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So I planned on waking up for the sunrise today as we were pulling in to Puerto Rico…but I hit the snooze…Oops. We arrived in Puerto Rico around 8 or so this morning. Once we docked, Puerto Rico’s governor and secretary of state boarded the ship in order to welcome us to their homeland. Archbishop was also at this little shin-dig, so I got a few pictures of him sitting with the governor and secretary of state AND I took a little video of them all as they exited after the welcome speech.
By the way --- the governor informed us that Ricky Martin was currently in San Juan and would be here until his concert this weekend!
Not too long after that, they started calling names to go up to deck 7 to get passports stamped. Let me tell you…This is a lonnnng process considering there are 702 students PLUS faculty, faculty family members, and lifelong learners. Whew. We finally stepped foot on Puerto Rican soil around 10:30. Seven of us immediately set out to find a taxi that would drive us to El Yunque Rainforest.
Well, this was quite an adventure. The taxis turned out to be more expensive that we had anticipated, but it all worked out. ***This is making me worry about how we’re going to communicate with people in other countries that we are not familiar with the language at all! Uh oh!*** Our driver was great; however, she spoke fairly broken English. Either way, we made it to the entrance of the park. Now you should all know that the entrance is not actually near the trails we were headed to. The trails were about an hour’s walk up the mountain and our taxi driver did not have a license to drive into the rainforest park at all. SO…we decided to hitchhike. People are so nice and friendly here. It’s great! But anyways, half of us went up with this guy from MARIETTA, GEORGIA – funny, huh?! He was in Puerto Rico on business (he works for the Atlanta Braves) and he was checking out the rainforest before he headed home. He was extremely nice and we rode up with him to one of the trails. Also…he told us to email him if we ever go to Atlanta and he’ll get us in to a Braves game! Haha. The rainforest was amazing! First of all, it was a pleasure just to be getting to much fresh air and to walk on land! Plus, it was the first rainforest I’ve been in…so it was just pretty darn cool. We had a little trouble figuring out if the rest of the group had gotten a ride up or not, but we finally found out where they were so we walked down the mountain to the La Mina Trail. After about a 15 minute walk or so, we found the rest of the group at this great waterfall! Although the weather was actually bearable in the rainforest, we still jumped in the water! AND GUESS WHAT?!! I went cliff jumping – for the first time – in Puerto Rico! I never really thought I was too scared of heights, but I found out today that I actually am scared of them! It was only maybe a 6 – 8 ft drop (yeah, seems like nothing..), but it was kinda risky because there were some big rocks that we found in the water that you had to avoid. It was great and no one got hurt! After playing in the water, we hiked the rest of the trail and then hitchhiked down the mountain. Our second driver was actually a man from Brazil and a woman from Austria! Once again, I’m realizing that we live in a pretty small world. They were extremely friendly and got us down to the taxi stop. Eventually, we were all together again and caught a cab. This was not a simple task, but I ended up bargaining with a driver to get us to the right place for a decent price. Our cab driver, Eric, was the funniest Puerto Rican I’ve met so far. We were asking him advice for places to eat and he said we just had to try “punky”. Apparently this is something you put on black beans. Well after about 15 minutes of trying to figure out what this stuff was, he described it as the thing we cut up for Halloween. Yes, he was referring to pumpkin, not punky. It was hysterical (this might be one of those “had to be there” kind of things)! He also kept talking about the “SheratOn,” not the “SheratIn” (how we pronounce it). Needless to say, this was quite an adventure.
Once we made it back to the ship (around 5pm) a few of us walked to Old San Juan searching for a place to eat. We hadn’t eaten anything except a piece of fruit since 8am, but it didn’t bother us in the rainforest because we were enjoying the hiking so much. Anyways, we ended up at this cute little place. The waiter was extremely friendly and offered some advice for what to order. We all ended up getting a Pabellon Cachapa. It’s basically like a sweet corn pancake that has black beans, cheese, chicken, and plantains in it. AMAZING! Very authentic and very good! On the way back to the ship, we ended up in the ghetto, I guess, and a man we passed suggested that we walk up a few blocks in order to be a little safer. I must reassure you, though, that I’ve been traveling with at least one guy. That was probably my biggest concern before I left. BUT don’t worry because even though the girls outnumber the guys about 3:2, I’ve made some good friends already that I will be traveling with. Whew!
My last bit of exciement for the day was the Welcome Reception that a large group of SASers attended at Carribbean University. It was so much fun! It also made me realize that American schools are pretty lame. These people have such a rich culture. As we pulled in, we passed band, people on stilts, people dressed in costumes, and others that were clapping and singing. First, we went inside for a little welcome from one of the Dean’s and we also viewed a short film on the university. Then we headed outside for the fiesta. At first, we sat and watched a bunch of dancers perform to music from the live band. I got some videos of this on my camera. It was so awesome to watch! The women were dressed in these flowy, bright-colored dressed and the men were in white tuxes. They performed a series of dances and once they were done, they encouraged us all to come up and dance as well! There was a DJ playing songs for awhile – he even played some American ones such as “Celebration.” There were a handful of Spanish rap songs which I found entertaining because who knew that there were Spanish rappers?! Anyways…we were also served some traditional Puerto Rican snacks. I can’t really say that I cared for any of them too much, but it was neat to try different things. There was fried chicken, fried corn sticks, a cooked banana surprise, fried beef sticks, and some breaded plantains. Interesting. The highlight of the trip was just watching all of the Puerto Ricans dance…they look like they must have come out of the womb dancing because they are just so good with the music! They were very friendly as well, so we had a good time talking/dancing with them. As we boarded the buses to drive back to the ship, they handed us bags with a funky pen, t-shirt, and a bundle of goodies. Sweet! Tomorrow night students from the university will be coming to the ship so they can see how Americans have fun.
P.S. On our way to grab our lunch/dinner, we found a beautiful church in Old San Juan…not only was it a church, but it was a Lutheran one – and it was almost right on the beach! Maybe St. Paul’s should relocate??? Just kidding. We’re going to try and go inside tomorrow!
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