Because life is short & the world is big
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!
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Watch out for that mountain! The plane that took us to Culebra was tiny and the landing terrifying! Will we survive? Watch and see.
We are back in the United States for a month and have settled into a beautiful apartment in the Penn Quarter of Washington, DC.
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.
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 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!
Beto’s enjoying a last hour of beach time before we fly to the snowy northeast today.
Lisa is capping her last run in San Juan in 2021 with coffee and a pastry (from 787 Coffee, of course) by the ocean.
Enjoy some last images of the weird, wonderful beach at Punta Las Marías, our home for the past month.
This evening we board a plane bound for Manchester, NH, where our car is parked. Then, tomorrow we plan to get up super early, drive across the state of Vermont before an approaching snowstorm, scoop up Gavin and his cat Ellie at Champlain College in Burlington, and drive down to Sarasota, NY for the night. On Sunday, we rise early and drive another seven hours to our next home: Washington, DC!
We are not looking forward to going from 84 degrees to 29 in a few hours’ time.
Puerto Rico is the rum capital of the world! So we have set out to visit as many rum factories as possible. We started with the island’s oldest, Ron Del Barrilito, in Bayamon, just outside the capital San Juan. In this part, we learn how Barrrilito rum is made with help from an excellent tour guide named Edgardo. Next time, we will taste it!
We drove up into the mountains with a friend yesterday to see the home he and his wife built in Utuado. The couple (they asked that their names not be used, for privacy), real estate hobbyists, scooped up 38 acres of property sight-unseen at auction 20 years ago, for just $1,000 an acre. Then they drove up to see what they had bought.
What they found was lush land, covered with banana and orange trees, and a slab where a house had been. The views into the valley and across the karst mountains to the ocean beyond were spectacular.
The pair camped on the land for many years, driving up on weekends to escape the bustling city of San Juan where they lived, two hours and a universe away from this quiet spot where roosters squawked and the coqui chorus reached a crescendo during the dark night, where the filament of stars was awe-inspiring. But one weekend when they were inundated with torrential rain for two straight days, which soaked through their tent, and they decided enough was enough.
It was time to build a house.
Working with friends and neighbors over a period of years, the couple designed and built a small, rustic home with a large main room, a master bedroom, a loft space for their son, and a partially covered porch with an outdoor wood stove and oven. They used found materials and built tables and gigantic doors using local hardwood. Consequently the house looks like it has been there forever.
The home is completely off the grid, with solar panels on the roof providing the small amount of electricity they need. A cistern collects rainwater for showers and dishes. The place is kept cool by its high-altitude location and breezes that pass through the windows. In fact, it was ten degrees warmer than the city below!
The house has evolved into a small fruit farm. Passion fruit vines climb up the side of the house. Banana trees abound. The yard hosts abundant bushes offering juicy blackberries. There’s also a bocce court.
We hiked through the woods to their one-acre coffee grove, wearing tall rubber boots (to protect from fire ants and navigate mud) and deep-pocketed aprons. Our friend used a machete to clear the trail where needed. We then spent a lovely hour plucking deep red coffee cherries off the plants. We then hiked to a neighbor’s abandoned coffee grove and picked those bushes clean as well.
We also found a branch still holding a huge bunch of bananas on the trailside.
One the way back, John and Bob picked fresh juicy oranges out of some tall trees, using a long orange picker. Watch a video of them picking here.
Then we had lunch, burgers cooked outside, on bread bought from a bakery down the mountain, with papayas, bananas, and blackberries from the yard. Magnificent!
This is Part 2 of our Hacienda Iluminada Tour. We learn how coffee is processed for 787 Coffee, and then taste it! Visit our previous blog for Part 1, touring the farm and learning how the coffee is grown!
Enjoy the video, and don’t forget to subscribe to our channel!
How does coffee grow? What does a coffee bean look like? We tasted 787 Coffee in San Juan and had to jump on the first tour of Hacienda Iluminada, where this rich, full-bodied is grown, processed, and roasted. Enjoy the video, and don’t forget to subscribe to our channel!
When Bob and I lived in Puerto Rico in the 1990s, the US Navy owned a large chunk of Vieques. It had bought 22,000 acres, or about two-thirds of the island, from the native inhabitants in the 1940s, and used 8,000 acres on the western end of the island as a naval ammunition depot until 2001, when the property was returned to the island. You can read the history here, including Vieques residents’ health effects from the Naval presence and protests to force the Navy to leave the island.
But long story short, despite negative effects, the long US Navy presence meant that huge swaths of the island were never developed. So today it is the Vieques National Wildlife Refuge, considered one of the most ecologically diverse refuges in the Caribbean and the largest wildlife refuge in the region.
It has beautiful, undeveloped beaches and stellar snorkeling, and a few hiking trails. (Unfortunately, a large chunk of the land is not open to the public because of the danger from possible encounters with unexploded ordnance, which the Navy is slowly cleaning up.)
Snorkeling and pristine beaches are the island’s main draws, and we came with our own gear, prepared to take advantage of both. With only 2½ days to explore, we could barely taste the multitude of beaches started with Chiva Beach (formerly the Naval Base’s Blue Beach), which had a bit of dried sargassum along its shoreline but was still lovely, with clear turquoise water and reefs just a short swim out. There were a number, but we did the best we could! The Vieques Insider website was a great resource for the best places to pull on our fins and masks and wade into the water.
Here are the highlights:
Chiva Beach: We passed a number of individual entrances to the beach, numbered, with parking for just one or two cars at each. We finally chose #10 and settled ourselves in the shade among the mangroves, when a huge iguana pooped spectacularly from a branch behind us. How often do you get to witness that? A little lizard also watched us curiously, and many majestic pelicans flew by.
