I headed out for Puerto Rico early on August 4, 2006, Erica (my sister) was kind enough to give me a ride to Providence airport. After arriving about an hour early for my 6:50am flight, I wandered around the nearly empty TF Greene airport for a while, eventually they started boarding.
My flight from RI to Fort Lauderdale was rather uneventful with the exception of being stuck next to this 6'7" giant who wouldn't stop talking... not only did he take up half my seat, but I couldn't get any sleep due to his nearly nonstop rambling about anything and everything. He even had the nerve to give me his business card...
I had an hour layover in Fort Lauderdale, I grabbed a quick lunch/breakfast at Nathan's hot dog stand and boarded my flight to San Juan, Puerto Rico.
I had expected the flight over the ocean to be a bit boring, as it turned out there are a lot of islands between Florida and Puerto Rico which provided me with non-stop things to look at. Here is a picture I took looking out the window of the airplane:
;)
Upon arrival in San Juan, I found my way out of the airport and attempted to find the car rental place which was supposedly in the terminal. A bit of looking, and I proceeded to ask someone where the car rentals were. I probably picked the only person in the entire airport that didn't know English, as I was met with blank stares upon asking my question. I finally figured out that you had to take a shuttle to the car rentals. I found the thrifty van and boarded.
A bit later I arrived at the thrifty rental place, which was sandwiched in between a rickety old shack and a McDonalds. I upgraded my car from a Toyota Echo to a Jeep Liberty, this proved to be a very very good decision... more on that later.
I found my way to the Comfort Inn in downtown San Juan, and checked into my hotel... The hotel was in the perfect location, a block from the beach, and walking distance of Old Town San Juan. Here is the hotel:
;)
I headed up to the place Susan is working, El Verde Field station, which was on Rt 186, east of San Juan. I decided to take the scenic route 187, which runs along the north coast of Puerto Rico. This was a really nice road, which winded its way along the coast, I even turned off at a point and drive pretty much right onto the beach to take a few photos. Picking up Susan was the next stop, up at the Field Station which was in the Caribbean National Forest..
;)
After picking up Susan, and taking a quick tour of her living facilities, which were quite nice for being so far up in the rainforest, we drove to some scenic areas up on Rt 191, on the National Forest...
We stopped at a few random waterfalls and climbed a nice tower to get some good views of the ocean from the mountains. They have some really big leaves down there-- it's like a poor man's umbrella:
;)
We then drove down to the beach and had a nice dinner from a roadside stand. It was quite relaxing just walking around the beach barefoot... the water was awesomely warm... There were stray dogs everywhere, just looking for someone to play with. Here's a pic of me, Susan and one of the dogs:
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After it got dark we drove to a small ice cream store for some refreshing ice cream, then drove back to San Juan for the night as I was incredibly tired from the long day of travel.
Saturday (august 5, 2006) morning we woke up and had a nice continental breakfast at the hotel, where for some strange reason the waffle maker decided to completely stick and grab my waffle, even though I buttered it... It was a bit awkward helping the lady get all the stuck waffle off...
We drove west towards Arecibo, stopping at a little known spot for some awesome cliff views... We parked in someone's front yard, which was down a driveway that I never would have known about or even thought about turning into... I guess it pays to know a local :)
We walked out onto the volcanic cliff and saw some amazing views. Susan went cave climbing, and was scared by a few bats, I walked around and took some pictures of the scenery. Unfortunately it started pouring and I put my camera back in the car before the really good sights... Oh well I’ll have to go back. Here is a pic of what it looked like, although it does the area absolutely no justice:
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And me and Susan on the cliffs:
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After getting completely soaked by downpours we drove southwest to the Arecibo Observatory... This radio telescope was completed in 1963, and is amazingly huge to look at... We took a walk around the facility, and watched a video in Spanish about the dish. I'm glad we made the drive up there, it was one of the more amazing things I’ve seen.
The dish:
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Me and Susan Chilling in front of it:
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We then drove towards the Rio Camuy Cave complex. They have this weird system where you apparently get a "ticket" at the drive-in gate, but you still have to buy your "ticket" at the ticket booth... this leads to mass confusion and nobody really knowing what to do... it doesn't help when they stop running tours and don't tell anyone :)
After we figured out that we had quite some time to wait, we drove out and got some lunch at a road side stand. We split a place of some rice and chicken, which was more than enough food. I love the way they charge you for food in Puerto Rico, When we asked him how much we owed him, he took a look down at the plate of food and was like, "ehh... $4.50" -- they have no set prices, they just charge whatever they want. 4.50 for a 2 person meal, not too shabby... This nice guy was working, and he gave us part of an avocado that he had grown himself to try, it was delicious.
Midway though our meal it started absolutely pouring. Every time we thought it couldn't rain any harder, the noise from the tin roofed building got louder with the buckets of water that were falling out of the sky. After it let up we went back to the caves and eventually got on our tour.
They have these cool trams that you take down a long steep hill to the caverns, I was nervous about how the crazy guy was driving it, and Susan kept on pointing out all these plants that cause really bad reactions when they touch your skin as they brushed just inches from me...
