Rainforest Hike and Waterfall Swim

Today Mom and I picked up some of my colleagues from the business program that took me to PR, Jim and Seung. Together we drove into the nearby rainforest and made our way to the the top of a mountain for the Mine Path for a hike. It was the crazy path that was sometimes paved, sometimes rocks, kind of crazy and totally beautiful.

The Mine Path met up with the Big Tree Path at a 50 foot waterfall that had a wading pool at it's base. It was beautiful. I went thinking I may want to climb on some rocks in the river so I wore my swim suit. When I saw the wading pool I knew I had to go in.

The water was FREEZING and with the waterfall there was a crazy under current, but it was exhilarating. It wasn't really possible to get a good photo, but I really did it for the memory, not the photo op :)

After our hike we drove around the park and appreciated the views and wildflowers. It was magical and stunning.

For dinner we went to a strip nearby that had little food stalls that were sort of like a blend between a food truck and a cafe. We decided to enjoy dinner at stall 22 which was a wise choice - it was DELICIOUS. A great end to our adventure.

Tomorrow I start the business portion of my trip and Mom will head home. Driving all over this island with her has been awesome, a great reminder of how lucky I am to have a built in travel buddy!

One Way, One Word, One Meal

Considering my lack of sleep I did surprisingly well today.

We spent about an hour trying to work out a glitch in the rental car computer systems (it wasn't giving us the discount that had us book with them to begin with) only to realize that they just had to put our DL info in for it to show up. :-| Luckily it was only a minor delay and we were off in our little red Kia with an abnormally low passenger seat.

The adventure began immediately as we drove through Old San Juan, squeezing between parked and moving cars with mom gasping along the way. It got even more interesting when they only places to park were through a one lane two way tunnel....we just beeped the horn and held our breath. Nerve wracking for sure.

Most of our day was spent exploring Old San Juan. We found the old cemetery oddly intriguing especially the sign which upon first glance we thought was telling us not to remove our pants. It actually said not to remove the vault covers, what a difference a letter makes.

We had a very yummy lunch. We used our experienced traveler senses to stumble upon a local gem and chatted up some locals. We wandered through the shops, admired the mysteriously blue bricks, found a geo cache and basically adjusted. It is a bit weird, it's like a cross between Miami, Spain, St Augustine, the Caribbean and of course something completely new since we are in Puerto Rico a place neither of us have been before.

Around sunset we made our way to Fajardo where we checked in to our hostel. It's acceptable, a lot of kids, not as luxurious as promised (no hot water :-| ) but SO cheap. It will do. :)

And now that I'm thoroughly exhausted and sleep deprived I leave you.

Prepping for PR

Since my last adventure I have launched a new business (Wildflower) which is awesome and fun and exciting and at time exhausting. I'm hosting a collaboration experience the evening I arrive home from our Puerto Rican adventure and realized today that I still had a lot of odds and ends to take care of.

After a day of running errands and setting things up so my business can go on while I have fun I finally got around to packing.

Now I'm off to take a 3 hour nap before Mom picks me up and we head off to PR!