Hows my little Puerto Rican Adventurer?

Well, our vacation has come and gone.

And oh boy was it great!

So at this point it's common knowledge that my surprise vacation for Laura didn't kick off quite as planned. But, the vacation that happened in real life was stellar. In fact, I think because of the rescheduling the trip actually ended up better than my original plan. How so? The additional day made a big difference as well as the commuting to Indianapolis (with free hotel parking) rather than Chicago.

So here is what we did:

Day One:
I spent this day in a state of travel induced stress. Will our flights be ok?

They were.

Will our rental work out fine?

It did, aside from the long wait to get to it.

Will we make it to Fajardo before last ferry?

We did.

Will our hotel have someone staffed so that we have a place to sleep?
They did.

The goal of our first day was to make it to the Isla De Vieques (pronounced vee-ih-keiss). We accomplished that goal so there isn't much more to say. Aside from the fact that I imagine myself better than it, I experienced the greatest culture shock I've felt since emerging from the underground subway in downtown madrid. I was a nervous wreck. I was thankful for a delicious dinner with a fruity and strong rum based cocktail.

Day Two:
Laura's Birthday. This day I had been thinking about since the beginning of my planning. This is 95% of the reason for me seeking Puerto Rico for our vacation. Laura has wanted to have a warm weather vacation since forever and while I do enjoy myself some warm weather it's not usually my first choice. So ultimately this vacation was for her.

She'll try and be modest and say I liked it too, which is true, but I'm sure you get it. So for her birthday I wanted to spend it on the beach because I was sure she had never spent her birthday lying on the beach.

If you do a little research on Vieques you'll find out that it's most well known for it's pristine and nearly empty beaches.

We spent some of the day on the largest beach Playa Grande walking around and getting attacked by wild horses.

We even walked over to the black sand beach.

We never did find out why the sand in this small spot is black when 100 yards away the sand was tan. Most importantly, there were no scary horses there.

After the sun came out we decided to hop into the wrangler and explore another beach. This one called La plata (I'm pretty sure AKA the Blue Beach). This according to Trip Advisor and strangers is the best beach on the island.

We agreed with everyone, until the next day. Regardless we had tons of fun swimming around taking pictures and checking out some cool coral sculptures.

That night we had a fantastic dinner at next course and we finished Laura's 30 day Birthday celebration. On the first day of 30 she got a beach vacation.

Day Three:
Like I said before, Vieques is all about beaches. There is a historic fort on the island which we tried to check out but found it was closed that day. So we decided to check out the other side of the island. Our first stop was at a 350ish year old Ceiba (pronounced Say-bah) tree. Honestly I didn't know what to expect from an old tree, but this thing was straight from fern gully.

It was HUGE! not necessarily tall but spread out in all sorts of wildly rooted directions.

Note Laura's tree pose

Ceiba tress are kind of cool in that they have spikes that grow on the top of their branches to discourage roosters while they are young. As I was gazing at the tree from the parking lot I was picking out my route to the top...until I saw those spikes.

After we gazed at the tree we headed over to Green Beach. Getting to this beach is half the fun. Most of the reading I found about Vieques was after you decide you're going, rent a car, THEN find a hotel. But not just any car, get something with a lot of clearance and 4-wheel drive, because the best beaches are off the paved roads. I picked out a wrangler for us, which rekindled my lost love affair for them.

After we navigated all the wild horses and dogs we were greeted with a fantastically unkept single track dirt road with a sign indicating the our destination was ahead. It gets it's name form the fact that the beach is really only 15 feet wide at any point, the forrest grows almost right to the sea, hence, green beach. This I thought was the most beautiful beach I've ever seen.

If I was to imagine what a deserted island looked like it would be pretty much this. As far as the beach-going experience went, it was awful. Coral and rocks were the makeup of the underwater floor for 85% of the area. The sand gnats (no-see-ums) pretty much ruined the experience anytime there wasn't a breeze, which was most of the time. Now if we had snorkel gear handy, this would have been fantastic and completely different.

I did just swim around taking pictures randomly underwater for awhile just to see if anything would come of it. Turns out there were all sorts of urchins embedded in the rocks. Good thing we didn't walk around in the water too much!

Since green beach was a bust we decided to head over to Playuela on the other side of the island. This we thought was the best beach we visited. There was a 20 minute hike after a short bumpy road and we were greeted with a bay surrounded by hills and vegetation. The water was amazingly clear, the sand was nice and soft, there were no rocks and the waves were big enough to body surf on but small enough to have fun bouncing in.

