Puerto Rico!!!

1-27-08
Puerto Rico is beautiful! It’s also a really great port to start us off in. Half of the signs are in English; almost everyone speaks English and is very friendly. It’s really pretty safe, and it is a US territory so it’s American currency. The food was also pretty safe to eat.
I spent all morning and the first part of the afternoon walking around San Juan. We first went to Fort San Christobal—made in the 1500’s. The structure was amazing, and it had some really great views of the city. We then walked around the shops and buildings of Old San Juan, which is known for its architecture (and I can see why). It’s hard to really describe well enough to understand how amazing it is. I guess the closest description would be San Franciso-in-the-tropics-a-few-decades-ago. It’s tons of tall, narrow buildings mixed with shorter, squat buildings that are fun, bright colors on cobblestone streets in the hills. There are tons of great shops. There was a pigeon park where a man stood covered in pigeons eating out of his hands. A few other people were doing it as well, but pigeons are way too stupid and dirty so I opted not to do that. We checked out one really neat store and found the nicest guy. He’s American by birth but has lived in Puerto Rico the last 18 years. He was incredibly helpful and told us tons of good cafes to go to and safe places to walk around at night.
In the late afternoon I got ready to go to the Bioluminescent Bay. We had to kayak in two-person kayaks into a lagoon. Amanda and I had a bit of difficulty at first with directions and were pretty much on our own personal guided tour because we were so far behind everyone else. We had two guides with us, telling us which way to paddle every other minute. In our defense, it is confusing to remember which way to paddle when you want to go a certain way, and the lagoon was very narrow and windy, so it was easy to get off course. It was a lot of fun though, and we were definitely entertaining the guides as much as we were having fun. The Bio Bay was AMAZING! I’ll try my best to explain how it works. There are tons of little plankton-type things that swim in the water, and as a defense mechanism they light up when they are disturbed (though I don’t see how lighting yourself up could protect you from predators…it really only shows them way you are). So it’s pretty much like tons of little Christmas lights. If you just look into the water it looks black, but if you swish your hand back and forth in the water it looks like waves of tiny Christmas lights. And on our way back to shore, Amanda and I had definitely gotten the hang of it, which is VERY good considering I have a 6 hour kayaking excursion today. They are also two-person kayaks, but this time I hope to request that I don’t have to be in the back steering. That is NOT my specialty.
We leave Puerto Rico on Monday, so after kayaking today we plan to hit up a few nightclubs and hope to find a place to do some salsa dancing! I’ll probably spend Monday walking around Old San Juan again and making sure I didn’t miss an opportunity for an awesome souvenir. Buenos Dias!