Hi faithful readers! I returned from PR at midnight Tuesday and ALMOST started writing my travel blog less than 24 hours later. But… the kid was home for spring break (a pleasant surprise as I thought I would completely miss their visit home) and yesterday was Fifa’s 9th birthday so … no blogging time. Alex is back in NYC now and Fifa is resting on my office couch after the extra long birthday walks and “cake” yesterday.
I had never been to Puerto Rico so I jumped at the chance to go there with a few friends who were competing in the Ironman 70.3 Puerto Rico half-Ironman race. Mark and Jaime had done the race 2 years ago (after scheduling delays for Covid pandemic cancellations). The idea of flying my bike that far for a half-Ironman race was not appealing but the idea of traveling to a new tropical destination was irresistible. I wanted to volunteer at the race but all the slots were filled when I tried to sign up; it was just as well because I was busy that day between spectating, helping out my friends, and exercising myself.
I would have spent longer in Puerto Rico but I had misunderstood and thought that BOTH Mark and his wife AND Jaime and his wife would be there for only Friday to Tuesday. Jaime and his wife (and 2 of their 4 kids) went down on Thursday and stayed a few days after we left. Four days was fine for just relaxing in the resort area of San Juan and a run around Old Towne. Next time I want to spend over a week so I get to see the inland rainforests and Vieques Island (which has a bioluminescent bay and wild horses).
It seems to me that PR has almost everything that Costa Rica offers but is closer and less complicated as it is part of the United States. I am so sad lately when I read more and more articles about how Ecuador and Costa Rica are increasingly suffering the same narco-traffic-associated violence as the rest of Central America.
Fifa is smart enough to start getting concerned when she sees luggage…
For a short trip, I was going to pack just a carry-on bag and overstuff a backpack. But as I knew that Mark would be checking his bike box, I used a larger suitcase and brought an excess amount of clothes and exercise gear, even some flippers for snorkeling, and of course one of my stylish travel hats (baseball hats just say Ugly American tourist in Europe or South America).
I woke up early to get in an hour on my bike trainer in the basement as the rest of the day would be sitting in planes and airports. While stretching afterwards I looked at my phone and saw I had gotten 3 emails from Jetblue. The first had come at 4:30 am and said our 1 pm flight to San Juan from JFK was delayed until 5 pm! Ack. But the next two emails said the delay had been shortened and our flight would be at 2:30 pm. I recently read that JetBlue has slipped to 9 out of 10 in the airline rankings for delayed and canceled flights so I guess having only 1 of my 4 flights for this trip delayed was “good” luck.
As soon as I stepped out of the Jetway at JFK a bird flew right in front of me. Although the sparrows are “cute” while hopping around looking for crumbs, I thought maybe they should make some effort to remove them when I saw one land in the water fountain and someone else noticed bird poop on a chair.
It was a 3.5-hour flight from NYC to San Juan. I had listened to an audiobook in the terminal and then read my Kindle for a short time on the plane before just resting/napping for most of the flight.
The Kindle and Audiobook were:
The audiobook was by the author of “The Alice Network” a book I had enjoyed (about British female spies in France in WW2). The Rose Code was historical fiction (based on some real characters). It is about some women (and men) who worked at Bletchley Park in England where Alan Turing and others led the efforts to decrypt Nazi messages. It was nicely read and enjoyable, I didn’t learn until the “afterword” that it was reality-based (and I had thought some of the plot was too far-fetched!!!).
The Kindle book was an enigma. It showed up from the public library waitlist and I didn’t remember at all where I had heard about it (likely from the NY Times book review or on NPR or a Goodreads.com recommendation). I see now that it was one of the nominees for “Best Sci-Fi Book of 2023”. It is about a slightly dystopic near-future world where criminals and opponents of the repressive government are “marked” and discriminated against rather than imprisoned. It was excellent. It did have a ton of graphic gay female sex scenes in it.
I assume I was like most Americans in that I had no idea exactly where PR was. I imagined it was closer to Florida. Someone this morning at swim practice asked me how big the island was and I said it was much bigger than a Virgin Island but smaller than Cuba. At about 100 by 35 miles it is the same size as Jamaica or Connecticut. It has a population of 3.5 Million; 350,000 live in San Juan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rico
Below is a nice article on the political/economic situation of PR.
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/puerto-rico-us-territory-crisis#chapter-title-0-8
Longstanding anti-Hispanic racism by mainlanders is the only reason that it is not a state 130 years after being taken from Spain in 1898. Although US “citizens”, and required to be drafted if needed (as they were in great numbers for all our wars), they have no representation in Congress and don’t get to vote for President.
Traveling from the mainland USA is super easy as one just needs a driver’s license and there are no customs to deal with.
It was a little drizzly with low clouds but I got some good photos on our final approach.
The Caribe Hilton was perfectly located (and was actually the official race hotel; registration and expo were in its conference center). The Laguna was a manatee sanctuary and the cove below the “Run Out” label was a sea turtle reserve. Both areas were off-limits to motorized boats so they were dreamlike swimming and snorkeling locations and also used by SUPs and Kayaks. There were also a few other hotels adjacent to the Hilton and some Condos where people (like Mark and his wife) rented AirBnBs. The peninsula labeled “swim in” had dozens of nice hotels and shopping/dining areas.
Because our flight did not land until 5:30 instead of 4:00, when we were picked up by Jaime we went straight to dinner (at a big luxurious mall with an Apple store and random Porsches on display) instead of first checking into our hotels as had been planned. We ran into an old friend of Jaime’s in the mall and I got to pet her friendly and soft dog!
Dinner was busy with about a dozen of us at a long table, one half speaking Spanish and the other half English. It took FOREVER for our food to come (I had eaten an apple and a Clif bar before noon and it was after 7 pm already). I just wanted to be in my hotel room bed after being up since 4:30 am and all the travel.
After a (not) “quick” stop at a foodstore for the AirBnB people I was dropped at the Hilton at 11pm. My room was very nice and had an amazing view!
I could hear the crashing waves with my patio door open and also the peeps and chirps of the Coqui tree frogs that called from dusk to dawn. I saw one or two quickly hop off of paths into the bushes on early morning runs but never saw any on leaves for a photo. Jaime told us that they are only found in PR (and in Hawaii where some were inadvertently imported and became invasive)
