Puerto Rico 2013 Part I

Just got back yesterday from our family vacation to Puerto Rico!  I say Part I because these are just my pictures which are not many.  Spencer took a whole bunch so when he has uploaded his I will make another post.  I have to admit that I was quite lame in the picture taking department.  In my defense, though two days into the trip I got a serious head cold--complete with sore throat, runny nose, stuffed up ears, plugged sinuses, the whole shebang!  Needless to say, I was too busy feeling the cold bug to get the photo bug going!

So two nights before we left, I came home from work, looked in Spencer's bedroom and this is what I saw on his bed.  It cracked me up.  It was so him!  All color coordinated and laid out like a fancy department store.  Too funny!

 The obligatory photo at the airport in Seattle before we took off for our 12 hour journey to Puerto Rico.  Six hours to Philadelphia, an hour and a half layover then four & a half hours to Puerto Rico--something like that.  We left at 6:00am our time and go there at 9:30 their time.

 Another funny shot of Spencer.  Not sure why he didn't just close the window, but apparently he needed the darkness to sleep.  Very funny.

 Won't go into the slightly worrisome trip from the airport to the place we were staying at 10:30 at night (by time our luggage came) in the dark of course.  We did find it though.  We stayed in Fajardo which is about 35 miles from San Juan.  Not sure why Dennis picked it (proximity to the rain forest & zip line I'm guessing).  It was slightly sketchy, but then you could also call it a good taste of local flavor!  These first shots are the view from our balcony on the 4th floor of the condo we stayed in.  Pretty awesome right!?  View to the right.

 View towards the center.

 View towards the left.  In all views I have cut out the sketchy street which ran right in front of the condos.  It was a gated group of condos up on the hill and the street that ran right in front of it had some really interesting local establishments.  Though we did eat twice at one of them just across the street.

 This is the balcony.  I spent many an hour out here reading on the longer deck couch.  It was really quite lovely!

 This is the church in downtown Fajardo.  I thought is was quite colorful as many buildings are in Puerto Rico (more of those in Spencer's photos from Old San Juan)

 Boys in the square in Fajardo.

 One day we drove into El Yunque which is the rain forest national park.  We took a hike down to this waterfall where Tucker was the only brave soul who got in.  We were all pretty damp at that point from the rain, but he is the only one to fully dip.  He did try to go all the way behind, but it was coming down too hard.

 As you can see it is a pretty popular destination.  Tucker said it was kind of cold and he ended up getting a bit of a headache from standing under the flow.

 The next day, we visited Old San Juan and El Moro which is the old Spanish Fort that guards the entrance into San Juan harbor.  It was pretty amazing to think about it being build (slave & indigenous labor I'm sure--definitely wasn't the Spaniards doing the constructing)

 We wandered all around.  Which is the most I can say about it, because this is the day I felt the most miserable.  My nose & head were completely stuffed and it was about 90 degrees so I was sweating like crazy.  Not my finest hour.  So just enjoy the photos that I did take.

 So I do have to explain the iguana.  It looks like he is out level from me, but this is looking down about a 100 foot wall.  He was about 20 yards down the wall looking up at us--a straight vertical drop.  It was crazy.  He hardly moved.

 There were two ends of the fort.  In between the two there was this awesome graveyard (for very rich people certainly given the size of the tombstones).  We wandered around a bit.  It was pretty impressive.

 This was right in the middle of the graveyard.  We took a minute her to just catch our breath in the shade before moving on to explore old San Juan (again photos coming by Spencer of that).

 The next day was our zip lining day.  Sadly, we did not take any photos of the actual zip lining because we didn't take the cameras for concern about the rain which didn't actually present a problem in the end.  So, this first picture is the platform where we started.

 This shows the 7 ziplines we got to ride.  One of them was over 1000 yards long.  It was pretty awesome.  This and the kayaking in the BioBay were the highlights of the trip.  We didn't get pictures of the bio bay trip either because of the water.  There may be a couple that I can get from the tour group.

 This is the last night at the restaurant across the street from the condo.  It had a great view of the bay, but it was really windy!

 At the restaurant.

  I wish I would have felt better, but most important was the kids thought the trip was awesome which is all that matters!