Body surfing selfie.

We floated in the water until the sun was nearly down and behind a big cloud.

After dinner and one of my favorite drinks of the trip (rum and amaretto frozen and blended) We hopped onto a BioBay Tour. A little background, the biolumenescent bay (mosquito bay) in Vieques is one of the brightest in the world. These little bacteria when agitated light up briefly as a defense and glow a soft blue.

It's really hard to describe and this is the best analogy I've got from the whale scene in Life of Pi. The light wasn't this bright nor did it leave a lingering trail but hopefully you can sort of understand what we were paddling around in. When we weren't looking down into the water we were also looking up into the stars. To me it seemed weird to see Orion in the tropical sky because I associate that constellation with winter and snow. But the amount of stars was incredible! Central IL gets lots of stars but this small island in the caribbean with no light pollution was as brilliant as the night sky in the Boundary Waters. If you're thinking about going to Puerto Rico, come for at least this majestic beauty.

Day Four:

Travel Day! Based on a good recommendation we decided to hit the only Rainforest in the US National Park system El Yunque. 

The clouds were closely hugging the top of the mountain so our views to the sea were limited at the top. 

We drove part of the way up the mountain and hiked to the upper tower.

We imagined the view to be spectacular.

A trip to the rain forest isn't complete without rain!

After an accidental tour of the suburbs of San Juan (buildings had space between them! And grass!) we made it to our next hotel in downtown San Juan, two blocks from the sea.

Day Five:

This day was one of my favorites. I scheduled a walking food tour in Old San Juan as a way to try some different places as well as to get a tour and history of the city. It worked out so great on both fronts!

This probably doubled the amount of coffee I've consumed in my life.

We had at different stops, mallorca with cheese and ham, and a mango tea, Puerto Rican Coffee, which I drank all of, I still think coffee tastes like dirt, this coffee tasted like a cigar though.

 Fried plantain with a fantastic shrimp ceviche. A Pina coloada from one of the two bars that claim it's origin.

Creole shrimp mofongo that we smashed ourselves with red beans and rice. My favorite stop, hot chocolate and cheddar cheese, with a chocolate truffle from Cortez, a large Puerto Rican chocolatier (at one point they made chocolate for Hershey's and Nestle).

Between eating we would walk from place to place learning about the history of San Juan, as well as Puerto Rico as a whole.

After the tour we did some shopping at some places we toured as well as some that were pointed out along the tour. I picked up two bottles of Puerto Rican rum that can't be bought at home. (they are good!). After dropping off our loot at the car we headed over to Castillo San Cristobal. This is an old spanish fort that is part of el morro San cristobal's main duty was to protect San Juan from land based attacks.

A funny story, when we arrived we noticed the PR license plates have this little tower on them, so on our walking tour we stopped by one and I tried my best to take a picture of it despite the weird angle thinking it was the only one. Turns out there are over a hundred along el morro and I got plenty of photos of them. 

After that we had a semi progressive dinner and stopped at a place that had some marvelous ceviche and at another place for really good sangria and tapas for the rest of our dinner.

Day Six:

This day we decided to play by ear as it came closer. We wanted to have a day available to do whatever we felt like whether it was from recommendations or from experience. After spending a day in Old San Juan we realized that we could easily spend another there, so we did!

We walked all over poking our heads in and out of different shops and then checked out Fort San Felipe Del Morro. This was the main defense fort of el morro and it was HUGE! Apparently Spain had a rather large vested interest in the caribbean and in the 1700s decided that it needed to take defenses seriously.

For some reason in 1898 America came sailing down and took Puerto Rico from Spain and has held it ever since then.

I spent a lot of time chasing tiny lizards all week, this guy was really nice and hung out for ages.

  

Day Seven:

Beach Day! 

We hit Ocean park beach for most of the day, we swam, jumped in some really big waves, got knocked around by them, watched some surfers, watched kite boarders, walked, people watched, relaxed, and got a solid sun burn.

That giant wave back there crashed into us
and smashed our heads together right after this photo was taken 

That night we headed to Oceano for dinner and had some good food, good drinks, and reflected on our fantastic week of vacationing.

I ended up with over 900 photos from the trip. You might have noticed some water shots, I got myself a new camera for the trip, I've had my eye on an underwater camera for ages and their photo quality has finally caught up to some of the higher end P&S cameras. Altogether I'm pretty pleased with it, Olympus TG-2.

