San Sebastián - The End of the Holidays

In Puerto Rico they know how to stretch the holiday season. This past weekend marked the end of the that season in Puerto Rico with the celebration of the San Sebastián street festival. This is the biggest festival in Puerto Rico, so we decided to have a look.

As expected the streets were packed and it took much longer than usually to find parking. We eventually found a garage where we could park but we had to wait about a half an hour for someone to leave before we could get a spot. But this is to be expected in Old San Juan.

With the car safely parked we were free to roam the streets. There were booths with free stuff, food vendors, street performances, parades, artists. You name it, they had it. It was one of the most diverse festivals that I had been to. After a few hours of wandering and wondering we headed back to the car and out of the city. We thought about the concerts and night activities that we were going to miss but the miles long line of cars attempting to get into the district made us glad to be heading to our quiet, uncrowded, home. There's always next year.

Here are just a few of the things we saw at this years San Sebastián festival. Adiós.

The sign says "1,136 Murders in PR in 2012."
And on an island with extremely low legal gun ownership.

Fun in the dark

This weekend marked the final weekend of "vacation" time (for me anyway) before officially starting my new job. Nothing too exciting has been happening lately, hence the lack of blog posts. That isn't to say San Juan has been without any goings on...

Earlier last week, there was a power outage. And I don't just mean the power flickered on and off or was just out for a minute or two - because that's already happened up here at our house on the hill a few times before. This time, our power was out for over two hours... and it happened as we were coming home after a sweaty run on the beach and hungry for dinner! As we were driving back from Ocean Park and making our way through the long and windy road to our house, traffic came to a complete halt. Not so unusual on the major highways but quite unusual for the road leading to our house. At first, we thought there was an accident - sometimes we encounter crazy drivers whipping around the curves and always cutting into the oncoming lane. We waited behind traffic for awhile and noticed a truck from the electric company driving up the hill past where traffic had been stopped. Then we realized that some power lines must be down and they were going to remove some branches and debris that had taken them down. We often noticed that the bamboo trees covering the hillside next to the road often become overgrown and sag over the power lines... in an unsafe way. Finally the power lines gave way, causing the power to go out.

Looking up from the car, these bamboo trees are just laying on top of the power lines... waiting for an accident to happen! :-/

First, we had to find an alternate route home - which was nearly impossible because we live far up in the hills. 10-15 minutes later, we finally arrived home to find that we had no power. Second, we had to figure out how we were going to cook dinner... because we were starving! And it was getting dark. Luckily, I decided to pack our headlamps in our luggage (who would have thought we would need them?) instead of packing it up with the movers, so we were able to cook some rice on our gas stove and Ethan grilled some chicken outside on the gas grill, and we had a nice meal. In the dark. It was quite delicious actually!

Cooking some rice on the stove

Grilled chicken, brown rice with pigeon peas, and fresh tomatoes... ¡Bon Prevecho!

Then, as we began cleaning up, the lights came on. Whew! We were worried that we would be without power overnight, and we had just bought fresh milk and yogurt the day before! Thankfully, this night was the worst of it. The following day when we came home just before dinner time, the power was out AGAIN! But this time only for about 30 minutes. Geez! Now we are wishing we had brought our camping gear with us - flashlights, gas stove, and gas lamps! Hopefully, this won't happen as often in our new place in Condado.

Last night, we decided to go out for some Mexican, and we found a nice place called Bartola's in Miramar. What a great place! A cozy and friendly atmosphere with great service and delicious food. We started with some house made guacamole, which we devoured immediately. It was so good, we forgot to take a photo! Our entrees arrived shortly after: I ordered the ceviche tostadas and Ethan got the enchiladas. The black beans were soooo good!!!

My meal

Ethan's meal

After our delicious dinner, we wanted to stroll around a bit and noticed a fine arts theatre just down the street. We decided to check it out and bought two tickets for Lincoln. Only $7.50 each! What a steal! They also had an amazing snack bar! Beer, wine, espresso, charcuterie platters, and gourmet desserts in addition to the usual popcorn and soda. Wow, check out these prices!

What, you can't read the menu? :-) Large popcorn AND soda $5.50  Glass of wine $6 Espresso $1.95 Cookies 2 for $3... not bad compared the prices you see at the movie theatres in the states!

The movie was pretty good (personally, I thought Life of Pi was better... even though Lincoln has more Academy Award nominations) and the theatre was excellent! Large comfortable seats that rocked back and forth and wide arm rests for your food and drink! We are definitely going back.

