When getting into a port there is a long standing tradition of students sleeping on the deck of the ship so that we can wake up to the sunrise overlooking the city that we are coming into. Many of us tried to follow through with this tradition when entering San Juan, Puerto Rico. 4 of us decided to sleep on the 4th deck of the ship and wait for the sun to rise. There were about 20 other SAS students already sleeping up there when we arrived so we just kind of found a spot and nestled in to try to get some sleep.
I pulled out my sleeping bag and everyone laughed at its light and compact size. No one thought it would keep me warm based on the fact that it would fit into most cups when folded up and it only weighed 6 oz. Needless to say, it might be the best investment I have ever made. It blocked the light from the ship’s lights on the deck, but I was able to see out of it when I heard something around me. It blocked the wind like any thick sleeping bag would and most importantly kept me warm the entire night. The only thing that it may have been lacking was general comfort being that it is pretty much a sheet to get inside of. We eventually got kicked off the deck at 4:30am because the crew had to pressure wash and clean the deck. I learned my lesson after Puerto Rico because I actually went to my room at 4:30 and then passed out until just before 8:00. I missed the sunrise. The entire reason that I slept on the deck was to see the sunrise and I failed. But worry not because I have seen many pictures of how amazing it was to be outside at that time. I vow to never miss another sunrise on the day we come into a port again.
Once we arrived and docked in Old San Juan, we had to wait to get cleared through immigration and many other logistical things before getting off the ship. To get things started and to give us a sort of welcome into Puerto Rico, we were fortunate enough to have the Governor of Puerto Rico come onto the ship and give a speech saying how pleased the island was to have us. This was a great honor because it’s not everyday that the governor of an entire island will give you a personal welcome to their home. There were lots of reporters and news crews there to capture the event and I was actually sitting right behind Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Governor, so had I not been an idiot, I would have realized that I was probably in the newspaper the next day in Puerto Rico. But I didn’t so I lose.
We finally got to get off the ship around 10:30am and decided to go for a walk. When we left, the tourist attraction guy told us that we could get a taxi to Old San Juan for $10 for the entire car no matter how many we put in. When we got to the taxi, they wanted $3 for every person. We turned it down and started to walk instead. They told us that there were no sidewalks on the way to Old San Juan. We walked anyway and it ended up being that there were plenty of sidewalks and that the taxi drivers were only trying to rip us off. I think its fascinating how they think we are going to pay any price that they throw out there and try to make it impossible for us to walk. What they don’t realize is we are college students and most of us walk for a living around campus and other things in town and refuse to pay insane prices for things that are not necessary.
We went to lunch at a local place called Mojtio’s, which is the local drink and since they had a restaurant named after it we thought it might be a worthy place to go to. We all decided to get 5 different entrees with 5 different sides so that we could share the Puerto Rican food and get the most out of the experience. We thought we should get the drink of Puerto Rico to make the occasion right. It was a drink of sugar, ice, crushed mint leaves, rum, limejuice, and club soda. It was decent, but for $8 a drink, I don’t think I’ll need to have another. It was good at first but the more you drink the more the leaves got in the way. It was literally mint leaves in the drink so you learned very quickly not to use the straw they gave you and drank from the side to avoid getting a mouthful of leaves in your mouth every time you took a drink. We thought it was kind of bad that our drink was more expensive than our meal but we figured that was our lessoned learned. Other people came eventually to the restaurant and it was the beginning of our realization that there was almost no possible way to avoid other SAS people on this trip. We are like a plague that takes over a city and we are impossible to miss. There is nothing like 700 white kids getting off a ship running into a city trying to cause a ruckus. It’s so easy to try to make the group you are with larger but you quickly learn that the larger the group, the harder it is to get things done. We decided on our group of 5 people which included me, Dave Romanyk, Andrea Mytinger, Tina Mercurio, and Anna Pier-Harrison. We were about to run a ‘muck on this town.
We set off on our adventure trying to get to El Morro, a six-level fortress to protect Puerto Rico from anyone that tried to come in. Puerto Rico was considered the gateway to the Caribbean Sea and this was built in 1589 to protect it. This may have been our final destination, but it was far from all that happened on the way there. This was one example that rang true that showed that the journey if much more important than the destination. We set out for El Morro but it took almost 5 hours to get to a place just over a mile from Mojito’s.
We got completely caught up in the town of Old San Juan and its beautiful architecture and buildings that lined the streets. Many of the streets were cobblestone streets and the buildings were 4 stories on both sides of the street with every building have a different color than the one before it. It turned the streets into a festival of color and pastels that made everything about the city get more exciting. I could have taken pictures forever of every street with their overhangs and balconies full of vegetation and people busting out of every seam. Cars are everywhere and most streets are either one-way one-lane streets, or they are just compacted more than imaginable. Once again, just like Bahamas, defensive driving did not exist. People just pull out in front of one another. It is absolute chaos on the streets.
