Lack of Posts

It started Monday, when the Puerto Rican love of AC became all too apparent. Tours of the coastal fortresses of San Juan--lovely day for it; 80 degrees, light breeze--ended with a cafe stop--in the high 50s. Back on the street, into a shop, onto the plaza, into a taxi--the cyclic temperature and humidity variations don't bode well. By Monday night I was running a fever and hacking up things I did not inhale.

The car rental experience didn't help. Our plan was to pick up in San Juan and drop in Fajardo, once we'd circumnavigated the island. For whatever reason, such reservations can't be accomplished online. Also, you can't pick up before 1:00. And there's no official drop in Fajardo, even though that's where everyone's trying to get to for the ferries to the islands, and they won't let you take rental cars on the ferries. This was the first indicator that we'd soon be writing a post entitled "PR: Permanently Retarded." Look for it subsequently.

But we got it done. We even convinced them to let us leave the car on the lot and pick us up at the hotel the next morning (you don't want to drive or park in Old San Juan). Of course, the manager who had agreed to this--in person, 16 hours prior--completely forgot and it took ten minutes on the phone the next morning to jog her memory and convince her to pick us up.

Once we were in possession of the car, I knocked myself out on NyQuil in the back seat and turned driving and navigation over to team Kienzle. Which I'll leave to them to describe.

(BTW, the photo is taken from the San Critobal fortress looking west toward the big old one at the mouth of the bay.)