Puerto Rico
Trip Start
Jan 24, 2007
1
7
Trip End
May 14, 2007
San Juan,
Puerto Rico
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
streets are cobble stone and the houses are all different colors red,
blue, green, yellow, purple, all trimmed in white. Everyone had a
Mojito, it's light rum, club soda, and crushed mint. It's a very
popular drink here in the Caribbean, especially in Cuba. We stopped in
the Ben and Jerry's in Old San Juan. It was supposed to be life
changing, I wouldn't say it was life changing but it was very cool. All
the tables were covered in sayings like: "An eye for eye leaves
everyone blind." It was pretty chill and their Key Lime sorbet wasn't
bad either.
We headed out to El Morro, a fort that was built in the mid 16th
Century. It took 200 years to build, and is a very prominent part of
Puerto Rico. It was attacked a number of times and was controlled by
the Spanish and British at different times in history. There were steps
up to the parapets, so we just walked to the edge. It was a pretty
steep drop, but really pretty because you could see the waves crashing
against the rocks. We ran into Roberto, the only student on the ship
who's from Puerto Rico. He's so sweet and walked around with us telling
us stuff about the fort we'd have never known. Some of the rocks were
dug up from the sea and so they still had seashells imbedded in them.
That night we went to the University of Puerto Rico and met some
of the students. We had a sample of a lot of Puerto Rican food. Most
Puerto Rican food is deep fried or breaded and fried with meat or
cheese in the middle. We talked with the students and then they tried
to teach us how to salsa dance. They gave me a really cool musical
instrument called a guiro(were-O). While we were walking back to the
buses we heard the coquis (coke-ies) or little tree frogs. They're
about the size of a dime and all over.
The next day we went to the rainforest El Yunque, it's the only
rainforest within the US park system. It's 28,000 acres and has three
different ecosystems and 40 different reptile and amphibian species. We
mostly saw Anoles which are tiny lizards that are fairly smooth and
FAST! I was lucky to catch a couple on camera. There weren't a lot of
animals in the forest because it was on an island so most of them are
tiny. The forest used to be the home of the Taino people before
Columbus got here on his second voyage. They left a number of
pictograph carvings on the rock in the forest.
Our guide used to be a botanist for the El Yunque and so he knew all
the plants and what they're used for. Impatias can cure breast cancer
in certain stages, one tree was used to make the head of matches,
turpentine, and candles (it even smelled like turpentine!). Another was
used to make war ships in the 17th century because it was so hard and
can take a lot of hits. The king of Spain wouldn't let anyone export
because he considered it a secret of war. They funniest one was when
our guide, Guillermo, said: "you take the juice from this plant, you
take it to a lab and ...you pay 25 million to go to the moon or you take
this and BAM you already there, it's LSD." It was easy to see after the
tour why Puerto Rico is responsible for so many pharmaceutical
products. Guillermo was really cool he was telling people (not even in
our group) where they should go, how they should get there and when. He
took us by a local fast food restaurant, which means everything is deep
fried. We left some food in the paper bag and the bag was soaked with
grease by the time we got back from our hike.
That night we all went out to the San Juan Hotel to the club Brava.
Roberto knew a girl at the front desk so about 35 of us were on the VIP
list to get into the club. It was really cool. I accidentally walked
into the men's restroom, so every other time I went upstairs to use the
bathroom the bouncer followed me to make sure I went into the women's
restroom. They brought out a drum band that was pretty cool. Puerto
Ricans dress up when they go out, so all us girls were limping back to
the ship, at the end of the night.
Today we saw the other fort on the island, San Cristobal, it was so hot
even at 10 o'clock I could feel the sun burning my back through my
shirt! The fort was more complete (both are being made into more museum
like attractions, so something aren't labeled) then El Morro. We were
able to figure out what areas were used for what. We went to Walgreens
and picked up clothespins so we can do laundry in the sink and hang it
up on the clothes line. A load of laundry on the ship costs 5 dollars
per bag (they're about 3 gallons), so almost everyone is doing their
own. We went to the beach this afternoon and wrote out post cards and
then went and took a tour of the Bacardi factory. It was actually very
interesting and we were the last tour of the day so we stayed and
talked to the guy who was giving the tour a crash course on bartending.
He let us back behind the bar and took pictures for us (apparently a
very special opportunity).