We took pictures forever of the streets but finally decided to explore this preserve that was randomly on the street that we found that was free. We called it our Secret Garden and those words could not be more cliché but also couldn’t be more perfect for what we found. We had an ocean view of waves crashing in on the shore, but we were in the middle of a jungle type atmosphere full of croaking tree frogs, lizards running around, and fish swimming in the ponds. Everything was so green and full of color. It was paradise. We constantly found ourselves sitting down on benches to just sit around and take it all in. Our Secret Garden was so relaxing, peaceful, and serene. We made our way to the end only to find it was a dead end of a wonderful fountain that went off at completely random times with no pattern whatsoever to it. The OCD in me really became bothered by how I couldn’t establish some sort of pattern to this fountain and when things were going to go off. We all sat down and spread out to just take some thoughts in and take some personal pictures for ourselves. This turned into an hour nap for most of us and we were in the middle of this Secret Garden without much sunshine coming in and fresh water all around in a canopy of trees and an ocean view not far in the distance.
After awaking from our nap, we decided it was finally time to get on our way to El Morro and finish the trip.
We never knew how wrong we would be. We walked for maybe another 5 minutes before sitting down on the side of a hill outside a playground to just watch the waves come in and crash on the rocks. We could see El Morro but it seemed like we were never going to get there. We sat around and talked about how relaxing the day had been even though we had been walking for about 6 hours at that time. My feet felt fine and we decided finally to make the trek to El Morro. We once again got sidetracked on the walkway up to the front based on the wind that was coming off the ocean. It was the perfect wind for kite flying and the grass was so green, plush, and short that it was pretty much the surface of a putting green. The urge to roll down the hill was too much so instead of just getting all dirty we entertained ourselves by doing cartwheels, round-offs, and other random fun on the hill. We played with the wind and tried to drink water as the wind blew our water all over the place. We later found out that the winds that were blowing were the same exact trade winds that blew Christopher Columbus into Puerto Rico on his 2nd voyage to the Americas.
El Morro ended up being one of the coolest things I have ever seen. How they constructed this so long ago was beyond me. It was a castle! 17 foot thick walls in some places and 180 feet high! There were ramps, and staircases of all varieties. They even had a triangle staircase that was so cool and weird at the same time to walk down because it was something that I had never done before. I felt like there were so many secret places that were off limits that I really wanted to jump into and explore. It was very well kept and seemed to still have many of the cannons and cannon balls from the time when they were actually used. In over 300 years of service, El Morro was only defeated once. This was to America in 1898. Now we just use them to test military things and make them the colony that everyone forgets all about. El Morro is something that is best described with pictures and we have plenty of them so in due time you will see all there is to see.
We finally walked down to the cemetery that is believed by some to be the oldest cemetery in the Americas. It was very well guarded and we could only look down on it from El Morro’s walls because the moat protected it.
We couldn’t resist the urge to buy a kite to fly, so we splurged the $4 and bought one collectively even though we never actually did fly it. We walked around the town for a bit and walked back to the boat to make it for dinner. In all, we just did 9 hours of exploring and walking. Combined I think we had over 500 pictures from this day alone and it was only dinnertime.
That night we got picked up by our friend Roberto Enrique Morales Lopez (yes that is his name and I feel he deserves the respect to have them all mentioned) who is on the ship with us, as I have mentioned before. He is a local so he took us to the local places for drinks. It was so nice to watch him in his natural element and how happy all the people were to see him. He is a celebrity on the island. But despite his fame, he is always smiling and having a good time trying to make sure that everyone around him is taken care of and happy. I got to meet Roberto’s parents when we got off the boat and it was hard with the language barrier but they seemed like very nice people. His father was a reporter of some kind and I got interviewed with the help of Roberto’s translation.
The differences with languages were interesting in Puerto Rico. Most people spoke both Spanish and English, but I noticed very quickly that if you could speak Spanish to taxi drivers or bar tenders that you got a much better price than if you were ordering in English. It was almost as if the language came with some sense of wealth. We knew English so we were either wealthy enough to have learned or we are some dumb tourist that’s sole purpose is to spend money.
The first night ended great and I was excited to start it all over again the next day.
Day 2 began with waking up in time to hang out for a bit before eating lunch and then walking to the beach. Surprisingly the beach was only a few blocks away. It was free and fairly nice. The beach was surrounded by the Coral Reef. This meant the waves coming in were huge but hardly any of them reached us due to the reef and the rocks that made a natural barrier to the beach. Small waves would still reach the shore but the fun part was the drifting currents and undertows in the ocean that day. No matter what direction you swam in, you ended up going in the direction of the wind which were the same trade winds that we experienced at El Morro. Samuel and I buried ourselves in and up to our necks and sat and relaxed as the girls walked on us and packed the sand below us tighter. Day 2 was all a waiting game until the night time when we knew all the fun would begin.
