Puerto Rico!

5.19 Tuesday: Becky and Tristan drove us to the airport on Tuesday morning for our first flight to Dallas. As we got off the plane we heard a guy yell, "Go big or go home!" Yeehaw, right?! It was about a 4 hour flight with a bit of a layover, then another 4 hour flight to San Juan, Puerto Rico. We arrived, safe and sound in San Juan to meet Nacho and head toward At Wind Chimes Inn for the night. Maggie and I drank a beer and ate mangos by the pool before showers and bed.

5.20 Wednesday: We lounged around the Inn while we waited for others to arrive on Wednesday afternoon, picked folks up at the airport and moved into the dorms at Universidad Sagrado Corazon. The rooms are segregated by gender, have strict rules (no visitors, no gender mingling, no alcohol, etc.), and are very different than we're used to. There are guards everywhere and it's a gated campus... very strange. We are all feeling a bit like we're back in middle school and not to be trusted. But, we have a clean room to call our own and we're definitely making it work. :)

5.21 Thursday: We toured Old San Juan on foot and by bus, visiting the Castillo San Juan Felipe del Morro and the Castillo San Cristóbal. These forts were some of the originals built by the Spanish colonizers. San Juan is one of the most historic cities in Puerto Rico, almost completely walled in by these fortifications.


U.S. flag, Puerto Rican flag, and Spanish military flag.






This is a picture of La Perla, a very poor neighborhood that is literally just outside the city walls of San Juan.


Thursday night we hit a couple of bars for dinner and the Laker's game.

5.22 Friday: We visited the Caguana Indigenous Ceremonial Park of the Taino peoples. There were something like 8 different clay ball fields and hundreds of petroglyphs to photograph and enjoy.






Here's what I remember... the Taino people had chiefs (caciques) and often practiced polygamy and small communal living, worshiped the 3-pointed cemi, had many gods (one called Huracan)... I'll fill in more details when I talk to Nacho again. :) We thoroughly enjoyed the muddy clay because it had been raining all morning.







Here's the river below the park


I saw my first termite nest in the trees, watched a lizard inflate and deflate a white pouch on its chest, and tested the Brazilian ant piles for their speedy response to invasion. Yikes! We poked one with a stick and it was instantly crawling with the vicious little biters. Glad I never found one with my bare toe.
After the park we hung out by a lake, went on a short boat ride and enjoyed the scenery.

We saw a plant called Mori Viví that pulls its leaves back into the stem when touched. I pictured a little brain working pretty hard in there somewhere every time I grazed it with my fingers.



Nacho made us Puerto Rican beans and rice for dinner... delish.

5.23 Saturday: We did a lot of driving along the coast today and then spent the afternoon on the beach in the rain. It was magical... great, warm water and cool, refreshing drops. We ate and played and napped in between showers. A few of us went exploring down the beach and swam to a little natural wonder that disappeared when the tide came in. It was a little coral spot with all kinds of plant life and very interesting crabs and shelled things. We found sea slugs the size of a football, saw something that looked a whole lot like a snake (Maggie says there aren't snakes in the Atlantic, but I'm pretty sure my eyes were not deceiving me), and took under water photos of the anemones. I feel asleep for a little too long and am paying for it with a sunburned back, but it was a great day. My back is sticky with aloe under my shirt, the ultimate sign of summer.