Weekend Adventuring Catch Up!

So here I am again trying to stay up with my blog. I would’ve had a third post by now if my computer hadn’t crashed just a few days after writing it. So this one will be a lot of catch up, and honestly I’ve been avoiding it because I hate catching up on work! But I’m sitting here on the beach, we walked to work early because Mark had an early lesson in an Open Bic, so I have some free time to myself. It’s completely flat on the wind and wave front and it’s so strange for here because we always have at least one or the other. Today it is calm and beautiful. We walked to work along the beach listening to reggae, and taking in the view that we’ve become accustomed to morning and night. Mark commented that at that moment it was exactly how he imagines the Caribbean: little waves rippling on the shore, happy easy reggae music, and an unbeatable view of where the land meets the sea. It’s amazing how content I can be in a moment like that, because it’s true and he’s right. I love this life. Cheers.

In my catch up I’ll go back two weekends ago. Our weekends, by the way, are Monday and Tuesdays because Saturday and Sunday are our big money makers at work. In my opinion it works out for the better because we never have those evil Monday mornings. So two weekends ago, our bosses rented a place in Isabella; a town west of us on the north shore known for it’s surf and kite spots. After a busy day at work, we all packed up in two cars and headed west. Both cars were stuffed with kite gear, people, dogs, and babies. It was quite the excursion. We got there around 11 or so and settled into our digs for the weekend. The next morning, Mark and some of the other guys were up at 6 am to get some surfing in. Around 830 Karla woke me up to see if I wanted to check the spot out and I gladly obliged. We drove through the small town while Karla pointed out everything I needed to know about the place. As it turns out, Karla and Phil’s second baby girl is named after the town and now I know why. We finally got to the entrance of the spot and to start we had to drive through a golf course. An active golf course where our cars were just another target for golfers to hit! Pretty funny. Then we got into the real off-roading part of the trip, the roads were completely muddy and full of pot holes, good thing they had cars with 4-wheel drive. After a slow and bumpy trek, we emerged onto this little point where the parking lot was full of cars. Everyone was there that day. I mingled with some local Americans turned Puerto Ricans and watched the boys do some surfing. I was definitely out of my league in terms of the waves, not that I can even surf little waves, but I knew everyone out there had been doing this for a long time. I really liked to see that Mark was holding his own out there too, it’s pretty impressive to watch him do his thing. In the afternoon, we checked out Shacks, a kite spot well known in Puerto Rico. To me it seemed like a tricky place to kite because there are only few safe pathways to get in and out because coral, rocks, and sea urchins make up the whole wave break. I enjoyed myself there, even though I can’t kite, because luckily we had friends with a place literally on the beach. We could watch the action from their porch, swim in the pool, and otherwise enjoy their beautiful home. At one point when the conditions weren’t great 5 of us put on snorkel gear and swam down a channel clear of coral and got to admire it from both sides. We saw mainly urchins, but got a bunch of fun pictures and video of us fooling around. At night, we grilled out and had quite the tasty dinner that the whole fam desperately needed, we were pretty tired and toasted from all our fun in the sun. The weekend was a great few days off: friends, water, and fun. What else could we need?

Our next weekend adventure we headed to San Juan to stay at Matt, Katina, and Carlene’s place which they so graciously offer up each weekend. Sunday night we had a laid back little Superbowl viewing, nothing crazy pretty modest but good fun. The girls made their favorite bean dip, and we contributed with some meat for grilling and Medalla of course. Everyone was fat, happy, and tired by the end of the night. The next afternoon, we got a rental car and headed up to Old San Juan. It was awesome! The pictures almost don’t do it justice. First we checked out the fort. It was located on a huge expanse of lawn right on a point overlooking the ocean. We didn’t do a tour of the fort itself, but took plenty of pictures around the outside and acted just like the tourists straight off the cruise ships so we were satisfied. Later we wandered into the town where the buildings are actually all those amazing colors like you see in pictures. Orange, yellow, purple, green buildings all stacked on top of each other and to top it off the roads were all cobblestones. It’s quite the quaint little part of town, between the history and colors there was a lot to explore. It is a very touristy part of town, naturally it’s a high point for the tourists off the boats but all the stores filled with souvenirs reminded me of home. I always wonder how they stay in business when each store sells the same thing and it’s all so cheesy. Either way, every place has got spots like that. I’m glad we made it, now we can check it off the list!

Tuesday morning we woke up with plans to head east to Rio Grande, which has a flat water spot for kiting. Personally, I was really excited to get out there because it was a perfect spot for me to learn and get up on a board. This time, we swapped our little sedan for a minivan so we could fit everyone and everything in. We had 6 people, 2 dogs, and gear for all. Somehow it fit- go minivans! Unfortunately, when we got to the spot, it wasn’t windy at all and there was a lot of spotty rain so we went with plan b: head to the rainforest! Just down the road, we could get to the rainforest and choose a couple hikes to check out. We stopped at the one with the waterfall and began our hike. It was a windy little path through a legitimate rainforest. There were healthy green plants with huge leaves everywhere, vines hanging from the trees, but the only thing missing were the animals! For whatever reason we didn’t see a bit of wildlife on our whole walk. I suspect that they were all scared off by how many people were on the trail that day. We were told Tuesdays are the days the cruise ships get in, so the path was pretty busy, and too busy for the wildlife! Nonetheless, we made it down to the waterfall. It was small to medium in size, but we went off the beaten path just a bit and climbed down to the next pool where we could go for a swim. The water was FREEZING but we jumped in and swam under the tiny waterfall that was spill off from the bigger one. Even swimming under that tiny one, I was amazed at how powerful it was; it pushed me down with a lot more of a punch than I expected.  After a bit of fooling around and getting videos of our shenanigans, we got our stuff together for the walk home. It wasn’t a long hike, maybe 30 minutes, but a nice little workout with the hills. On our way out, we stopped at this little restaurant that looked over the whole valley. The food was pretty lame, Puerto Ricans really like cooking little meat and cheese pastries and leave them sitting in a box with a heat lamp. Luckily for us, they had fresh coconut water that the cashier opened with a machete right in front of us, so that was a redeeming factor in my eyes. Also, they had a small little shop next door, and Mark and I found hammocks for SO CHEAP. We got a monstrous one for only $40. What a steal since we’ve used it both as a hammock and beach blanket since. That pretty much concluded our last weekend’s adventure! I’ve been able to finish this in the van coming back from Shacks again this weekend and I do have a few more details to cover a bit later, mainly about our daily life and work. Until next time, and I’ll try to get this weekend’s adventure up sooner.

Again I apologize now and for the future for all the run on sentences and large blocks of paragraphs. Most of the time I'm just trying to get the words out of my brain and onto the paper. Sorry! 

Cheers!

<3 Em

P.s.  I’m gonna start trying to include some of the music we’ve been enjoying and even get pics up if I can figure it out. A few songs that have been running our brains: 

Mason Jennings- Keeping it Real   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPNjlho05rY

Manu Chao- Me Gustas Tu   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPNjlho05rY

Great playlist: http://8tracks.com/topomodesto/for-the-right-time

Enjoying our new hammock at the beach next to our house. Like the view?