Here is a picture of the tram ride down:
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We made it safely to the bottom of the hill, and walked into the caves. I took a picture looking out of the caves at one of the mouths, as well as looking into the cavern. Here are those pics:
Looking out of the cave:
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Looking into the cave:
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We then drove down some random roads, and were headed towards the south coast. We ended up taking Rt 128 for almost its full length, with a few random detours. 128 in itself was a scenic road, but I always have this urge to "get off the beaten path" -- I saw a small side road, unfortunately I had driven past the entrance. I reversed on the road and took the side road. This road descended through a banana farm, and some beautiful countryside. Side note: bananas grow upward, see pic:
;)
This road led down to a river. This is where my rental of the SUV came in really handy as we cruised right across the river (it ended up being a lot smoother than expected) and continued on our way. Here is a shot of the road in the river:
;)
After a bit more driving, we saw this orange tree, and for some reason we decided we wanted one. Now we hadn't seen another car in at least half an hour, so I figured I was safe.. I stopped the car and hopped up on the roof of the jeep (only way I could reach the tree)... just as I’m grabbing the orange, a car is coming at us head on. I hop down and get into the car, hoping they didn't stop. Luckily they did not :) Here is a picture of me being a fruit thief:
;)
We drove around in a bit of a loop, going up some very steep roads. We ended up ant a large, terraced banana plantation. I had to stop and take a few pics, so we both got out. A few minutes after our arrival this crazy guy in an old beater car shows up and starts talking to me about the sights and stuff, after he left these guys and gals were riding horses _really_ fast up and down the wet road, to the point that I was worried for the horses.. here is a pic of the crazy guy riding:
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and a pic of the terraced banana plantation:
;)
A picture of the rental car -- it got a bit more muddy than is shown in this pic:
;)
We drove back down in a loop towards the place where we had crossed the river, unfortunately I don't think the "road" we drove down was on the map... it led to some incredible sights that I’m sure your average tourist does not see:
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We continued south on 128 for what seemed like forever, driving 40 km on a road where you can't go faster than 15-20mph due to the turns is very tedious... Here is a nice shot of what a lot of this road looked like, this is the "flamboyant" tree, as Susan put it, she's not sure if this is the right translation, but I think it fits the tree pretty well:
;)
We continued down 128 until we hit the main highway on the south coast (rt 2), stopping to see the incredible sights along the way:
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We had a quick dinner in a town called Yauco, in the southwestern part of the island, then drove to La Parguera, which is known for it's bio-luminescent bay. By this time it was 9:30pm, and we paid $5 and took a short boat ride out to the bio-bay. A man from the tour company jumped in the water and it all started to glow around him. This is apparently a defense mechanism in the micro-organisms in the water, but looks incredible. Next time I want to go to Vieques Island, off the east coast of Puerto Rico, and go to what Susan said is an even cooler bay, where you can swim in the water yourself..
After A long 2+ hour drive back to San Juan, We both passed out.
Sunday (August 6, 2006) we spent walking up to Old San Juan, and stopping at some touristy locations along the way. I apparently got really dehydrated, and was dizzy for a bit of the walk... Stopping at some air conditioning and drinking lots of water barely helped. The only thing that did the trick was finding a machine that sold powerade... that stuff works wonders! Here are a few sights from the walk over to old San Juan:
Looking west on the coast near our hotel:
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A really nice beach we found:
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Looking west on the coast near Old San Juan:
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Susan in front of the coastline:
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A city street in old San Juan:
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Me doing impressions of this random statue:
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We took a $1 round trip ferry over to the bacardi factory, then got in some random dude's van to get to the factory from the ferry drop-off point. Kind of sketchy, and they failed to tell us that they wanted $3 for each of us-- oh well.
We waited for Susan's friends at the bacardi factory while sipping on a few free rum drinks. The tour was rather unimpressive, they didn't even show us the distillation facilities, or explain the process very well. After the tour, all of us (including Susan’s friends) piled into Andrew's car and went back to the ferry.. We were stuck in there so tight that the cop on the way out of the factory got a good laugh at us as we were leaving. We all took the ferry back to old san Juan, Susan's friends went off in search of some ice cream, while Susan and I headed to a local brewery for some delicious beer and an appetizer dinner...
;)
We walked back to the hotel and put our bathing suits on for a sunset swim at the beach. After a probably half an hour to 45 minutes of riding waves and jumping over the surf, we called it a night and went back to the hotel.
On the walk back we saw some more lizards (we'd been seeing them the whole trip, this was the only time i got a good pic):
;)
Monday Morning we woke up early and headed out towards El Verde Field station (Susan’s workplace), we toured that area a bit before I had to drop her off so I could catch my flight home. We saw some interesting sights up on her road, including, some more waterfalls, a number of abandoned cars, some great views, and a cockfighting arena.
We stopped to transfer my pictures to a computer at the field station so Susan could have a copy of them. I then made my way back out of the rainforest and back to the city to drop the car off and head home.
The flight home was really uneventful until I got close to Providence, where I was met with some amazing thunderstorms right outside my window. Check out the lighting in this cloud:
;)
Erica and Arno picked me up at the airport, and I proceeded to pass out once I got home. What an awesome long weekend-- definitely the most fun I’ve had in a while.
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