Puerto Rico

I woke up at about 6 a.m. on the 7th to watch us pull into Puerto Rico. When I walked outside on the 7th deck I could hardly believe my eyes of the view. The sun was just starting to rise and right next to it you could just see Puerto Rico. I won’t even try to describe how the sun rising and the clouds and scenery looked. All I can say about that is that the clouds were a pinkish-red-orange hue and the only place I had ever seen anything like this before were the drawings and paintings that you can only find in children’s books. It did remind me of a song too, which is, “Orange Sky” by Alexi Murdoch. If the internet on the ship is being fast when I post this I’ll post a few pictures for you guys. There’s no way to describe it, you just have to see it to believe it and even then the pictures don’t do it enough justice. But the pictures that I got are still amazing. As we finally pulled into the port in Puerto Rico we had the governor of Puerto Rico come onto our ship and give us a speech. Which was pretty cool. From his speech we learned that Viagra is made in Puerto Rico along with tons of other pharmaceuticals. He talked about a lot of other stuff too, but that’s the main thing that I remember.

Puerto Rico is an interesting place. It’s pretty much just a mini USA (I say mini because it’s a small island). Except for that all the signs are in spanish and everybody speaks Spanish. But 98% of the people that I talked to also spoke English, which was very nice because due to the wonderous nature of the Jefferson County Public school system in Colorado I could say hi to them and ask them how they were and that was about all. But they don’t consider themselves to be Americans or Puerto-Rican Americans at all. If you ask them what nationality they are they say with a very strong emphasis and a Puerto-Rican accent, “Puerto Rican of course.”

Over the three days that I was there I walked around with some people and explored Old San Juan. Old San Juan is pretty much your olden day town. It still has a bunch of culture in it. It consists of 2 forts, one of which is on the very tip (we passed by it coming in to the port and is in a few pictures). Old San Juan also has a ton of shops, everywhere you go there are shops. I also hit some beaches!!!!!!!!! Which were very nice, except for the extremely high content of salt in the ocean. My roommate and I ended up taking a very expensive cab ride. And I’m sure I’m forgetting about a bunch of other things that I did. One other thing that I did was the Bioluminescent Kayak Tour. I had arranged this back in the states for a group of people. We put 33 people into two 15 passenger vans and took an hour and a half drive out to a certain shoreline (it wasn’t as uncomfortable as it sounds). Then we got a bunch of kayaks and tour guides and we kayaked for about a mile down this pitch black, jungle-like, small trail (some of us un-intentionally played bumper-kayaks) to this bay. What happens in this bay is that when the water is disturbed the plankton in the water give off little ions of light, thus making the water glow when you move it. We were allowed to swim in it and it was the coolest thing ever. When you’re in this water and you’re swimming your arms and legs and pretty much your whole body has this turquoisish glow to it. If you splash it on yourself you can see the individual plankton glowing. It’s pretty sweet, plus we got complimentary Pina Coladas afterwards.

I would’ve loved to spend some more time in Puerto Rico and see Puerto Rico’s rain forest (El Yunque) or go visit the town of Ponce or just spend more time exploring the island. But our next stop is Brazil and I cannot wait for Carnival. But right now I have a ton of homework to do and I’m really tired so until next time, Ciao. As always if you have any questions/comments/suggestions e-mail me: jlissy1987@gmail.com