Our tour guide and mixology master Joisa made learning to mix mojitos and piña coladas at the Bacardà rum factory a party! Did you know that piña coladas originated in Puerto Rico? Pour yourself a glass of rum and join us for the class!
Back to Puerto Rico!
After a month in cold Washington, DC, we are back in Puerto Rico, where Covid is relatively low and everyone wears masks, even outside. Where the weather is warm so we can eat out safely. Where the beaches are lovely and the people are so friendly.
Road Trip!
Our first stop is the village of Cabo Rojo, in the southwest corner of PR. The drive from San Juan was 2 hours and 15 minutes. We’re staying in an apartment in the historic center, right next the the AlcaldÃa (City Hall) and two blocks from the Plaza in the center.
A number of beaches can be reached in 15 minutes or less by car, and we plan to explore as many as we can over the next month. We also plan to do a lot of hiking, find some new boutique distilleries, visit new cities, and experience life off the beaten path.
Buye Beach
Yesterday we spent the afternoon at Playa Buye, a small local beach ten minutes away. It was adorable, and remarkably crowded with Puerto Rican families for a weekday. There were a couple of bars, a waterside concession, and a number of cinderblock cabins. It was lovely until the rain came.
Balneario Boquerón
Today we’re visiting Balneario (Public Beach) Boquerón, and it’s perfection. Three miles of pristine sand and turquoise bay. Hardly any people.
Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Check back to find out!
Three Days in Culebra
We spent three days exploring Culebra, 12 miles off the east coast of Puerto Rico. It’s hard to believe that this tiny island – world-renowned for its pristine beaches, incredible snorkeling in turquoise water, and vibrant underwater landscapes – used to be used by the US Navy for bombing practice.
Culebra totals just over 10 square miles, and served as a U.S. Naval base until 1975. That’s why you can still find a couple of rusting World War II tanks there, detritus that has been reimagined as art by Culebrans. You can read all about the tanks in this article from Atlas Obscura.
The flight alone was spectacular.
More than 20% of Culebra is preserved as a National Wildlife Refuge, which serves as a habitat for endangered sea turtles and seabirds, among other creatures. The flight in and out literally takes your breath away as you behold soaring mountains, dappled clear waters, and lush forest.
If you’re looking for natural beauty, come visit. If you’re for nightlife, go elsewhere.
Three Days in Culebra YouTube Video
Related Links
Culebra
Puerto Rico Ferries
Messy Suitcase Snorkeling Culebra (Snorkeling Series Video #1)
Gypsea Mermaid Guesthouse
Dinghy Dock Restaurant
Vieques Airlink
It’s a New Year – Let’s Go For It!
Happy 2022!
It’s a new year — thank God — and despite the inconvenient evolution of Covid-19, Messy Suitcase plans to forge ahead with our traveling life this year, as safely as possible. We hope you will come along for the ride! We plan to continue helping our friends and followers stay abreast of what we’re doing with our creative retirement.
Whether you love to travel or just want to live vicariously through our adventures, we hope our journey will inspire you to think differently, to look at life through the prism of possibility, to get out there and explore!
Where are Bob and Lisa now?
We’re in Washington, DC, till mid-January, enjoying holidays with family and college break with our son Gavin and his cat, Ellie, and exploring the Nation’s Capital.
When Gavin goes back to Champlain College in Vermont, we will return to Puerto Rico. Why? Because international travel is just too difficult with Covid spiking, and Puerto Rico is a warm, lovely space to spend the winter. We lived here in the mid-1990s, and being back this past fall has felt like returning home.
1st Stop: Cabo Rojo
We will spend our first month living in the beach town of Cabo Rojo, on the SW coast of Puerto Rico. Cabo Rojo puts us within a short drive of a number of stunning beaches with excellent snorkeling, La Parguera with its bioluminescent bay, towering limestone cliffs, idyllic nature reserves, creative restaurants, and so much more! It will also give us a sense of really town living, Puertan Style. the town square is just around the corner.
(Dr. Blofeld (highlighting), CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
2nd Stop: Isabella
After a month, we will travel to Isabela, on the northeast coast. We will stay in a resort condo community right on the ocean, with a cycling trail nearby, and access to a number of surfing and snorkeling beaches.
(Dr. Blofeld (highlighting), CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
3rd Stop: San Juan
We are just not done with San Juan. We barely scraped the surface of our to-do list of activities and places to visit in Puerto Rico’s capital city, with its diverse combination of awesome beaches, historic sites, and urban culture. So we will be back in Punta Las Marias in mid-March for another month of city and urban beach exploration.
