puerto rico

March 18 – 21, 2007
San Juan and Fajardo, Puerto Rico

(for pictures go to the travels page)

This was my first trip with Luc. Let me first say, that he is a first rate travel companion. No complaints that our flight was 1 hour delayed on our leg out (getting into San Juan around 2AM instead of 1AM), nor about the fact that I apparently cannot drive on the correct side of the road (island driving is crazy, what do you want from me … I was trying to fit in). He also didn’t complain about us shelling out ridiculous amounts of money for cab fairs because we were idiots and couldn’t figure out how to take the bus. Sheesh, you’d think I’ve never traveled before. Don’t worry. The trip was totally awesome. A real get-a-way … since we were only there for 2.5 days. We made the most of it though.

I am pleased to say that our first hotel, which was the crap hotel since we just needed a cheap place to get 4 hours of sleep (3 AM – 7 AM), had no bed bugs. Believe me, I’ve had that happened in Puerto Rico before. However, the Mango Inn is bed-bug free, for future reference. Our first day started out bright and sunny. We strapped on our packs and were ready to head back to the airport to pick up our rental car, because we were going to jet out of San Juan and head to quieter Fajardo, on the east coast. Now, when booking this first hotel, from the website it said that it was walking distance from the airport. Yeah, walking distance if you want to walk on a 6 lane highway. After a bit of walking (we had taken a cab the night before since it was so late), we determined that walking was not an option. Now, instead of thinking to try public transportation (which totally did not occur to me), we hailed the next cab. Luc told the driver (in Spanish, none the less), that we wanted to go to the airport, and specifically the Dollar Rental place. The driver told Luc that he didn’t think that Dollar was at the airport, but right outside it. Now, I figured we should just go to the airport, because if the rental place is not there, there would probably be a shuttle that would take you. That’s how these things work. The cab driver had better ideas. You see, there is a flat rate from San Juan to the airport: $13. If he took us to the rental place, though, then we would be charged $23. You can guess where we ended up in our ignorance. Oh well. You win some, you lose some.

After we picked up our rental car, we hopped on the highway and made our way to Fajardo and the nearby beaches. We did quite well navigating, since we seemed to end up on highways that weren’t on our maps. Luc directed us to a nice beach near Fajardo: Playa Seven Seas. We were looking for a nice quiet beach. What did we find? Jackpot. There were a total of 5 people we could see and parking was free. We hit that up til lunch time, then drove a bit til we found some shacks serving lunch. Delicious. After that, we went back to the beach, but then walked about a half mile west to Playa Escondida (Hidden Beach). On the way there, Luc found a number of conch shells (5 total). Many were in good shape too. Upon arrival, guess how many people where there? Just 2 … me and Luc. Yes ladies and gentlemen, we found a secluded beach. I didn’t think they existed anymore. I was wrong. It was great. We lounged about the rest of the afternoon before making our way back to the car and finally driving into Fajardo where our hotel was.

Now, I was a bit nervous about this hotel. Luc booked the airline tickets, so then he made me do all the hard work and find hotels. I found this one and it looked far too good to be true. It was inexpensive, yet looked like a resort. I figured the pictures were lying. I can make bad places look good with my camera too. However, it was exactly as advertised. We had a room with a balcony with views of the ocean. The hotel had 2 restaurants and 2 swimming pools (one with water slide and waterfall). There was also a mini-golf course. Quite nice. Everything was clean and beautiful. We won again. That night we hung out at the hotel exploring, because that’s what you do at new hotels. We ate at the Mexican restaurant in the hotel (really inexpensive, and the food was good) and proceeded to have our first tropical drinks of the trip (strawberry margaritas … no little umbrellas though). After that, we were exhausted since we didn’t get much sleep the night before, so we went to bed. A very nice day.

Day 2 dawned bright and beautiful. We got our gear together because that day we went hiking in the rain forest. It was a quick drive (about 30-40 min) to El Yunque, the Caribbean National Forest. We hiked one of the more popular trails, because halfway down the trail one runs into a waterfall that you can go swimming under. We did that, naturally. The water was frigid, but it felt good after hiking in the warm forest. After hiking, we went back to the hotel. Earlier that morning we had tried to make reservations on a night time kayak expedition to a nearby bioluminescent bay (Laguna Grande). Unfortunately, there was no more space for that evening and we were heading back to NJ the next day, so we couldn’t do that. Next time though. Instead, we explored the large pool with waterfall and water slide at the hotel. It was nice and relaxing. We also played a round of mini-golf. Dinner was eaten at a local seafood restaurant, Rosa’s. It was quite good. Luc had conch … the animal from a conch shell. It was chewy. That’s all I have to say about that.

The last day we awoke early to get the car back to the rental place by 9:20AM. We made it just fine, even though it was a bit tricky to find the right roads to take us to the rental place. Then we took the free shuttle to the airport and started to have a few problems. I think that the San Juan airport just doesn’t like us. See, we were hoping we’d be able to do something with our bags, because we did not relish the idea of traipsing about old San Juan with our huge backpacks on. Ideally there would be a luggage storage room. If not that, then maybe we could check our bags, but our flight was not until 7:30PM and I didn’t know how early one could check luggage. We thought our hopes had been answered when we saw a sign that said “luggage storage”. We followed the sign but after a bit of walking with our bags, we were at a loss as to where this alleged storage place was. We walked back to the sign to see if we had missed something, but we hadn’t. I checked down a narrow corridor and there it was. Hooray! Except it was locked. Boo! We looked around to see if there was someone to ask, but there was no one. We headed back to the Jet Blue check-in counter and thought to try checking our baggage. After getting our baggage inspected by the USDA and waiting in line for a while, we finally got up to the counter. We mentioned how our flight wasn’t until 7:30PM and the lady said she could only check in our luggage 4 hours before the flight. Strike 2. Now what were we to do? She said there was a luggage storage place around the corner, and to find a porter to ask him to take it. So we searched for a porter and finally found one. Returned to the storage room and waited a bit til someone came and unlocked and took our luggage for $3.00 a bag. Finally success. I was getting a bit cranky because it was taking so long to get this accomplished, and the severe lack of people to ask irritated me.

We walked back outside, our packs greatly lightened, and found the bus stop. No more taxis for us. We got $2 out (since fare was $0.75 each) and awaited the bus. It came and as we tried to present the money, the bus driver informed us that the machine only accepted change. Gah! We frantically scrounged about and came up with 30 cents. It’s all we had. Luck was with us, though. The bus driver just motioned for us to throw it in and take a seat. Woot! We had to transfer buses to make it to old San Juan, and while waiting for our transfer we bought a pack of gum with $5 in order to get lots of change for the next fare. The bus ride into old San Juan was uneventful, if long (about 45 min – 1 hr). Our first order of business once we got off the bus was to find lunch. In my guidebook were two recommendations that looked good. Unfortunately, neither of them seemed to exist anymore, as when we approached the address, the buildings looked long abandoned. I was getting really hungry, so I said we’d eat at the next place we found. Around the corner we saw an open-air café. It was one of the places we were looking for!! It had apparently moved since the publication of my guidebook. Needless to say, it was amazing. Exactly what we wanted. Delicious panini and we had tiramisu for dessert. Wonderful! After that we made our way to the fort and just hung out there for a few hours. It was sad when we had to make our way back to the bus station and back to the airport. I could have stayed 2, 3, 4 more days. Probably longer. What a great vacation.

For pictures, I direct you to my travel page and from there photos. There are many of them. Hope you have nothing else to do.