Puerto Rico - Day 3 - The green road, pinas con pina colada, y the lamest New Years Eve ever!

We woke up with the sun, and admired our awesome camp spot as we packed up our stuff. We caught a muy inexpensive cab ride across the island in order to make it on the early morning ferry back to the mainland. It had been a hard debate whether to stay one more night in what was paradise if you could overlook the extreme tourism of the place.

We had made our plan the night before - we would stop at Wal-mart (yes, they are everywhere) to pick up some food & supplies before driving as far as we felt like it on the green road that runs right through the middle of PR, before heading down to Ponce - the 2nd biggest city on the island to spend our New Years Eve.

The green road turned out to be the most beautiful and dangerous road that I had ever been on. The winding roads that went up and down the mountainous land had hairpin turns where you would often be met nearly head on with somebody winding their way down or up the mountain. We slowly accustomed ourselves to the near collisions around every bend, and enjoyed the scenery.


After deciding that we had been traveling on the green road for long enough, we made our way south and came upon a lively small town that were already in full swing of their New Years Eve celebration mid-day. We joined in on the fun for a little bit, enjoying our gigantic pina coladas con pina with sprinkles, umbrellas, and a couple cherries on top!


We explored a couple of beach towns along our way to Ponce - all of which were near deserted. We arrived in Ponce around duck, and started driving around to explore the town only to discover that Ponce was very much so deserted as well! The only place we found in the city that was jumping - was the local Hilton casino that was SOLD OUT for the night. Feeling sad that our NYE plans were falling through we decided to start driving in the direction of Bosque De Guajataca where we were planning on heading the next day.

Extremely hungry, we pulled off at Guayanilla where we had dinner at the fabulous El Dragon - Chinese food complete with french fries.


We discovered a small hotel at the exit and since it was getting pretty late we decided that we might as well hole up for the night and except our defeat of our hoped for NYE extravaganza. We did our best to celebrate with some delicious Modelo, Don Q (of course), and our new set of PR playing cards.

Puerto Rico - Day 2 - Day on Vieques - an island off THE island

Ahhh, what a refreshing night of sleep in our humid as hell tin tent! We woke up feeling particularly sticky and already ready for a shower when it would still be a couple days until we got a chance.

We headed back down the mountain in our tent, stopping at lookouts along the way to check out the gorgeous view which I actually have a picture of from Adam's camera!



Our plan was to head back into town to pick up the permits that are required to camp nearly anywhere in Puerto Rico. Once we made it back into San Juan we caught a quick breakfast (we made complete fools of ourselves trying to get in because you apparently have to ring a doorbell to get into fast food restaurants around there....crime rate maybe high?) well waiting for the park office to open. Hah! Apparently the park office is closed for a very extended holiday for all of December and January. Oh, well for legal camping...

Since the bioluminescent bays are best to see on nights when the moon is nearly gone from the sky, we planned on heading over to the small island of Vieques and spending the night there. Knowing that the island was on the east side of PR, Dana managed to find a small dotted line on our PR map that had a little ferry symbol - to Vieques! Sweet! We headed to our departure city - Fajardo on the east coast of Puerto Rico.

We spotted this HUGE iguana right downtown Fajardo!


The ride over on the ferry was gorgeous and we arrived at Isabel Segunda on the Northern coast of the island. We found a small surf shop where we got the scoop on the best company to use for seeing the biobays - the tour happened to set out from Esperanza which is located on the southern coast of the island. Now, Vieques being an island and all seems to distort the islanders reality of distance - they made Esperanza seem like it was a days drive away when in fact it was a short 5 mile walk across the island.

After a delicious lunch, we began our hike across the island and within a mile of hiking we were already picked up on the side of the road by local who just happened to work for the exact company that we had scheduled our biobay tour with!

We arrived in Esperanza, a beautiful touristy town with a row of tour shops and restaurants on the street opposite the beach. We walked around the small town, watched an amazing sunset, and caught a late dinner before we met up with our tour company. The three of us, plus a couple of families were driven out on a bumpy dirt road in a van where our kayaks were waiting for us. Dana and I were in the same kayak, well Adam got stuck with the tour guide - who bet that I couldn't get a good picture of the biobay because it was near impossible.

We kayaked out and started to notice the blueish glow that started to surround our paddles as we navigated through the water. If you scooped your hand through the water it looked like blue glitter would trickle over your hand and the fish that darted through the water looked like shooting stars! We got to an area that was deep enough to swim around in without touching the bays murky bottom and we spent about 20 minutes swimming around in the bay. It was a surreal experience! But, it turns out that my waterproof camera was not so appreciative of the biobays as it malfunctioned and would not take pictures for the rest of the trip! Grrrr the tour guide won the bet!

After the tour, the three of us wandered down the strip of sand away from the crowded tourist section to find a secluded section of sand to pitch our tent on. We found a perfect spot right in between two bays and set up camp. We passed around our bottle of Don Q Anejo (definitely not as good as silver!) with our newly discovered favorite mixer - Carrot Orange juice.

The temperature continued to drop as we drank our rum on the beach and we spent the night in our tent attempting to sleep through the chilly, chilly night WITHOUT our sleeping bags. We had neglected to bring them to Vieques so we wouldn't have to carry them around everywhere with us (oh, and Adam had neglected to bring one to Puerto Rico period!). We got a very sparse amount of sleep in one of the most amazing camp spots ever!