I was going on a kayak trip into a bioluminescent bay. It’s very hard to explain but there are a rare breed of plankton that live in Puerto Rico because of the Mangrove trees there that only exist in 1 other place in Japan. There are 4 total bioluminescent places left on earth and 3 of them are in Puerto Rico. The bay was 50 miles way so we packed into a van 17 deep and took a 90-minute ride in rush hour. It took forever and we were with some interesting people to say the least.
We arrived at the bio-bay and it was very dark outside and we were in the middle of nowhere. There were many groups going and coming with different tour guides escorting each group. Everyone was required to have a life jacket and a team of 2 or 3 people per kayak. We were a large group of 3 and we rocked it better than we could have ever imagined. Dave, Tina, and I had to kayak down a narrow channel of water in the middle of darkness to find the sights we were going to see. It was a lot of fun to kayak along because the water was very warm and I was having such a good time getting other people wet. I was that guy, but I figure we were in the ocean and there was nothing better to do than get a little wet.
I don’t know exactly how to explain what happened next and there is almost no possible way to get a picture of what I was about to see so the stories is as good as you are going to get. As we are rowing down the channel in a canopy of trees so that I cannot see Dave or Tina in front of me, we noticed that the there was light from time to time in the water. Then it hit us that anytime we put the oar in the water that the water lit up. It was so earth-shattering that these dark waters were now lighting up for a short second only to go dark again. It was one of the weirdest things I had ever seen before in my life. The channel finally opened up and all of our 25 kayaks just got together in a circle for story time with our guide. Peter (the guide) explained that there are millions of plankton in the water. They are a half plant/half animal organism that lives in the water and they are the absolute bottom of the food chain in the ocean. These rare breeds give off a small hint of light after soaking it in from the sun all day during the night when they rub together. There are roughly 8,000 of them per gallon of water so no matter how small they are, they are bound to touch once water is moved. What we saw was priceless.
The water literally lit up. It was like there was some kind of special effect going on anytime you touched the water. Small speckles of light would blink of a short second if you had water in your hand. Peter continued to talk as we drifted out farther into the middle of the bay to places that were deep enough to swim in. I was having a difficult time controlling myself and paying attention to Peter because of how fascinated I was with these plankton.
Finally we were able to jump in and jump I did. I wish I could have seen the light from my splash because the more water that is moved, the more of these plankton emit light. If you swam around, you left a glow in the water. We were glistening in the night. Its very cheesy to say but it was actually true. We glowed. I found it extremely fun to cup some water in your hand then dump it down your arm and your entire arm would have shimmers of light as they fell back into the water. Absolutely speechless. The saddest part is they light is gone so fast and it has to be so dark that a camera wouldn’t pick anything up. It’s something you really have to see to believe because there is no other way to see it besides being there. It was the best experience of Puerto Rico and I don’t think it will be my last time on the island because of the bioluminescent bay. I have an urge to see the other 2 bays on the island.
Day 3 began and ended as fast as the trip went. It was over in a blink of an eye. It wasn’t an eventful day full of crazy adventures but it was a day that we just walked around into shops and had a good time in the post office. We spend over an hour in the post office and it was probably the best bonding experience I have had with SAS thus far. You never know how much fun can come from 5 blank postcards and hours to waste and nowhere for certain to send them. We were back on the ship by 6 for dinner and just hung out and talked most of the night until we left. We had to be back on the ship by 9pm and if we are late we get docked time in our next port of call (i.e. Brasil)
The majority of the night was spent on the phone with friends and family saying one more goodbye before our cell phones wouldn’t work until May 7. I found it weird to realize how much having a cell phone annoyed me. At home, I am completely dependent on my cell phone for life. But going without it for 2 weeks and not having a way to be in touch with everyone was liberating. I was on my own time and didn’t have to worry about being interrupted or talking to anyone. My phone is now off for over 3 months and so far I do not miss it. It was very nice to be able to talk to my mom one last time and even my niece Hailie. My last call from Puerto Rico as we were sailing away from Old San Juan was my old man. Grandpa was telling me stories of the old days in the Navy and how life on the ship used to be. No one in the family may know exactly what the ship looks like or how sophisticated cruise ships have come now days but Grandpa understood what it was like to be at sea for a long time and see nothing for days except the horizon and blue skies. Back to sea again for now, but Brazil will be here in a mere 7 days. Hope this wasn’t too long and I’ll keep you updated with the happenings on the ship and how things are going.
Calm seas and blue skies for now just awaiting the first storm.
