Puerto Rico - Day 6

Day six I went to Ponce which is on the south side of Puerto Rico. The first stop was the history museum. Unfortunately, the exhibits were in Spanish and our guide was a low talker (at least he was when he was speaking in English) so I didn't learn very much about the history of Ponce. There was some interesting things to look at and some pretty stained glass that was original to the house the museum is in.

Then we went to the Ponce Cathedral. Like all cathedrals that I have been in, it is very beautiful. The statues on the roof are there because they would not fit inside.

From the cathedral we went to Parque de Bombas. A museum dedicated to firefighters. There are also a street of houses that were given to firefighters. I didn't get a picture of them, but you can see a picture of one of them here.

We then took a trolley tour of the city. The tour went by a ceiba tree (the national tree of Puerto Rico) that is 700 years old. It also went to the Ponce Sports Hall of Fame, Ponce Music Museum and statues of local heroes. Every time a local hero was talked about the people on the trolley would burst into applause. Honestly, I could have done without the trolley tour.

After the trolley ride we went to Serrallés Castle. This is the house, not a castle, of a family the owns a rum distillery. It was a very pretty house and gardens with a wonderful view.

After the house, we went to dinner at a restaurant that I never knew the name of. It wasn't that great. Then we went back to San Juan.

Ponce is a dryer city then San Juan. As a matter of fact the south side of the whole island is dryer than the north side of the island. The mountain in the middle of the island keep the rain from coming to the south side. When we were going down, the north side of the mountain was green and lush. We went over a mountain, everything change to brown and dry. It was very different.

Puerto Rico - Day 5

Not wanting to spend $28 at least to get to and from anywhere, I stay at the hotel Wednesday. It was a beautiful day. Nothing like the day before. I mostly stayed at the pool, but I did walk up a few block to a more accessible part of the beach. Blake said something about there being a lot of sting rays and I didn't have my protector (Jason), so I didn't go into the ocean. I did sit on the beach for about 30 minutes and took pictures. It is a very pretty beach. The prettiest I have ever seen. I also got a picture of our favorite restaurant, Yerba Bueana. We had Mexican food for dinner. Easy, boring, relaxing day.

Because I didn't do anything all day, I couldn't really sleep. After Jason went to sleep, I went to the casnio and won $50.25 on the slot machine. $70.25-$20(my initial bet)=$50.25

Puerto Rico - Day 4

Day four was back to Old San Juan. I had a little better plan than I did Sunday, but not much better. At least when I got dropped off, I knew where I was. My first stop was city hall. It looked a lot more impressive on my guide map. The plaza in front of city hall was nice.

After that was Cathedral of San Juan Bautista (John the Baptist). I didn't know what I was looking for and almost missed it. It kind of plain on the outside, but very pretty on the inside. Juan Ponce de León is buried there. (That was a lot of hard work for such a little accent) Across the plaza from the church is the Children's Museum, so the plaza had some cute kid friendly statues.

Next stop was La Fortaleza. This is where the governor lives. The governor must have been in, because there were police everywhere.
It was at this point that it started to feel like it might rain, so I decide to go the La Princesa. My guide map said there was a museum there and it looked pretty big. I can waste so pretty serious time in a half way decent museum. This was not even half way decent. They had about 20 paintings, all by the same paint, and they all looked alike. Personally, I didn't think they were all that great. So I sat outside the museum and waited on the rain with the plan to go inside the museum for cover.

When the rain finally came, it didn't leave. This was not one of the fast moving storms we had so far. After about 30 minutes and watching the radar on my phone I decide that the rain was going to be a while, so I wrapped up anything that could be damaged by water and went out in the rain. Then I made a bee-line to El Morro so I could get a poncho.

After I got a poncho, I went to San Cristóbal. Even though I went there Sunday, I didn't get a chance to fully explore the fort. Thankfully, the part I got to explore Sunday was the top level, because that was closed for safety reason. While I was exploring the fort, the rain turned in the a thunderstorm. I was in this room that was telling about when they demolished part of the wall so people could come into Old San Juan. (I really should know the story better because I "watched" it so many times.) They had a video telling the story and it had exploding sounds on it. Well, lighting struck fairly close at the same time the video made a exploding sound and it scared the fool out of me. I had to sit down for a while and collect myself.

The thunderstorm finally passed and I found a covered area to contact Jason to find out if they were coming to Old San Juan for dinner. They weren't. I was glad because I looked awful.

I went back to the hotel and freshened myself up. We ate at Che's with a bunch of people Jason works with. The meal was very good, but took forever. I was very glad when the day was over.

Puerto Rico - Day 3

Sunday night I was so tired and achy that I decided that I would spend the whole day relaxing. So I got up when Jason left, cleared some emails from my inbox and had a early lunch. Then I went to the pool to relax and read. This is something that I have never really done before. I didn't much like it. I just kept thinking about all the stuff in Old San Juan that I could be enjoying. I'm sure that it didn't help that my book was a little boring. It's about Henry the VIII and his court. The author said that the first third of the book was devoted to describing Henry the VIII and how he lived. Basically she said the first third of the book might be a little boring and it is. The weather was not as bad as it looks. I was cloudy most of the day, but it didn't rain.

Jason got back about 6:30 and we went out to eat at Yerba Buena Cafe with some people he works with. Then it was back to the hotel where Jason did school work and I cleared out some more emails.

Boring day.

