Parque de las Cavernas

Next stop the caverns, one of the largest cave networks on the planet, in fact. Unfortunately, you have to explore on a tour, admission into which is based upon a number assigned to us when we drove in. What was expected to be a 50 minute tour became a three hour exercise in how not to organize people in crowd form. Caves were cool though.

Science! It Works, Bitches

I grew up on Carl Sagan's Cosmos. I took astronomy classes from Yervant Terzian at Cornell. I'm a member of SETI. So seeing this--the Arecibo Radio Observatory--up close has always been a bit of a dream. And there it is: nestled between the karsts that define this part of the island's terrain. Big dish--the largest, actually, covering 49 acres. Even Karen was sort of impressed. Or she just humors her geek.

Cat adoption

While at Casa Grande, we were all adopted by a feral lapcat.

Detox in Utuado

After three nights of trying, unsuccessfully, to love Puerto Rican food (none of us feel the need to have any more tostones, the flattened then fried plantains that are saturated in oil and seem to accompany everything) we were in dire need of a respite. Thankfully we were heading out of San Juan to the lush jungle of Utuado.

After picking up the rental car (finally), and setting up Miguel comfortably in the back seat to sleep off his cold/flu, Jonathan and I were off. First stop: the Bacardi factory tour. Now, I've been on a fair amount of brewery/distillery tours in my lifetime, but this rates the worst. They don't let you in the factory, but instead tour you through a barely functional interpretive display. The best part was the fact that they forced us to board a ridiculous kiddie-tram to take the 1/2 block distance to the center. Other highlights included the poorly produced and barely informative video that was punctuated by the worst Bacardi commercials imaginable (featuring all the subliminal imagery we learned about in junior high plus butts, butts, and more butts, along with a weird scene in which a scantily clad bimbette was shaving a guy with a razor that we are still confused about). At least we got cocktails at the end.

Thus fortified, we began our journey into the forest. More on the Puerto Rican conception of driving to come, suffice it to say that we were very afraid.

Once arriving at our remote and rustic retreat, Miguel continued his napping while Jthan and I hiked and yogad. This was the view from our cabin.

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.)

There's Music Everywhere

In the local square it resembles a mariachi band, but bigger. Dinner comes with a side of flamenco solo. The Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico featured a rehearsal of the local philharmonic, an interesting accompaniment to our visit considering their Wagnerian, use-every-instrument-in-the-orchestra-or-else approach to Christmas music. And the bar directly under our hotel room offers salsa and jazz every night until two. I've been dreaming in Dolby.

PR's National Beer...

...is a light beer? It's also terrible. Apparently there's one other domestically produced brew, but it's worse.