Puerto Rico

Table of Contents

About this quest

If you can find a trip to Puerto Rico for $170 (round trip), you'd take it as well, right?

Puerto Rico, a current U.S. territory and former Spanish colony, located only 4 hours from Boston, is where Erica and I took off for adventure. With little research or planning beyond housing and a flight, we decided to take our chances and explore the PR.

Having not travelled, this was a great way to explore at low cost with someone I adore.

Breakfast in the PR

The trip started off with the flight (Spirit Airlines) getting delayed, leaving us coming closer to 2am instead of midnight. This, however did not deter us and we were able to get to the Airbnb without issues other than exhaustion.

The following morning we proceeded to get breakfast at a local cafe, where we inadvertently sat across from the VP of legal at SpaceX (Christopher Cardaci), photo on the left. He worked for Invest Puerto Rico and was the deputy secretary for the PR department of economic development and commerce!

P.S. the food and coffee was excellent!

Olympus XA | 28mm | Fuji Superia 200

Old SanJuan

Olympus XA | 28mm | Fuji Superia 200

Old Sanjuan is filled with bright and pastel-colored buildings, with a bright blue sky. Not only were the buildings stunning, the streets were filled with culture, bars, gift shops, and cafe's all of which had wonderful atmospheres. In between, different sections of the city contained open spaces with fountains, trees, and statues.

Olympus XA | 28mm | Fuji Superia 200

The Hilton "Break in"

Being in beach territory, we of course wanted to explore the beach. While exploring the coast line we stumbled across a private beach... which just so happened to belong to the Hilton. We ended up talking our way into having a tour guide of the Hilton believe we were staying there

We later "wandered" back onto the premises to bombard their curated private beach, it was phenomenal

Olympus XA | 28mm | Fuji Superia 20o

Olympus XA | 28mm | Fuji Superia 200 Olympus XA | 28mm | Fuji Superia 200

Museums of San Juan

Erica and I spent extensive time at various museums in order to understand the history and context of Puerto Rico. Through those museums, you could feel that the art reflected the history of oppression that Puerto Rico had gone through. The art shows the beauty of the forests overtaking what was once symbols of prosperity. Artwork showing the desperation of the struggle of slavery, submission from the Spanish and the glimpse of hope and revival from the U.S. which they crushed.

Olympus XA | 28mm | Fuji Superia 200

El Yunuqe National Forest

One of the items on our itinerary was to hike in the El Yunuque rain forest, however this trip didnt' come without it's own setbacks. In order to get there, we needed to rent a car, with Erica being the only one with a license. Getting the car wasn't an issue, however we had heard about random fees they would try to tack on, which we were weary about. Eventually they got to the question, "do you want to pay $6/day for a toll pass," we stupidly decided to say no to save 24 bucks... little did we know we would fall victim to a toll. In the end we took a wrong turn and spent 15 minutes to mentally prepare for the $150 fee we would have to pay for a 2 dollar toll because we thought we could avoid them... Regardless the forest was stunning.

Olympus XA | 28mm | Fuji Superia 200