OPEN Friday: May 22, 2026 [34:36-39:39]

Yes, this is empatillas. And in empatillas, there were quite a few stores that were painted like this. And just sometimes you have an image that captures you as you're driving along. And I just feel like the gentleman in the doorway there is just, this is what town is like. This is what, you know, Pueblo is like. You go to the store, you socialize there, you, this is where family is. This is where your connections are. And that was one of the reasons why we chose the placitas. Just because out of, I mean, this is what mostly survived Hurricane Maria. The placitas were not, many of them were not decimated. This is, you still have structures standing in the placitas. And they also serve almost like a center. What's the next image? Yeah, like a central location of identifying a village. But one of the reasons that we, that we also chose the placita was because it was the hub of social, it was the hub of religious, it was the hub of courting friendships, baptisms, marriages, you're shopping. You know, even if you were in El Campo and you, you formed your own food, you may have come to town to sell it. You know, so just for, for many reasons. And so, and then there's the, the greenery, right? This beautiful, beautiful ancient tree. I'm a tree lover. And then the fact that the horses, they run free in Puerto Rico. Right, right. We would always joke like, who's, who's horse is that? You know, but, but the hope for us is that these, these images will, will allow people to engage in dialogue so that you can show, you know, you open up the picture and I will eat that can talk about, you know, promenading after, after church on Sunday or going to market or whatever, but it allows people to engage in their own personal, familial story. And there are larger Puerto Rican stories, but, but what about me and my family? Right. And, and so, do we have any more images? That's just what I'm just saying. See about imbeicates. What is this? See about tree imbeicates. Yeah, oh my gosh, that tree looks like a tree. I want to just sleep on for a day. 400 years old. 400 years old. 400 years old. 300, 300 years old. And so, now we're looking at, this is the sugar, but what's remaining of the sugar cane factories? Yes, I thought the workers would live. So on site, there were housing for the workers and this is in Yabokawa. And I also love that you kind of captured a storm on its way in, which is another thing that is quite mesmerizing is seeing the storms arrive. I mean, you know, nobody really wants to, whether a storm by, it could be raining on one side of the street or not the other. One thing that was interesting was that, no matter what the weather did for us, the times that we had planned for that day, you had to go through it. And so, the last thing we have is the map, which we also have here in studio, but let's talk about how you were able to accomplish all of this in 22 days. So it was 22 days over about a year and a half to two years. So we went back at any given time, we were both still working at the time. And once we decided that this is what we were going to do, because originally it was just going to be a set of photographs for our kids, but then we were like, well, why don't we visit every town? And so that's how it kind of started. So we took out a map. Okay, so we're sure in the image, but we want to show the actual map that we have here in studio. And you put stars on everything. We just sort of located every town first, and then said, well, what can we do in a day? And so those became the loops that are shown in the book. The loop is just the group of towns that we did in a particular day. So you might have, like from here, you might have gone up and done here around and back down. Right. And so the book is divided in loops. So it's categorized based on towns and placitas that are close in proximity. So we've suggested if you want to visit around Bonse, well, maybe you should visit these places. Or you could do however you want, but our experiences shown that you don't want to keep driving back to Vihau San Juan every night. So do this instead. So stop in San Juan Man and then go off from there. So that's how our book is divided. There are almost 600 pages to this little island, which is very big. Right. We have thousands of images of Puerto Rico in this one book. And you also have a space where people can write their own experience, right? We felt it was important to put a page after each town so that if you have your own family memories, if you have some people suggested putting a photograph there, we do have people who we've encountered. One gentleman is using the book now with his granddaughter. So they're planning a trip every summer. He said, I've talked her into going with me but under the pretense about pay for this. But so now he has a yearly trip with his granddaughter,