Where the History Comes From...

Flamenco dancing at Rosa de Triana our last night in San Juan. Emily got a chance to be part of the show. It was our most fun of the week!

Here we are in the Luís Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan.   This week has been really fast and really slow all at the same time.   We are trying to figure out the magic of our trip that it feels almost like our time in the rain forest was a different vacation entirely.   If we can figure that out, maybe we can make sure to recreate it every year. Our last full day in San Juan (yesterday) was probably our best day of the entire trip, which was a nice way to end it.   We started early, seeing El Fuerte de San Cristóbal.   It is the second fort of San Juan, though it is the largest Spanish fort in the Americas.   It was built to protect San Juan from land attacks while El Morro protected her from the sea.   Just like with El Morro, the US Navy added some observation decks during World War II.   It was interesting to see these modern-day sentry posts sitting just yards from the Spanish variety circa 1500. After a few hours at the fort, we wandered around the city and vis...

Hola from Emily! Well, we have been in San Juan for two days now, and what a difference from El Yunque! First, the heat. It is HOT in San Juan. There’s a nice breeze from the Atlantic, but we are not in the mountains anymore and the sun beats down pretty hard. Second, there is plenty to do and we are very centrally located in Old San Juan. We are on the Plaza de Armas, which is the heart of the old city, so we can easily walk to everything we want to see. So far, we’re having a great time. We got here Wednesday around lunchtime, dropped the car off at the airport, and took a taxi as close to our hotel as we could get – in a town of one way streets, he had to drop us off a block away. Our hotel is a Howard Johnson, but in an old building, which is cool. Our room doesn’t have a window, which is not so cool, but at least it’s nice and dark and quiet at night ☺ After we checked in, we took a self-guided walking tour around the city wall, saw a tiny museum dedicated to Doña Felisa Rincón de...

A burned out house on the beach in Huraces (the small village by the ocean near Naguabo, the closest town to our B&B) The stairs leading up to the burned out house. Highway 191 snaking off into the wilderness.  We walked a little way down this VERY abandoned portion of the highway.  It was a little spooky. A waterfall on part of the abandoned highway. Some abandoned pipeworks at the top of the mountain.  Made everything feel even more like the Dharma Initiative than it did before.

This one is a little long since we haven’t updated in two days.   We’ll post pictures as well for those who don’t have time to read. Well…we’re off to San Juan today.   It has been a relaxing four days in the rain forest, but we are ready to move on.   On Monday, we went on a short hike from the Casa Cubuy.   They own all the property in front of the lodge, so there is about a 7 minute hike zig-zagging down the mountain to the beautiful waterfall that you see in all the pictures.   To continue our hike, we crossed the river (on the rocks) and then took off through the woods.   The trail was marked sporadically with caution tape tied around tree branches and trunks to mark the way.   Other than trying to pick our way over the rocks, the first leg of the journey was pretty straightforward.   After about 10 minutes or so we came to a second river that we needed to cross.   This one was a bit trickier.   Climbing the rocks and getting across wasn’t too hard, but finding the trail on th...

Here we are at La Mina Falls.  We didn't swim since we weren't in our swimsuits, but we did sit on the rocks and watch the action.  There were a lot of locals there since it was Sunday and Father's Day. Pineapples lined up on the buffet in the dining room.  We have fresh fruit at breakfast every morning including pineapples, grapes, kiwis, watermelon, cantaloupe, papaya, mango, and grapefruit. An interesting camouflage tree at El Portal (the Visitors' Center) on the north side of El Yunque National Forest.

Emily showing off our balcony at Casa Cubuy.

The pictures ended up in reverse...so this is end of our trip in El Yunque.  This is La Mina Falls.  As you can see, it is a very unique and popular "swimming hole."  We had fun watching the action, but with no swimsuits, decided to wait for our private swimming hole back at the Casa Cubuy. We're at the top of the Yokahu (no accent available in Blogger, sorry).  The tower was built for tourists in 1962 to match a smaller tower farther up built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1935.  I didn't realize FDR's arms were so long!  The views were beyond description - they picked a great spot for the tower.  The ridiculously blue sky can give you some idea of the surrounding beauty. We're at El Portal - the Visitors' Center.  We did pick up a couple of magnets, too.  There were some local artisans selling their crafts as well.  Very cool stuff - but also kind of expensive.  The center is built on a hillside, so you walk across a bridge to get to it.  It felt ...

Hola, mis amigos digitales. This is Emily, and I am sitting on our balcony at the Casa Cubuy watching the forest get dark and listening to the various bugs and the coqu ís get louder. A coquí is a little frog that eats mosquitoes, bless its amphibian heart, and is the reason we can leave the giant sliding glass door to our balcony open all the time. The rainforest is definitely louder at night, and I love listening to all the animal noises and the waterfall. We had a relatively busy day today. And by “relatively busy,” I mean that we left the Casa and went and did something. It’s easy just to dig in here and watch the forest and never leave, I think. A lot of our neighbors did that today. But we wanted to see the visitors’ center and the more developed side of El Yunque, so after a delicious communal breakfast of fresh fruit and French toast, and a quick hike down the to the Río Cubuy (where I slipped on a wet rock and fell on my booty) off we went. It took about an hour to get t...

Our eco-lodge has a VERY slow internet connection, so we will hold off posting pictures until we have a faster way to do it.  For now, here is our text.  If it is too long, just read the first part! :) ..... Bienvenidos a Puerto Rico!   We made it….YAY!   We flew AirTran, which was a pretty decent carrier, come to find out.   When Emily checked us in online last night, we had the opportunity to upgrade to Business Class for $140.   Even though it was only a 2 ½ hour flight, we decided to do it – and boy was it a great decision.   Having the extra room in the seat took flying from an uncomfortable, but necessary, part of the travel experience to a highly comfortable and enjoyable part of the travel experience.   And being able to get off first was a nice bonus too! The airport in San Juan was weird.   By and large it felt like you were still in the US, but all the signs were reversed – Spanish on top, English in the small italics underneath.   So it was normal but a little off – whi...

We will be leaving for Puerto Rico on Saturday, July 20, 2009. We will be there for a week staying four days in the El Yunque Rainforest and three days in San Juan Viejo (Old San Juan). We will update this blog daily. We are planning to do this blog in two ways. The top of each blog entry will be pictures and captions to give you a quick overview of the day. Below that we will have a more lengthy entry that gives a lot more detail. We aren't really expecting most of you to read this part, it is mostly for our own documentation to keep a record of our travels. We know our moms will probably read this too, but most of you probably don't care to know that much detail of our days and we aren't really vain enough to think you do! :) We are thinking of trying some audio blogs inspired by Gram and Hannah, but I'm not sure it will happen this year. This will definitely be a different experience than last year...but one we're sure to enjoy! We hope you enjoy it too. ...