So Puerto Rico is the shit, I wanted to brush up on my spanish after leaving only because everyone we encountered seemed to know both English and Spanish, that left me wanting to know it that well too. I was pleasantly surprised with how much came back to me as the trip progressed though. This was also one of the few vacations I've been on that I wasn't ready to come home at the end of. We could have easily spent another day in San Juan and there was tons more on and around the Island to explore. 

If you're ever thinking of trying to get out of the country without actually leaving it (no passport necessary!) consider PR a fantastic option. Having spent over 400 years under Spanish rule along with it's own climate and cultural influences over the years it truly seems like an out of country experience. Better yet, if you google something along the lines of cheapest flights to cool places PR will top many lists. Laura and I got there for under $600 total. Maybe someday I'll laugh at that number.

Happy Birthday Laura!

Hows my little vacation delay?

I've got a fun story for you. It's a tale of love, loss, and desire.

Last November I booked a flight for a secret vacation for Laura and I. I didn't tell her anything until the day of. In fact I told her with only about 12 hours to prepare. More on that later though.

The morning of, we'll call it R-Day, I got a phone call from a mysterious phone number, naturally I ignored it. I happened to be sitting at my computer and saw an E-mail from Delta, Your flight from ATL - SJU has been canceled, You can rebook this online or call to make the change. So I call and get on the waiting list. This is great because I don't have to listen to hold music for 4 hours nor do I have to call every 3 minutes hoping I'll get through. I was expecting my callback at around 11.

At 1-ish I got my call. Yay! I tell my agent, Hey I Iive between my original booking (chicago) and (Indianapolis) If you can find a flight to San Juan from either spot I'll just be tickled pink. My helpful agent pulls through and finds me a nearly absurd flight, IND-BOS-JFK-SJU Indianapolis to Boston to John F Kennedy to San Juan, about 13 hours of flying and waiting.

So after the R-Day festivities completed I told Laura, 'well, actually we aren't leaving quite yet, we got delayed a day.' It sucked because I had booked a super cool walking food tour during our now (14 hours of) flying day. But oh well, I eventually got over it. Until later that night when I was making hotel adjustments.

Oh shit! We are going to come home to a different airport (Midway in Chicago) than the one we took off from (Indianapolis)! It's just a three hour drive to our car in Indy, no problem. But honestly the blame is shared here, I should have mentioned this to my friendly agent and she should have noticed I wasn't coming home to the same place, granted this situation isn't uncommon, but it should have been at least addressed.

I call again, this time at about 8pm, the fancy message thing says wait for only more than 5 hours. So we slept with the phone in our room on loudest just in case someone from India would wake us up I would only have to move a few feet.

Alas, no call.

I went to work today, planning on working a half-day and driving to indy. Today is a bonus day for me so I do something aside from my usual and work on painting some new walls in the loft area above the tasting room. Laura is paranoid and sending me worry texts every hour and I've still got my phone on loudest so Chewbacca is roaring all over the place.

So this part I'm painting required a bit of effort, I climbed out on a couple of big beams that (also hold the floor up) stretch beyond the floor to paint the wall behind it, I'm 15ish feet up. And of course at 12:25, while carefully painting a wall with no ground below me I finally got the call I had been waiting for! JOY!

Hello Delta person!
Oh hey Tony.
I'm not landing in the city I'm taking off from, can we change this?
Sounds like you're special, and I can't help you with you, let me just put you on hold and I'll transfer you to the department that can.
Sure! (oh shit! I've been "on hold" since 8 last night! NOOOOOOOOOO)

So I put my phone on speaker and finished painting my wall in the air. I then finished another little wall and thought OK I've been on hold for 20 minutes, I REALLY have to pee. I'm going to go.

I grab my phone that is still on speaker and head for the head.

I pull it out and pee for no more than one half of a second. (Remember, I really had to go so it's not a trickle) and someone breaks into the hold music and says Hello?

AAH! SHIT! I pinch it off poorly, tuck myself into my trousers, pee a little more, some on my hands, pull my phone out and shout HELLO! HELLO! I'M HERE!

No flushing, a quick rinse and a dash to a place with reception.

Hello Delta Person! I've got this issue, here is my confirmation number that I've got memorized now.
Oh Hey Tony, I'm looking at your reservation, why aren't you landing where you're taking off?
That's why I'm calling actually.
Oh well you'll be sad to hear me mumble under my breath that your Boston to JFK flight has been canceled then.
Let me reschedule you looks like I can find you a direct flight on the 15th from *CLICK*

...

[Checks Phone]
Call Disconnected.

