Turista was to be an animated slideshow/documentary about my trip to Puerto Rico in 2006. I had too many problems getting the sound set-up correctly and eventually I decided to scrap it until further notice. The movie consisted of segments comprised of (sometimes animated) photography, illustrations and vector animations. It was to be presented in Flash format and the estimated running time should have been around twenty minutes.

Other than the absent narration, these are completed segments of the movie. It was to start off with a vector-animated intro of me showing a slide show to my friends about my 2006 vacation in Puerto Rico. My friends were tied up, Clockwork Orange style and would have to sit through everything. But the slide show would soon become animated, the pictures would come alive and the whole thing would be sprinkled with animated segments.

The first scene shown after the intro involves my visit to the Taino Ceremonial Park in Utuado. Tainos were the Arawak natives who make up, on average, 1/3 of the blood of Puerto Ricans (the other two thirds are made up of the blood of African slaves and Spanish conquistadors). The park is where they would settle differences with sport, as they were a particularly peaceful people.

It's followed by my visit to El Yunque, a beautiful mountain in Puerto Rico home to many weird stories about alien abductions, secret American Military experiments (sometimes true) and... yes, el Chupacabras. The alien, soldier and chupacabras were rendered with vectors. That same day I visited a restaurant that can only be reached by boat and through the mountains. The food was delicious!

The last scene deals with the assassination of Filiberto Ojeda Rios in 2005. It means to show American influence and how actions taking place overseas by elements of the United States government end up marring the overall image of the United States people. It was supposed to precede the last part of the movie, which dealt with Puerto Rican politics. Everything in the shot was made with vectors, except for a cloud JPEG I used in the 1 second switch between New York City and Puerto Rico.

I wish I could have finished it - many of my favorite pictures never made it in. I had scenes involving San Juan and its old architecture, the hundreds of stray cats in that city living by the sea, art in Puerto Rico, the shutdown of the school system and the public outcry that followed, a chapter about homeless and mentally ill people in Puerto Rico, a scene in which a public transportation bus I was in went through a flood and had a little river running down the isle, and a chapter about my favorite place in the world, the beach houses of Jobos, Isabela.

Maybe someday...