Nov 22 - 27, 2007

It was a long journey to fly from San Jose, CA to Puerto Rico with two stops in between. I was expecting scattered rain but the weather was good during our entire stay there. We reached Puerto Rico around 12.30pm and after picking up the rental car, we dropped our luggages in Comfort Inn in Condado (about 1 mile from Old San Juan) and headed straight to the Old San Juan city.

On the next day (Nov 23), we started our journey to the West side of the island by stopping by at the Bacardi factory. Unfortunately, it was closed for Thanksgiving and we didn't get our free drinks there. As we were driving towards Arecibo, we passed an outlet mall and Irene demanded us to stop for 15mins in Ralph Lauren shop. Knowing that we won't have a peaceful journey to Arecibo unless we comply to her demand, we stopped but with one condition - that she will buy us (Patrick, Tzun-Wei and I) a T-shirt if it is less than $10. Everyone got lucky and within 15min, she came out with 2 big bags including free T-shirts for three of us..HEHE..According to her, Ralph Lauren outlet in Puerto Rico is cheaper and has wider selection of clothes than other RL outlets in the US. Actually, each of us did buy one or two shirts there despite having a free T-shirt from Irene :-) We spent a night in Rincon at a very nice and reasonably priced villa called Villa Antonio. Our two rooms suite (USD181/night) has nothing fancy but a balcony facing the sea.

We spent a lot of time on the road on the third day (Nov 24). After having a very cheap breakfast with local price in Rincon, we headed to Ponce by passing Cabo Rojo, San German and Guanica in between. From Ponce, we took a detour to the panoramic road and it is not really recommended unless you have lots of time to spend and don't get car sick easily due to the winding and narrow road in the jungle. Since we were running out of time to get back to San Juan before dark and Irene wasn't feeling too well, we came out from the panoramic road to use the highway instead. However, the wasted 2.5hours on panoramic road wasn't that bad after all since we now reserve the rights to brag about going through this road :-) We reached at our rental apartment in Isla Verde (very close to the airport and inside San Juan) around 8.30pm. Not wanting to waste any time, we dropped off our luggage and went out to check out a cock fighting arena across the street. Unfortunately, it was closed earlier than usual due to some human fights in the afternoon. Just like the cocks, human male species could not resist the temptation not to fight as well.. hehe..

Sunday was planned for Vieques Island and we had to wake up very early to catch the first boat at 9.30am to the island. On weekends, there are only 3 boat trips to the island. To get to the island, we drove 40min from Isla Verde to Fajardo and took another hour of boat ride.

We came back to the main island on Monday (Nov 26) after staying one night in Vieques island. In the afternoon, we went back to old San Juan for another round of sight seeing. It was a perfect time for me to walk alone for fews hours to take some photos. On the last night, Ivan suggested to buy about 40 cans of Medalla beer to drink in the apartment. Ivan, Patrick and Tzun-Wei drank about 10-12 cans each. Me? I drank 3 cans and fell asleep on the floor :-)

Our flight back to San Jose departed at 1.35pm and was supposed to reach at 11.35pm. However, there was a delay in Philadelphia connecting flight and we were forced to fly to San Francisco instead of San Jose. We reached SFO about midnight and waited nearly an hour for the airline to arrange a shuttle van to take us home. I reached home about 2am and went to work the next day with my heart still left in Vieques island :-)

Things I learnt or noticed in Puerto Rico:
- There are lots of policemen/cars and ambulances
- A few Spanish words
- Reason why Caribbean beach is such a fantastic place to drink Corona :-)


Below is a map showing our itinerary of the trip with colored lines marking the route we took.
Green: Nov 22 (Thu) and 26 (Mon)
Red: Nov 23 (Fri)
Blue: Nov 24 (Sat)
Pink: Nov 25 (Sun) and 26 (Mon)



More details about each location is inside each sub-gallery.