I snorkeled there and saw some lovely coral and a multitude of undersea life. On my way back into shore, I found myself in the magical middle of an enormous school of dancing silverfish.
Caracas Beach: Caracas is a larger beach on a bay with lovely, calm water for swimming, and even parking, shelters, and even a bathroom, something the smaller beaches were lacking. There we relaxed on a concrete strip among the trees and watched the visiting horses wander around and forage in the garbage.
In fact, we ran into horses everywhere we went. Also, weirdly, a wild pig.
Esperanza Beach: Esperanza Beach, near the town by the same name on the south coast, is primarily a local hangout, a little grittier than the others because of the parking lot behind us in which men smoked weed and teens hung out, but we enjoyed its charms. Its most striking feature is a deserted concrete pier which provides an eerie, fascinating snorkel experience. You can dart between the coral-encrusted pylons and watch fish swimming in and out among old anchors and piles of thick rope abandoned on the seafloor below. I almost ran into huge purple jellyfish a couple of times. People claimed sea turtles hang out underneath the pier, but we weren’t lucky enough to see any. Kids jump off the pier into the water on weekends.
Black Sand Beach: We had to hike for six-tenths of a mile through lush woods to reach Black Sand Beach, though the GPS first took us down a long, incredibly bumpy, narrow dirt road to a cliff near the beach. Black Sand Beach is so named because it boasts volcanic sand, but we found it to be overhyped. The walk was lovely, but the beach itself was not a place where you would want to hang out, and the so-called “black sand” just made the area look dirty. However, the views of the sea crashing into the cliffs were spectacular. Here’s a video of the beach.
Pata Prieta Beach: Pata Prieta, not far from Chiva, offered some gorgeous snorkeling along the rocky east side of its cove. Among the vast quantity of sea life we encountered while swimming in shallow water above the coral reef, I saw a small barracuda and even an octopus! He was hiding in plain sight on the seafloor, camouflaged among the rocks and plants. I only recognized him because I had seen the documentary My Octopus Teacher on Netflix. He crept along as I watched him, before finally deciding to launch himself and swim away, shedding his rocky camouflage and revealing himself to be a translucent orange swimmer.
The highlight of our trip was the touristy experience everyone needs to have, a Bioluminescent Bay Tour. We went out in transparent double kayaks the first night to see the brightest bioluminescent bay in the world with Taino Aqua Adventures. Our guide, Kevin, took us out into Mosquito Bay in the darkness of a waxing moon under mercifully cloudy skies, and the water shimmered green, blue, or white (depending on your vision) with every stroke of the paddle. The water also sparkled underneath the boat as we moved through the inky water. It was magical!
But actually, it was science. Kevin explained that the luminescence in the bay is caused by a microorganism, the dinoflagellate Pyrodinium Bahamense, which glows whenever the water is disturbed, leaving a trail of neon blue.
Sorry, because of the darkness and the fact that our hands were busy paddling, we were not able to get any photos or video. You can see what it looks like on Taino Aqua Adventures’ website.
We have so much more to share, but I think you are just going to need to visit Vieques yourself!
Here are some resources to get you started:
We just spent a glorious month in the northeast coastal town of Luquillo, Puerto Rico. When we left our seventh-floor condo with its glorious view of the ocean after a month’s stay, we thought sadly that there was no way our next place could possibly be as good. Especially since it was in San Juan, a metropolitan area, instead of an idyllic beach town.
We were wrong.
I always have trouble with the concept of “halfway.” Any time I’m on vacation, I get a little depressed when we pass the midpoint. In my mind, every minute from then on takes me a step closer to the end of vacation.
So we have one month left of our stay in Puerto Rico, and that meant moving to our second residence, just 40 minutes west. When we pulled into the driveway of 6 Calle Villa Internacional at Punta Las Marias, a coastal residential neighborhood at the eastern edge of San Juan, we were greeted by John Lombardo, the gregarious American who owns this house, his friendly old dog Lola and cat Putzie. He immediately made us feel at home, giving us a tour of the property and our apartment.
There are actually four apartments in two adjacent houses united by a covered courtyard. John and his wife Sylvia live in the front building, and there are two units on the ground floor. As he led us to ours, Kaylee in tow in her travel crate, we passed several comfortable seating areas, a desk and chair, two hammocks, and a barbecue grill. Kaylee hissed at the curious cat and dog as they sniffed at her before we ascended the stairs to our apartment.
It exceeded all expectations.
First of all, the ocean is crashing against the rocks literally 50 feet from our front door. Salty breezes chase each other through the apartment. The unit is huge, with two large bedrooms, two large bathrooms, and a generous living/dining/kitchen.
The master bedroom has a king-sized bed, a sitting area, a large desk, and a huge walk-in closet.
The second bedroom, which Gavin will use when he comes home for Thanksgiving next week, has a queen-sized bed (which Kaylee the cat immediately claimed) and a desk (which Bob immediately claimed).
Kaylee also loves the little rug in the living room. When we were in Luquillo, it took her a month to relax into the place. Here she has immediately adjusted.
The piece de resistance for me is the reading nook next to a bookshelf.
We can walk out to the ocean, turn right, and walk to Isla Verde Beach. We’re a block off Calle Loiza, a street famous for its huge variety of restaurants and coffee shops. There’s an ice cream shop on the corner and a coffee shop with the best brunches in town a block away. Even the grocery store is within walking distance. Old San Juan is a 15-minute drive.
Putzie keeps dropping by to visit. A couple of days ago she licked my yogurt bowl clean on the patio and Kaylee hissed at her through the screen. This morning she returned and peed on the pavement and rug right outside the door, marking the territory as hers. We’ll keep you posted on the kitty drama.
I think we’re going to be happy here. Kaylee certainly is. This place just feels like home.
