Back in Fresno

It was a long and tiresome flight home, each leg was delayed, an hour & twenty minutes in Puerto Rico, 50mins in Miami, and 40mins in LA. But we finally got home at about 10:45 last night. We had dinner at Mangosteen (there was nothing to eat along the way). It was good to be home. The dogs missed us and we the dogs. Now it's to the business of getting back to business. Trying to get things back in order. Tomorrow is Easter, it'll be good to see the family. We're going to get film developed to take over.

We usually do up a pretty extensive vegan Easter lunch, but I think we're going to keep it simple this year.

It's good to be back, but Puerto Rico is still pretty fresh in our memories.

Hopefully it's not goodbye Puerto Rico, but we'll see you next time...

Goodbye Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico is a wonderful place. For such a small island, it packs a lot in. We barely scratched the surface. Even so, it's time to go home. We're packing up getting ready to head down for one last breakfast. We fly out at 11am for a marathon trip home (two stops along the way), we land in Fresno 10pm.

Last Night in Puerto Rico

It was a good way to finish our trip. We started with dinner at the Italian place down the street. Then we came back to the hotel for some drinks (actually had some sangria with dinner) swimming and relaxing, which included smoking the cigars we picked up in San Juan on the second day.


Aside from the fact that the pool was as crowded as it's ever been, everything went about as well as it could for a last night.


We mostly talked, drank, and smoked. It's always bittersweet on the last night of a trip with friends you don't see very often...laughs mixed with, "we're going to miss you," and "can't wait to get together again." There were more laughs than anything, and that's all you can ask for.

We finished up our cigars then headed off to bed...early morning.

Day 5: Arecibo, etc

Today didn't turn out quite as we planned, but in many ways, it turned out better.

The first oddity was our attempt to go to the caverns at Camuy, which came highly recommended by several acquaintances and the travel books. When we bought the tickets at about 9am, they said it would be about a 25 minute wait until our tour. The music in the waiting area was true hell - it was literally one song with bad vocals on a continuous loop. The same awful song over and over and over... When we asked about our tour again at 10am, they said it wouldn't be until 11:30 because of the tour buses. It was frustrating at first, and then we just said heck with it (or words to that effect) and left. It was somewhat liberating to be able to let go of a plan like that.

So we went to our next intended destination, Arecibo, the largest radio telescope in the world (also where they shot parts of the films Contact and Golden Eye 007). Arecibo was great. We got there before much of a crowd was there, so it was pleasantly low key. The telescope was impressive and expansive, and some of the astronomy exhibits were nice.

Next we went to a restaurant Lisa had read about and had a pretty nice lunch. Puerto Rican food exhibits a much greater appreciation for yuca root than I imagined possible, so that's been fun. At lunch, we had yuca fries, mashed yuca, fried, formed into something about the size of a fried zucchini stick. Good sangria at this place, too. The best part was definitely the view, since we were eating outside right on the beach.

On our way to the restaurant, we had spotted a great looking beach. We didn't have swim suits or towels with us, but the beach was so enticing we had to swim in it anyway. So we went to a nearby drug store and bought some towels, then went back to the beach and just swam in our cloths. It was definitely worth it. The waves were pretty strong, so we didn't go out far, but we had a blast.

All in all the day felt fun and spontaneous, yet we were still able to cross something off of our wish list of things to do, so it was a fantastic way to spend our last full day in Puerto Rico.

Tonight we'll just hang out at the hotel: have a drink, smoke some cigars, maybe swim, and just chill...make the most of our last evening to hang out with Mike and Lisa!