(insert heartbreak emoticon here)

Waits a minute, staring at phone, screen dims, does not light back up...

Finishes peeing, Washes hands, leaves work for the day.
Gets home, changes underwear.

Knowing full well I've got another 8+ hours of hold time ahead of me I call Delta back quickly (at 12:30) and get back on "The List". Laura calls this time as well to be extra safe. So I'm now a mixture of sad, depressed, stressed, and angry. As most of you know these are not typical emotions from me so you might be finally understanding what it takes to get me down.

(SURPRISE LAURA! A VACATION TOMORROW! to...vacation?)

But I got a bright idea, I know gate agents at airports can change flights, who doesn't know this, I mean everyone has seen Home Alone, Kevin's Mom makes it back to Chicago, from Paris like two weeks early (on Christmas!). Our nearest Delta friendly airport is in Bloomington, IL a bit over an hour from our house. Weighing the time, we decide if we drive there and back and still need to end up in Indy, it's possible, and we probably won't hear back from Delta by then. They also had flights going out today so we grabbed our bags (just in case) and headed to the airport.

After talking to Scott who is sickeningly intimate with the Delta customer service system "You're Screwed" we got some good tips and stayed the course. The reason? What if we didn't hear back from Delta by the time our 6am flight occurred and we no showed that flight? would we still get rescheduled? Would be we be out our money? Who knows.

So we walked into the airport expecting a zoo, and there is almost no one around! We stroll up to the counter and quickly get handed to a veteran. I've learned from doing Hotel time and experiencing life that smiles, kindness, a joke, and a perception of happiness along with mutual respect gets you places a lot quicker than expressing the frustration that is actually just simmering below the surface. After a few possible flight and connection ideas (all along the east coast) are shot down we get sat down. "Figure out what you want and come back after I've helped these people who need to leave today."

So we took a time out, flicked through the Delta app, discussed life, watched some people, and came up with a solution. Scott was right, rebooking on Saturday was really the only option...is a two day wait the magic number? Are MSP and ORD really the only airports that fly direct to San Juan outside of the east coast? So after some more waiting, some pleasant conversation and stories, we finally got my surprise vacation for Laura rebooked on Saturday...four days after the original reservation.

We then drove home, made some dinner, I rebooked nearly our entire vacation, and started writing this story. At 9:11 pm I got my callback. I was happy to ignore it and get someone else bumped up in line a few minutes quicker.

The best part of todays effort was this:

Everyone, please cross your fingers for us. We need all the luck we can get at this point.

Hows my little secret vacation?

Well folks let me let you in on a little secret...Laura and I are leaving for vacation tomorrow (Feb. 12). TO PUERTO RICO!

HOLY SHIT.

I feel better. I mean, yeah, I've been telling a few people here and there but mostly I've been keeping this trip a secret, from everyone including Laura. In fact I've flat out lied to a bunch of people. Why? Well it's Laura's 30th birthday on the 16th and I wanted to give her a memorable birthday...and the fewer people who know the easier it is to keep a secret. Plus I have this thing where I can hold a grudge(I can't help it!), this would be one of those things I wouldn't forget quickly.

So let me tell you what it's like planning a vacation in secret.
It's hard, really hard. Especially for someone who isn't used to dancing around the truth.

First off there is all this sneaking around and spending money, more money that usual. We do a pretty good job communicating our expenses too. But for reasons similar (though not on such a grand scale) to this, we both manage our own credit cards so that we can buy some things under the radar for surprises. The credit card I manage, we use for everything we possibly can so when I'm buying plane tickets over the holiday shopping season, sneaking in an extra $500 gets a little easier.

But there is more to consider than money, as if that wasn't enough of a challenge. Think about your daily life with a roommate who does everything with you. Like groceries, if you're into buying more fresh food than preserved food, you have to time an out of town trip nearly perfectly with a trip to the grocery store and include possible leftovers. This has to be casual, so as to not arise suspicion.

Another thing to think about is conversation, like oh, well I'll take care of that when we get back. No you must say lets work on that (the day after we leave) I don't feel like it tonight.

