Many moons ago I lived in a small town called Borinquen Puerto Rico. I had a love hate relationship with the island during my stay (mostly because the living conditions were hard and we were so poor). However looking back on my time there Puerto Rico is a magical island that has amazing things to offer. With 3.5 days off, my husband I headed to the island for a marathon trip.
Day 1
We headed out to the El Yungue Rain Forest to do a quick hike. I convinced my husband on the way there to stop at a Kiosco and buy some pincho and Puerto Rican street food. Puerto Rican food is typically anything fried, plantains, and pork. We must have pulled over at the sketchiest stand. The lady was burning wood in an old garbage can with a steel pot full of cooking oil. When we ordered our empanadas and some other stuff she refried them for the second time to heat them up. It was pretty disgusting because everything was crazy oily. I’m really proud of my husband and I for not having to use the bathroom for the rest of the night.
Is it fried? Then it’s probably Puerto Rican food
El Yunque rain forest
After the rain forest we checked into our hotel which in a true Puerto Rican style took forever. We hurried down to a line of Kiosoco’s and got the Puerto Rican national dish of Mofongo and pork. After that we headed to the Bio Bay near fajardo.
Kiosco’s in Luquillo
There is only 5 Bio bays in the whole entire world and three of them are located in Puerto Rico. Plankton in the water absorb the suns rays during the day and when they are moved in the water at night they expel the light much like a fire fly. This basically means that the water glows! We took a kayak trip through the dark mangroves barely able to see the small light on the kayak in front of us. Once we got to the bay the magic of the lagoon wowed us. We could see large fish swimming and glowing under the water. Everytime we moved our paddles it lit up. This is a truly once in a life time experience that everyone should have.
Bio Bay in Laguna Grande near fajardo
Amazing!!
I’m also happy to report back that my husband now 4-5 years together kayaked without fighting. If you have never kayaked with a loved one it’s atrue test of your relationship.
Day 2
The next day we drove all the way across Puerto Rico headed for Rincon. It’s known as a sleep surfing town. We stopped at Playa las jobos to see the water hole. However the waves weren’t up enough to get the full effect.
The blow hole near playa jobos
Rincon surf on a good day… see how many people are in the water!!
By the time we got to Rincon it was getting late. We went over to Playa domes to check out the waves, rented surfboards for the next morning from some lady that clearly smoked too much weed in her adult life and drank rum punch at the calypso cafe.
We headed back to your hotel and walked on the beach to a small hotel next door that serves these famous Pirate drinks out of a coconut shell as we enjoyed the thunderstorms off the coast along the beach.
Pirate drink and storms in the background!
Day 3
We perhaps drank too much the night before at our hotel swim up bar. However we met some great people and had way too much fun so I suppose it was worth the sluggish morning. We headed out to a beach not realizing that a category 2 hurricane was currently over Cuba. The waves were scary but we were determined.
Scary overhead waves… guys were getting barrels at playas domes
After a few hours of going back and forth between beaches to find a good break that we wouldn’t die on or get yelled at by locals (surfers are very territorial) we threw in the towel and gave up. We packed up the car and drove inland towards El Rio Camuy Caves.
The cave was discovered sometime in the 1980’s and is pretty awesome. An underground river carved it out. There is approximately 9 miles of the caves system hidden up in the Mountains. Our tour guide was the most boring guy ever but hey we got to see tons of bats flying around the cave so it may up for it.
Rio Camuy Caves
We were pretty pushed for time so we headed to Arecibo Observatory to the world largest satellite. You probably have seen this on a few sci-fi movies before and for any space science junky this is a must.
In Puerto Rico we couldn’t get a navigation system on our phones to work however google maps kind of worked. I put in the direction from the El Camuy to Arecibo and it sent us on so crazy back roads that even Puerto Ricans wouldn’t drive on. I don’t think I breathed for the 20 minute drive to the observatory as we could have died at any given moment.
Arecibo Observatory
The satellite was amazing and had I not looked like hell from swimming in the ocean and not showering I would have cherished a picture. in front of this.
We then got in the car and headed to San Juan. We pricelined our hotel using name your own price (the only way to get hotels) and scored what was a $200 dollar hotel for $70 bucks at the Hotel Hilton Caribe. Please use betterbidding.com a priceline cheat website next time you travel. You are totally missing out if you don’t!
We headed to old san juan and had dinner at a cute cafe. Im pretty over heavy unhealthy Puerto Rican food at this point. My work schedule has been pretty bad and I haven’t worked out or ran in over 10 days, which is clearly unheard of from me. I’m ready for a healthy cleanse when I get back to the states!
Old San Juan
Day 4.
We yelped a breakfast place in the condado that overlooked the water. We were bummed to find out that they ran out of cooking gas so we settled with sandwich’s for breakfast. Had the view not been amazing we totally would have bailed out on this place.
Breakfast with a view
After breakfast we headed out to the hotels private beach and swam to the floating islands where I layed there like a beached whale as the husband treaded water and practiced his back stroke.
We ran back in packed, then dropped off our rental car (another puerto rican delay) and then got on the plane where we waited 40 minutes for TSA to screen bags (another typical Puerto Rican delay). Adios Puerto Rico!
craftinginphl 