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!