What else? Everything I do digitally is saved digitally, for example with Chrome my recent searches pop up after typing only a few letters into the search bar. Enter incognito mode (cmd+shift+n) and boom, no more saved searches. What complicates things, my email notifier on my desktop, Priceline says, HEY! Your hotel room is confirmed! in a big ol pop up after my computer wakes from sleep. So I have to be diligent with archiving E-mails on mobile before they show up at home. Oh don't forget this bonehead mistake, I left my car rental page OPEN after I came home for lunch to do some research. Not just open, but the only open tab in incognito mode with no other browser windows in sight. What a rookie. Needless to say I raced home from work that day to make sure I was the first one to wake the computer luckily I remembered. This as far as I know has been my closest call and I was less than one week out. Don't forget those things pop up on the cell from time to time too, get that shit on silent, turn off notifications and cross your fingers she doesn't look at my gmail app over my shoulder.

Another hangup is to make sure you actually CAN go on vacation. This is a loaded statement, but if you can't get the time off work for whatever reason, you probably shouldn't go. Fortunately for me I have a well placed friend and I was able to procure the e-mail address of Laura's boss. (Thanks Michelle!) She was super helpful and her HR background I imagine helped her with keeping a secret without hinting that anything was amiss.

So what about all that planning? That's the easy part actually. Trip advisor, and a few recommendations I've archived in my brain planned the trip for us. Also we have this weird thing where I can spend hours on my computer and Laura only checks in to say hi, this is not out of the ordinary. Bonus, I leave about 45 minutes after Laura every morning for work. The best part is I like to just know what there is to do, and shoot from the hip on vacations. Sometimes it's nice to know what sounds great and get some local advice on timing, or alternatives. It's worked in the past and I have no doubt it will work this time.

Bonus, secretly buying plane tickets for a secret vacation that your wife's boss just OKed while your wife is sitting less than 10 feet from you is quite a thrill.

How to cover up all this sneaking around? More on this topic in a later post but I made a fantastic 30 days to 30 countdown where my goal was to create a fantastic event where every day Laura got a card that sometimes contained a hint about a present (from me or someone else) or just a something very nice for me to do for her. This has worked in my favor because when I give her two plane tickets to a caribbean destination a few days before her birthday, she won't think something is up until she reads the date on the ticket, if she even gets to that part on her own.

Unconfirmed as of this writing but I think there may be some anticipation for something building. Fortunately for me I've been using a few well timed questions and discussions I'm convinced she thinks there will be something on her birthday, she just doesn't know how big of a what. Right now the plan is to hang out on a beach all day. That sounds pretty great.

So there you have it, planning a secret vacation is hard. But if you keep in mind all of these things and probably a million others, you too can pull it off.

Oh, if you're going to write a whole blog post about it, don't forget to either save it and post after you let her know, or schedule it in the future.

Hows my little wine conference?

Last week I had the pleasure to attend my third Illinois Wine conference. I've typically blown these off on my blog, but this time around I thought, hey I bet someone want's to know what a conference about wine and grapes is all about. So I brought my little camera and did some documenting.

I won't go into too many details so enjoy the photos!

Day #1

Where I thought I was going to sleep for three nights.

But I got a real bed instead...whew!

This is my learning space.

After our first speaker we did some wine troubleshooting. Our table brought mostly good wine with few troubles.

Cheeky vine humor. Our team name for trivia & pizza night.

Wine Sample.

Round 4 Trivia answers.

We came in second place! Joe and I typically do pretty poorly.

Day #2

Each day had a similar setup. Lots of glasses waiting to be filled!

The winemaker from Wollershiem Winery

This is for learning!

We talk about exciting things like 2,4,6-Trichloroansiole AKA TCA or Cork taint.

More learning!

There is also a festival where something like 15 wineries were sampling and selling their wares.

At the festival, It got quite a bit busier and I had to work instead of photograph.

After party!

 Day #3

"Penalties for breaking state wildlife laws"

We got to taste some Frontenac Blanc this at this one. It makes good wine!

I got fancy for the banquet.

That's my co-worker Chelsia getting social before dinner.

The cool thing is there is always time for drinking good wine. You know, for learning.

One empty glass per course, 6 + 2 I didn't finish while being social.

Awards are given, like Winemaker of the year.

Hats are stolen by goofy fellas.

Chelsia gets conned into drinking more.

After 6 courses of wine I bid on other people's wine in an auction.

It's hard for everyone to finish all the wine during dinner, so we tried to help afterward.

These guys were doing their part too.

We took what was left to someone's room later.

We called it a night I'm getting old, and thought the time was significant.

At 5:30am the fire alarm went off on the top two floors and having been asleep for only 3 hours and probably still a bit drunk I didn't know what the hell was going on aside from the LOUD NOISE. I'm happy it wasn't a real fire because I was not clearly thinking one bit. At least we had enough sense to take the stairs.

Day #4

So long Springfield! It was fun!