We wanted to go on a fun trip so we booked a cruise for the family a few months back. It was slated for April. However, as it approached, the cruiselines we not able to start cruises by then so we had to postpone. Harper pumped them up quite a bit about the cruise so they were pretty crest fallen when it all fell through.
Then some flight deals for Puerto Rico popped up and we jumped on them. Booking flights for 2 weeks away! After a binge deep dive weekend researching Puerto Rico, I had a loose itinerary and booked some hotels.
The trip turned out absolutely amazing.
Some background: Harper, our most vocal critic of all things, had never stopped talking about our impromptu trip to Hawaii so she was worried it wouldn't be nearly as good. By the end of the trip, she said it was as good as Hawaii and that she wanted to return again. I think that means it is a win.
Puerto Rico is still just reopening to tourists (from Covid) and our trip was mostly during the weekdays; so we ended up having most beaches and destinations all to ourselves.
The highlights were the Beaches, the Rain Forest, natural water slides, old San Juan and Rincon.
Here is some of the more memorable things that happened.
A four hour layover
The drawback to getting ridiculously cheap tickets is the two layovers; one was 4 hours in Fort Worth Texas. We had some time to kill. Reece and Gideon spent a lot of it riding their sky train and at some of the art exhibits.
Almost had a Jeep
Having 5 kids has it's challenges with rental cars. You need to make sure the car really fits the whole crew. I had reserved a full size SUV that guaranteed to seat 7, but when we arrived, they didn't have any. The attendant offered me a jeep, but that wouldn't hold us all so we ended up with a mini-van (again). The kids were pretty shocked when I told them we could have had a jeep and all agreed they would have rode dirty to make it work. Oh well.
"I want that Truck"
It would seems as if Puerto Rico was the Ford Ranger captial of the world. Hudson was been saving up for a truck. She really liks the Ford Ranger and Toyota Tacoma. Every 5 minutes Hudson would call out, "Ooh, I really like that truck." "Oh, that one is the perfect color". If Puerto Rico wasn't on an island, she might have bought one while we were there and driven it home.
Rabie Dogs
On things we noticed pretty quickly was the number of stray dogs wandering around. They were totally harmless, but Reece liked to refer to them as 'Rabie Dogs'.
Flat tire
On our drive across the island, we got a flat tire. We were pretty deflated about it, but it ended up getting it fixed in amazingly fast time. We were on a toll road at the time, so some incident management guy came along and helped us put the spare on. Then we drove over to a tire shop and they immediately patched the tire and put it back on in about 15 minutes. We were back on the road in no time. Amazing.
Don't Tell Tate
Since the trip came together so quickly, Megan decided not to tell Tate about the trip. She didn't want him to get homesick. Tate usually callls Megan every other Monday, so he wasn't supposed to call on the Monday we'd be there. Well, he ended up calling on the Monday while we were walking about San Juan. After a minute of talking to Megan, he asked, "Where are you?" The secret was out.
'Would you like fish with that?'
While out on Vieques island, we did the amazinbioluminence glass bottom kayak tour at night The water lit up as we paddled. It was absolutely surreal and amazing. On our way back, a fish (it looked like a mini sword fish) jumped into Hudson and Harper's boat; right onto Hudson's lap. She naturally had an absolute freakout. The fish fell under her seat and the tour guide had to come fish (pun intended) it out.
Pina coladas
Hotel Disappointment
We traveled to the island of Vieques for one day. We were shocked when we arrived at our hotel; the Wave. It was much more run down than the photos advertised online. It was especially demoralizing for the kids because we had just left the sparkling Wyndam resort; which the kids couldn't stop talking about how high class it was. Luckily it was only one night.
Golf Carts
On Vieques, we needed transportation, so I opted for something different. I rented two golf carts. It was really fun. Harper and Hudson even got to drive them; which Harper loved.
Don't Tell Tate
Since the trip came together so quickly, Megan decided not to tell Tate about the trip. She didn't want him to get homesick. Tate usually callls Megan every other Monday, so he wasn't supposed to call on the Monday we'd be there. Well, he ended up calling on the Monday while we were walking about San Juan. After a minute of talking to Megan, he asked, "Where are you?" The secret was out.
Mini donuts
Close to Rincon, there was a mini donut food truck that we stopped by. They made us a batch of a dozen mini-donuts. The kids inhailed them before I was even done paying for them, so we ordered another 2 dozen. We liked them so much, we stopped by the next day and ordered another 3 dozen.
Sara alert
This was hilarious. About a day after arriving Megan and I got alerts on our phone in Spanish. All we could read is "Sara Alert". We assumed this was similar to the missing child Amber Alters we occasionally get in Utah. We kept getting more throughout the trip and it really freaked Megan. She was thinking that lots of kids were getting kidnapped here. Finally, on our second to last day of our trip, I got a call from the Puerto Rico national guard asking why I wasn't responding to their Covid tests (asking if we were exhibiting any symptoms). Oopsy. lWell, they switched them to English and we realized we just needed to be replying with a "No" each day. Ha ha.
Abandoned Hotel
Our fifth night in Puerto Rico was in a hotel in Rincon. They told us they wouldn't be there so they sent us instructions on how to get into the hotel, and then into our room. There was no front desk attendant. I called the guy a couple times to ask questions. Even in the morning, there was no one around. When we left, the guy just told us to leave the keys at the front desk. The hotel was great, it even had a cool rooftop deck (that we had to let ourselves up to). It was just weird we never saw anyone in person.
Turn off the dang alarm
When we arrived at the aforementioned hotel, there was a neat atrium attached to the room. However, there was a horrifically loud chirping sound coming from there. It sounded like some type of alarm that had tripped. And it showed now signs of stopping. It was definitely going to keep us awake. I called the 'absent' front desk attendant and asked if they could turn of the alarm. He laughed and told me those were Coqui frogs; apparently the loudest frongs in thw the world. He assured me they would eventually fall asleep. And they did.
No comments:
Post a Comment