Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico Day 1 (Day 4) 00:47 (10:47cst)

So the first day of Puerto Rico just ended. Right off the bat, I would suggest Puerto Rico to anyone over the Bahamas any day. It’s cleaner, things make sense (like the roads), stuff is easy to get to, and everyone is very friendly. The native language is Spanish of course but everyone will speak English to you when you’re getting service for something. Gas is 73 cents per liter. I’m not sure how well that translates into gallons, but I would assume it’s really cheap in comparison.

(I think) that the police just drive around with their blue lights flashing during the night. It’s either that or there’s a lot of accidents/crime that they’re going to. On our way to bio bay I saw a ton of cop cars with their lights on (but not sirens) either helping people on the side of the road or just driving down the road. Weird.

Started the day at 06:45 to watch the sunrise as we came into port (dock time was 8). I just missed the beginning of the sunrise but got some great pictures a little after it (will post to flickr soon). After that I attempted to make my cell phone work again because Puerto Rico is part of the US cell phones aren’t in roaming. However, I have to be on Verizons network or some crap like that to update my roaming capabilities. So no cell phone for me :(. Once docked and cleared for debarkation, we headed to starbucks for some FREE high-speed internet. Which was really nice for a change. Got to try out skype from log distances, catch up on email, and post all of my photos so far (as seen in last *quick* post). After that we ate at a place called Café Puerto Rico which was awesome. For $13 I got some delicious baby back ribs, fries that tasted EXACTLY like Annie’s Parlor in Dinkytown (awesome), rice, and bean soup. Needless to say, I was very satisfied. After that we headed to check out Old San Juan and the two castles nearest to where we were – El Morro. Some really interesting history was there as far as the Spanish-American War times. Huge castles, very well preserved, and provided a great oversight of Old San Juan and San Juan.

Once exhausted from walking everywhere, we took the free trolly back to our boat to rest up for the bioluminescent bay and schedule scuba diving for the next day.

Now maybe my expectations were just set way too high, but I was somewhat disappointed by the bio bay. We started in a harbor on kayaks, and then kayaked about 20 minutes into the lagoon. Now don’t get me wrong, kayaking under the stars through a small channel leading into a beautiful lagoon is awesome, but I guess I was expecting spots of the water to just glow. When you put your hand in the water and splash/move it around the water lights up. Which is pretty cool. However, they stopped letting people swim in it for whatever reason. The channel/lagoon was also packed with kayaks and such. So not a bad experience, just not what I expected. I’ve never kayaked before either, so that was fun.

Up for tomorrow: two dives (leaving at 06:30. Yes, they’re really making me into a morning person around here – having to get up early all the time) then possibly renting some jetski’s and going out into the ocean with them which would be super sweet. I also want to check out the rainforest at some time but I’m not sure if that’s going to be possible independently or not.

ALSO – if there’s a certain souvenir you want from me in any country, you should send me an email and let me know (I can check email a lot easier than the comments on posts). Otherwise you’re gonna get nothing and like it (kidding).

Anyway, it’s 01:09 and I need to be up in about 5 hours.