you will have to pay to cross the toll bridge. There’s no charge to get out again, which makes me suspect the English are missing a trick.
K