In Novermber 2008, a few months after I graduated from college, I got the amazing opportunity to visit Puerto Rico, when one of my life-long friends invited me to tag along to a conference that was being held in San Juan. I'm not sure if it was a fluke because I've never checked on ticket prices again, but it was really pretty cheap to fly to Puerto Rico.
We started out in San Juan for 4 days during the conference and then took some time to travel around the island. Puerto Rico is relatively small but there is still a lot to see, we stayed a full 2 weeks and only really saw the East half of the island.
Puerto Rico is a US territory but it stays very true to it's own unique culture. We didn't run into many English speakers, so there was a little bit of a language barrier, but to me that's a total plus - bring on the adventure!
We took a jungle hike/ zip lining and repelling tour through the Puerto Rican rainforest. So fun! Except when we got our crash course in braking while ziplining from platform to platform (a hundred feet in the air!) which consisted of being given a worn leather workman's glove and being told "when you want to stop yourself just grab the line that you're hanging from- but make sure you grab behind the wheels and make extra sure you use your gloved hand"...
The beaches in Puerto Rico were so amazing.
The city of San Juan is a very old city and the history dork in me was in absolute heaven.
The absolute most amazing thing that I got the chance to do in Puerto Rico was kayak in a bioluminecent bay in a town called Fajardo. Puerto Rico is one of very few places that has this specific ecosystem. An organism that lives in the water turns a brilliant, florescent color when pressure is applied to it. So as we were kayaking in the dark towards this bay we couldn't see anything, but as we reached the bay the water that was displaced by our kayak put pressure on these tiny little creatures and they lit up. While we were there is also started to rain and the rain drops caused the little guys to light up all over the bay. It was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen in my entire like and I would absolutely go back to Puerto Rico just to do this again.
Unfortunately pictures don't even seem to want to attempt to capture this, but here is a picture of us in the kayak anyway and then one that the company that took us on the tour has on their website, they obviously doctored the picture and it still doesn't do it justice but it's better than nothing!
I took this trip before I got as into photography as I am now so I don't have as many pictures as I would like and I had a cheap, awful camera that erased all of my pictures about halfway through the trip so there are a lot of important things that I don't have pictures of. One is the rainforest, El Yunque, that we spent a day hiking and driving through and one was Culebra Island, a teeny, tiny island just off Puerto Rico with the most beautiful beaches ever. Both are absolutely worth a look if you ever make it to Puerto Rico!
No comments:
Post a Comment