Ethan and I have had a slew of visitors over the past few weeks. First, my PhD advisor was in San Juan for several days attending a conference. On one of her days off, we took her for a hike on our favorite trail, the El Yunque Trail, at El Yunque National Rainforest. It was a long 3.5 hour hike, but well worth it! This was the second time Ethan and I have hiked this trail, and on the first time, we missed the incredible view from the top because the clouds were passing over Los Picachos peak, one of the tallest peaks in the El Yunque Rainforest at 3,175 feet. But on this day, we lucked out. Check out these views!
View of Luquillo and Fajardo from Los Picachos peak
Another lovely view!
We had to take our photos quickly... the clouds were coming in fast!
Then, Ethan's sister, brother-in-law, niece, and nephew came to visit for a week at the end of April. We had so much fun with them! Ethan's sister planned so many fun activities... Check out some highlights, pictures courtesy of Ethan's sister:
Ethan and our nephew playing in the sand at the beach near our house.
Playing at the pool... Don't drown, Ethan!
Snorkeling at the Seven Seas
Enjoying lunch and the sunshine on the catamaran
Check out this snorkeling video I found online. This is footage from the same area we went snorkeling... and possibly from the same tour group in Fajardo. This was my second time snorkeling ever, and it was so much fun! The tour boat gave us bread to feed the fish and they got really close! There were so many of them and all different colors and sizes... I can't wait to go again!
Here are some photos of the Bio-Bay tour we did in Fajardo at La Laguna Grande (the Grand Lagoon). There are only 7 Bioluminescent bays in the world... and three of them are in Puerto Rico! Here is a post from one of our favorite blogs about fun things to do in Puerto Rico with more information on the Bio-Bays.
They had a food cart near the Bio-Bay that sold corn dogs wrapped in bacon!
Got our life jackets on, ready for some adventure!
Getting our stroke in sync
We took the early tour before the sun set so we could get a better view of the lagoon and the mangroves. You can't see the dinoflagellate during the day, so you have to wait until after the sun sets to see the action. I was a little weary of going kayaking around a lagoon in murky water, but it was an incredible experience. These little dinoflagellates light up so much in the dark! Every time we moved our hands or oars in the water, it would light up! Ethan said it was one of the coolest things he's EVER seen. So obviously, we are going back next time we have more visitors.
Ethan's Churrasco Mofongo entreé at La Estación after the Bio-Bay tour
On the last day of their visit, I gave them a tour of the lab. I also showed the kids some fun science stuff. Check out my niece's fascination with a human heart!
A future cardiologist?
She was in awe over this heart... much the same way I am in awe of the brain!
I also explained to them what we study in the lab and showed them some of our "subjects."
Overall, this was a really great visit with my new family. We packed in a lot of activities and I think they had a great time.
We had about a week and a half to recover from this fun visit before my mom and step-dad came to visit for Mother's day and my birthday. My mom arrived first to stay at our house for a few nights, then joined her husband at the Conrad hotel and resort, where they stayed the rest of the week. They wanted to mainly relax, so we spent most of the time hanging out at the pool or walking along the beaches. For Mother's day, Ethan and I made my mom some breakfast, then we headed out to Playa Mar Chiquita, my favorite beach in Puerto Rico. We also wanted to do a little shopping, but the Puerto Ricans like to close EVERYTHING on Mother's day (this is also the case for Father's day too! who would have thought?). While we are used to Mother's day sales on the mainland, the Puerto Ricans use Mother's Day as another excuse to celebrate and party!
For my birthday, Ethan brought my mom to the lab, and I gave her a quick tour and introduced her to all my fun lab mates. After lunch, the lab surprised me with a birthday cake! It was so yummy. Then we finally went shopping. They have the Premium Outlets here, just like Waterloo in upstate NY. For dinner, we ate at Silk, where I enjoyed some delicious sushi!
After my step-dad arrived, we gave them the usual tours of Old San Juan and El Yunque. This time, El Yunque was a little different. Because May is one of the rainiest months in Puerto Rico, the rivers and waterfalls were gushing at El Yunque!
This stream/river is usually half the size of what we saw here!
My mom and I on the flood steps at the Baño Grande pool in El Yunque.
It was nice having my mom here to show her where we live. I wish she could have stayed longer. Can't wait for your next visit, Mom!
Sunset stroll in Old San Juan con mi mamá
Wow, you are a trooper if you are still reading this! This was quite the long blog post... until next time!
¡Hasta Luego!
Warning: this post may not be suitable for herbivores, vegans, vegetarians... read at your own risk!
One of the most delicious foods of Puerto Rico is lechón, a whole pig that is slowly roasted over charcoal. Scattered along rural roadsides, you are likely to come across something called a Lechonera. This is where they prepare and serve the delicious slow roasted pork.