Have You Visited Our YouTube Channel?
Beto has created scores of videos of our adventures over the past three-plus years for you to check out! From strolling through the pueblo magico Tlaquepaque in Mexico, to exploring the Leather District in Leon, Mexico, to touring a coffee hacienda in the mountains of Puerto Rico, to splurging on a sunset dinner cruise in London, there is so much for you to discover at the Messy Suitcase YouTube channel!
Please subscribe today, and ring the bell to be notified of new videos!
Greenwich, England: Sea, Land and Time
We took a Thames River Tour to Greenwich, England, which then surprised us with a bounty of attractions: The Cutty Sark, the Greenwich Market, the Royal Maritime Museum, and, of course, the Prime Meridien, where East meets West!
Castillo San Cristobal: Protecting San Juan
The Spaniards built Castillo San Cristobal in the 1500s to increase the fortification of the strategic island of Puerto Rico. Let’s walk through history together!
#messysuitcase #retirement #travelblogger #travelblog #puertorico #castillosancristobal #oldsanjuan #usparkservice
Our Death-Defying Flight to Culebra from Ceiba
Watch out for that mountain! The plane that took us to Culebra was tiny and the landing terrifying! Will we survive? Watch and see.
Why are there US Army Tanks on Culebra’s Beautiful Flamenco Beach?
Why did the US Army leave two giant tanks at the end of Flamenco Beach on the Puerto Rican island of Culebra, considered one of the most beautiful beaches in the world? Find the answer in the latest Messy Suitcase YouTube video.
Big Bus Tour of DC
When you are traveling with someone without a lot of mobility, a Hop On Hop Off bus tour is the best way to give them an overview of a place. So I took my visiting sister-in-law on a Big Bus Tour of Washington, DC, on Christmas Eve. The tour is definitely overpriced at about $45 a person, but she loved it, and we had a birds-eye view of Washington’s most iconic buildings and monuments from the upper level. She loved it!
Big BusTours has a useful app that lets you follow your bus’s progress on a map, and see where the next bus is if you decide to disembark.
The audio version of the tour — everyone gets free headphones — included a lot of historical tidbits that we both found fascinating. But there are definitely some limitations to a bus. They can’t get as close as you like sometimes, so we saw the graves at Arlington Cemetery from a distance, and couldn’t even see the Potomac River when we passed the Wharf and the Southwest Waterfront. But now we know where to go back and explore!
Here are some of the sights we saw:
We are Back in the States!
We are back in the United States for a month and have settled into a beautiful apartment in the Penn Quarter of Washington, DC.
Saying Adios to Puerto Rico
Our two months in Puerto Rico were glorious and it was difficult to leave, so we of course spent some final moments enjoying the beach in front of our apartment in San Juan.
Then we headed sadly to the airport, donning long pants and shoes for the first time in two months. Even Putzie came out to say goodbye!
This was the sight out the window as our southwest jet flew out of San Juan International Airport bound for Manchester, NH, where our truck was parked.
How New England Greeted Us
After leaving a balmy 84 degrees, we stepped out of the airport to a frigid 29 degrees at the airport. We also discovered there was a Winter Storm Warning for much of the next day, our primary travel day through New England. With the sandals barely off, we were strategizing an early wake-up (after getting to bed after 2 AM) so we could cover as much ground the next day as possible before the predicted 8-10 inches swept in.
Still, this was what we encountered on the ground the next day, after we drove across Vermont to Burlington, picked up our son Gavin and his cat Ellie, and headed south to Saratoga Springs, NY.
It was a knuckle-clenching trip, especially one spot on a back road in upstate New York where our truck slip all over the road. Bb managed to right it with no harm done, but it was a tense journey from then on out, and reminded Bob why he likes to live in warm climates in the winter!
We spent the night in the best La Quinta ever, in Clifton Park, NY, where Ellie and Kaylee negotiated a reunion between growls and hisses.
It was great to be with Gavin again!
On to DC
On Sunday, we rose earlyish and continued the trek south to DC, finally moving into the Lansburgh at 425 8th Street NW at around 4 PM.
Our condo is beautiful, and the location is superb — just a couple of blocks from the National Mall, and a block from the downtown Christmas market. It even comes with a bar and a liquor cabinet for us to fill!
We are excited to begin exploring the Nation’s Capital and spending time with family and friends!