So that was the last of my "vacation". I actually am very excited to be starting my new job on Tuesday! Hope everyone is having a great New Year so far!

The holidays continue in Puerto Rico...

Just because Christmas and New Year's have passed does not mean that the holiday celebrations are over here in Puerto Rico. They celebrate another holiday, Tres Reyes or Three Kings on January 6th. This is actually quite a common holiday in Latin and Spanish cultures that celebrate the arrival of the three kings that came to visit Jesus after he was born and brought him gifts. For Puertorriqueños, it means getting more presents and candy - a much-loved holiday, especially for the kids. The night before, children put grass in shoe boxes and place them under their beds and the following morning, they find candy and small gifts in their shoe boxes. Kind of reminds me a bit of getting an Easter basket! :)

In Cupey, where we currently live, they have something extra special for the neighborhood kids: Los Reyes Magos where three men dress up like the Three Kings and ride horses down the street and hand out candy for the kids! This was also accompanied by a float full of people singing and playing typical Puerto Rican instruments including the Güiro, the Cuatro, and Palitos. It was quite fun to see this happening on our street! It was especially nice to see the kids (and Ethan) getting all excited to get candy from the Three Kings!

¡Feliz Día de los Reyes!

¡Feliz Año Nuevo! / Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! We hope you all had a fun time ringing in the new year. Our friend Mercedes came to visit us for a few days and we had a great time on New Year's Eve. We started off the day touring the Bacardí distillery in Cataño... how can you beat a free tour with free drinks?!? After the tour, we headed to Old San Juan for a Puerto Rican dinner at Mojito's Restaurant. We shared a large pitcher of Sangria, and I ordered the cod stew with tostones while Ethan and Mercedes each ordered the mofongo. It was all delicious! We were a little put off that they did not have any mint to make mojitos... Seriously? A restaurant named Mojito's that runs out of ingredients to make their most famous drink!? In any case, we enjoyed our food. After our meal, we wandered around Old San Juan in the hopes of enjoying children playing in the square and seeing some fireworks. Instead, it seemed like everything was closing early and very few people were out and about. We noticed that Calle Fortaleza was being closed off to traffic, so we asked a local police officer what was going on - this also gave me a chance to practicar mi Español! :-D He told us that the governor's inauguration was the following morning, and the new governor rides down the street around Old San Juan and up to the Capitol building where the inauguration takes place. Turns out, the only new year's festivities taking place in San Juan were in Condado at the fancy hotels which required a fancy cover charge to get into the parties. Era demasiado caro para nosotros. So we then decided to head back to our house on the hill to watch the show of fireworks that would be set off all over San Juan. We were so glad we ended up back at the house to see that!

The video doesn't come close to witnessing the real thing, but it will certainly give you an idea of the quantity of fireworks that went off that night. It was like Gangbusters! (you can hear me saying this in the video, haha!)

We explored quite a bit of the island on several day trips while Mercedes was here. Here are some of the highlights:

The Dry Forest and The Southern Coastline

Passing by Bahina de Bellana or Bellana Bay on

our way to the dry forest in Guánica

Rocky Cliffs off the Meseta trail in

Bosque Estetal de Guánica aka the dry forest

Coves created from the waves washing away the limestone rock

Walking around the cliffs

Interesting limestone rock formations just past 

Bellena Bay

Mercedes on the cliff

Some of the cliffs had tons of little crabs living on the limstone near the ocean. Hard to see in this picture and when you approached them, they ran away fast!

 Dinner in Ponce, PR

After the coast we head to Ponce for some dinner. On the left is the Typical Puerto Rican Christmas dinner at Casa de Las Tias in Ponce that Ethan had and on the right is the dish that Mercedes and I shared.

pork chop, rice with pigeon peas, and a pastele
(pasteles are similar to tamales except they use plantain instead of corn)

 Red snapper stuffed with shrimp
in a spicy tomato basil sauce...mmm!

Exploring Camuy Caves

Mouth of Camuy Caves near Arecibo, PR

Inside the Camuy Caves near Arecibo, PR

 

Hiking El Yunque National Park

 Juan Diego Falls in El Yunque Rainforest

Reaching Picachos Peak along the El Yunque Trail
(This was the best view from the top as we were engulfed in clouds)

 

Bumming on the Beach

Our favorite beach of all: La Playa Mar Chiquita in Manatí, PR. A small cove created by limestone rocks that enclose the beach. It was gorgeous!

La Playa Mar Chiquita in Manatí, PR.

Overall, we had a great visit with Mercedes and got to see more of the island. We can't wait for our next visitors!