Puerto Rico - Day 2

Day two started kinda slow. Jason and Blake went to breakfast while I slept in. When Jason got back, it was my turn to go to Burger King for breakfast. When I got back, I went to the pool area for a little while. At lunch time, all three of us walk around a bit. We went down to the beach, but didn't go on the beach. Then went ate lunch at Latin Star. It was alright, not that special. After lunch, Jason went to the hotel to work and I went to Old San Juan.

I was a little nervous about the taxi ride, but I didn't want to stay at the hotel and I did not want to drive. I got out at the Christopher Columbus statue and had no idea where to go to next. So, I walked down some streets with shopping and then decided that walking toward the water would be more interesting. I ended up at La Princesa Fountain, which is on the south side of the island (Old San Juan is an island). From there I walked along the city wall past La Fortaleza to Castillo San Felipe El Morro, which is on the west end of the island. Then I walked along the city wall on the north side of the island to Castillo San Cristobal, which is very near where I started.

Castillo San Cristobal is magnificent. I wondered around there for a while, took some pictures of the amazing views and was in general in awe of the place. To give you an idea of the size of the island, those cruise ship are on the south side of the island. You can also see how close Castillo San Felipe El Morro is. That's it on the farthest point. That the most western point. By the way, the little neighborhood in the middle is La Perla, one of the worst slum areas around. Shortly after taking this picture, Jason called and said that he and Blake were on their way to meet me at El Morro.

El Morro is just as magnificent as San Cristobal if not more so. The inside courtyard is painted yellow, which is something I have never seen in an fort before. We completely toured this fort from the sixth level to the first. The views from this fort were more of the ocean than of the sea. El Morro sits on top of a hill with a big grassy area in front of it. As you can tell in t he photo, it's very windy here, so there were a lot of kite flying. According the website, there is a kite flying festival at El Morro every year I wish I could be there for that.

As we were leaving the fort, there was a huge storm. That's not the night sky in that picture, that's the storm cloud. You can see in the video how hard it was coming down. Those people with the umbrella walk by us a few minutes later and they were soaked. I don't know why they bothered with the umbrella. (Sorry about it being sideways. I keep forgetting that I can't turn the camera that way for video.) The storm lasted about 15 minutes, then it was over. That's pretty much how the rain is here. Just a few minutes (or seconds) and then it's over and done.
After the storm we had dinner at Restaurant El Jibarito. This a restaurant that Jason knew about from previous trips. It was very good. After dinner we went to the piers and got a closer look at the cruise ships. Those ships are enormous! After that, we went back to the hotel.

Puerto Rico - Day 1

Day one was mostly getting here. I was more than a little nervous about flying over the ocean. The ocean is full of shark and other animals that want to eat people. I saw a lot of white specks in the ocean that didn't fade away like I would think white caps would. I can only assume that those white specks were sharks trying to eat me. What else could they be? We did fly over an island, which was kinda cool. I don't know what island it was, so don't ask.

When we were close, the pilot made an announcement. It was at the point that I thought, "It's such a tiny island. What if he misses?" And then there was all the tipping. Then we were getting closer and closer to the water. I was very sick at my stomach. I was very happy when we landed.

After we got our car (which had a hand crank for the windows), we drove around. We were not sure if we needed to wait for Blake or not. We didn't. So we decide to go to the rain forest, El Yunque.

The rain forest is amazing! First stop was Coca Falls. The street goes over this waterfall. Very pretty. The man on the rocks should have been a indication of things to come. He was so proud of himself. When he got the rock that was climbing for, he stood Capt. Morgan style and said "Take my picture!"

The next stop was the the Big Tree Trail which takes you to La Mina Falls. We had a hard time finding a place to park because this is where everybody was. There are little pavilions off this trail and all of them had a huge group grilling something. All kinds of parties. (I took this picture on the way back, after the parties were over.) The trail was very nice, but very narrow. It's a concrete trail that is about 1 1/2 - 3 feet wide. We often had to step off the trail to let people pass. The narrow trail was nice, because everything was close. The trail went along a river (I'm sure it has a name, but I don't know what it is.) that had a bunch of little pools. Most of the pools had people swimming in them. Looked like a nice place to relax. It did rain while we were walking on this trail. Imagine that, raining in a rain forest.

Finally, we made it to La Mina Falls. Jason on got hit with one branch. It didn't really hurt him, but it did fling a lot of ants on him. He didn't realize he had ants crawling all over him until about 10 minutes later. He thought the mosquitoes were biting him, but it was the ants. There were no mosquitoes.

La Mina Falls is where most of the swimming took place. Everyone was having a great time. There were even some people picnicking in the water. Looked like fun. We wished we had on our swimsuits. After we left the falls, we had a short .8 km hike all uphill to the trailhead and then another .1 km walk to our car, also uphill.

Third stop was a tower. I can't remember the name of the tower. We could have walked to the top for more dramatic views, but it was 5:45 and the gates closed at 6. We didn't want to get trapped inside the rain forest.

After that, we left. The traffic back was horrible. We did see some interesting things like a man riding a horse and talking on a cell phone.

After we check into the hotel, we went looking for a place to eat. We ended up at Yerba Buena Cafe. Very good food. I had beef and yuca. Jason had chicken and yuca. We will eat there again.

After dinner, we walked around a bit, went to Walgreen's, got a ride back to the hotel from Jeff, a guy Jason works with. We went to the casino for a little bit, but the slots were not paying out enough and we lost our money too quickly.