Ethan and I first noticed these restaurants on our way to El Yunque one afternoon. As we were driving down one of the back roads, we noticed a huge line of people outside a building with someone out front furiously chopping up cuts of pork served alongside amarillos or sweet plantains, and arroz con gandules, also known as rice served with pigeon peas. And the cooks are there bright and early 6am to get ready for the day!
After asking our landlords about these restaurants, they recommended a place nearby - Los Piñones - and we had to go check it out. When we first got there, it was not so easy figuring out where to place our order, where to pay, or where to pick up, since they display their food outside right next to the front door. However, this makes it easy to point at what you want because we didn't know the names of the dishes! Most of the Lechoneras also have a dining area, but we wanted to takes ours home since it was just around the corner.
We also enjoyed some lechón at a different location after exploring the Camuy caves outside of Arecibo. Ethan overheard a tour guide informing his group that an excellent place to have lunch after visiting the caves was at "Rancho T" just down the road. We heeded his advice and it was quite delicious indeed. We even caught a glimpse of one of the cooks preparing to serve up some pork, hot off the skewer. Check out his sweet machete!
Wow, I just realized it's been over two weeks since our last post! March has definitely felt a like a whirlwind; so many things have been going on this month!
First, the Quirk lab had our annual "winter" retreat the first weekend in March at this beautiful mountain resort called Casa Grande in Utuado, PR. Utuado is about 2 hours southwest of San Juan, tucked away in the beautiful mountains. The purpose of these retreats is to step away from the busy lab and get to know each other better and talk about science on a philosophical level. We read and discussed a chapter out of Karl Popper's book The Logic of Scientific Discovery in addition to some other philosophical readings on science related to the Socratic Method, theory testing, etc. We also had another session on women in science and what that means for the lab and for the future of science in general. Overall, it was a pretty enlightening retreat, and I had a great time. One very interesting thing I learned was that Puerto Ricans do not really care for peace and quiet. The mountain resort we stayed at had a lot of non-Puerto Rican tourists who were there for relaxing, mediating, and doing yoga, and several times our group was asked to be quiet! It was very interesting to see the different cultures from both perspectives: the Puerto Ricans being loud and rambunctious were not doing so to be intentionally rude, but were just having a good time... which lasted into the late hours of the night. On the other hand, the non-native guests were trying to have a peaceful visit and probably seemed onery to the Puerto Rican guests. Greg (my advisor, the professor in charge of the lab) was saying that maybe next year, we should go to a place where there are more locals. But I am not sure if I will be able to handle all that loudness! haha :) Anyway, here are some pictures from the retreat:
Casa Grande Terrace
View of the pool from the terrace
One of the lab members ordering a drink at the cozy bar
The Quirk lab goes for a hike
Beautiful view of while on the hike
A few of us also stopped by a cave on our way home. It was beautiful! You can see the other side of the mountain where Casa Grande was located from this cave. I can't remember the name of the cave, unfortunately :-/
Second, our friends Ben and Leora came to visit us from Rochester last weekend! We were so excited to see them. They also brought their baby Misha and we had such a great time. We took them to the beach, had them try lots of Puerto Rico's tasty foods, and strolled around Condado and Old San Juan. We also cooked a feast of America's Test Kitchen Pulled Pork for them and invited our neighbor over and had some fun late night conversation. Here are some photos from their visit:
Enjoying the day at the Piñones Beach with some agua de coco
Strolling around Old San Juan near the Old Wall. Look at those huge waves!
Cool statue near the Old Wall in Old San Juan... the Three Kings perhaps?
Brunch at Caficultura in Old San Juan. It was delicious!
Our second visit to El Morro. Always a beautiful sight!
Third, I made a trip with some of the lab members to Vieques to teach kids about neuroscience! It was part of Brain Awareness Week, a national event that promotes awareness of the brain, mostly to school kids, but really to anyone who is interested. Our lab actually participated in several events we planned in Puerto Rico. We had some artists come visit our lab who were interested in our research and how we can connect the mind with art. They in turn, invited us to their space and showed us their artwork and what they do. They were a very interesting group that I hope our lab keeps in touch with. One of the undergrads also planned a Brain Awareness Week event at the Río Piedras campus for the psychology department. As you can see, we love spreading the word about the brain! Anyway, Vieques was so beautiful and I had a great time helping with this event and watching the kids get excited about science. Here are some photos:
My first time on a little plane. There were ten of us. How were we all going to fit on that thing!?
All packed in like sardines... but still smiling!
Getting ready to head to Vieques! The plane ride was only about 5 minutes
Up up and away!
Five minutes later, we are landing...
View of the ocean from the school we visited in Vieques
Teaching kids about the brain
Wild horses roaming around Vieques!
So as you can see, it has been a fun-filled March. We are ready for more! We have some more visitors coming in April and May... hope you are planning a trip here if you haven't already done so! ;)
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!
