A day in PARADISE!

This is Isla de Culebra (Culebra Island). It is a very small island east of Puerto Rico. It is considered to be part of Puerto Rico.

A ferry leaves out of Fajardo a couple times a day to take passengers to Culebra. It takes us just under an hour to drive to Fajardo where you board the ferry. The ferry only costs $4.50 for a round trip!! Not bad for a trip to paradise. The ferry ride is just over an hour. If you get motion sickness the ferry would not be a fun experience for you. I can usually handle motion but even I was feeling a little queezy on the boat.

After arriving in Culebra you can take a $3.00 van ride to Flamenco Beach. It's about a five minute drive from the ferry dock. Flamenco Beach is absolutely amazing. There are no buildings around, no major roads, no trash, and endless clear and turquoise water.

This is Joe and Dave walking down the path to the beach

Joe heading into the water

The water is soooo beautiful.

ahhh....Paradise

The water really looks like a swimming pool. There was an area with some coral and we snorkeled all around it. There were fish all over, mostly small but there were a few bigger ones.

Of course we packed some Gasolina in the cooler. We each had a few and then fell asleep on the beach. Seriously, it doesn't get much better than that! (it kind of sucked waking up with a sunburned back though!)

The last ferry leaves Culebra at 5pm on Sundays. We got there early, but not early enough. When there were four people in front of us in line they stopped selling ferry tickets. There were too many people on the boat already. We were worried we would have to spend the night on the island with only our wet swimsuits!

Fortunately, we were told that a ferry would be back to pick us up around 9pm. We went and found a little pizzeria/bar and hung out for awhile. After leaving the pizza place we waited and waited for the ferry.

Here comes the ferry.....finally!!

The ferry was mostly empty on our trip home so we all got a row of seats to lay down on. This is Joe relaxing. He is covered by a towel because it was about 50 degrees on there!


Overall we had a great day on an amazing little island!

Dancing like a white girl!

We have been checking out some small local bars with our friends and it has been a lot of fun. All the bars have live music with couples dancing. The first night we went to one of those bars I kept thinking how fun the dancing looked. Then a guy came over and said he is a salsa instructor and asked if any of us girls wanted to dance. I said yes and he taught me some salsa steps. I had a great time but Joe said I dance like a white girl.

Here I am dancing white-girl-style with the salsa instructor

After our night of bowling we found another little bar with a lot of people dancing. This is just me and some random guy (he's hot, I know you're jealous). Joe said I did better the second time...must not have looked like such a white girl ;)

Bowling the night away

We went bowling with a bunch of people from my class. The bowling alley was the nicest one I have ever been to. I am such a bad bowler though, good thing I was just there to have fun!!!

Joedie, MaryBeth, MaryAnn, Dave, Joe
(notice Joe's new haircut, or just lack of hair I guess)

Day at the beach...

This is Joe and I at the beach in Isla Verde. We live about 10 minutes from this beach. This is definitely our new hobby (don't worry Dad, we do this on the weekends...I focus on school during the week). I can't wait until it's winter and we are sitting on the beach down here ;) I won't miss snow, I know that for sure!

Surprise!

We were at Luquillo Beach with some friends one afternoon and there were little round holes all over in the sand. We had no idea what dug the holes so Joe decided to find out. He dug into one with his hands and this guy popped out. It scared us all and we all jumped back and screamed!! This thing was crazy looking. After it got over us ruining it's home, it dug another perfectly round hole and went in. Now we know to just leave those little holes alone :)

Is he feeling ok??

Those of you that know Joe know that he isn't a dancer. I usually can't get him to dance for anything. I don't know if it was the beer or just being in a new place but Joe wouldn't stop dancing the night we went to Shannan's bar. I have pictures to prove it!

Joe dropped a beer and caught it between his legs resulting in a wet crotch haha



Here comes the dancing...

I really should have used the red-eye remover on this one...I'm too lazy ;)
This picture is hilarious though haha




The boys
Dave, Joe, Les, Ryan

As the old Girl Scout song goes....

Make new friends, but keep the old.
One is silver and the other's gold.

There are several people in my class that had a significant other move down here with them so we have a lot of couples to hang out with. This was the first night we all went out to a bar...it was a lot of fun! I'll post the pictures of Joe dancing next ;)

TRAFFIC!!!

Driving down here is absolutely crazy most of the time. No one obeys any traffic laws. If you want to turn left it's totally normal to do it from the right lane even if the light is red. It's crazy and you just have to see it to believe it.

It takes me anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes to drive to school. Most days traffic isn't too bad at all. The picture below is from a day when I was driving to school at about 4 in the afternoon (NOT a good time to be on the road). This isn't what it's like when I'm headed to school in the morning. It took me about an hour to get to school this time. I'm working on my road rage one day at a time.

Horse Races

Today we went with some friends to the horse races. It was our first time at the horse track. I am not a gambler but I still had a great time. The track was beautiful and had views of the mountains. It was free to get in and I didn't place any bets so I didn't spend any money! Joe won on his first bet so that was exciting. It rained later in the afternoon and we spotted a beautiful rainbow. I wish I had a more high quality camera because I don't think these pictures turned out that great. You get the idea though!

Hello!

We haven't taken really any pictures of ourselves since we got here....so here is one finally!

None of these in Iowa...

...except at the pet stores!



This big guy was just hanging out in the middle of the street right outside of our house! I showed this picture to Bernardo, our landlord, and he informed us that this is a small iguana. He said they can grow to 6+ feet around here! Ahhhh!

Puerto Rican Solara

Haven't seen any other Iowa plates on the island!

We shipped my car down here so we wouldn't have to worry about buying one right away. We arrived in PR on a Tuesday and my car arrived that Thursday and was available for pick up Friday. Thank god we could return our expensive rental car early!

In order to pick up my car we had to drive to the port (after we finally found it!) and pay for the cost of shipping ($1000). We then had to go to the Departamento de Hacienda to pay the import taxes on the car ($1700). We arrived at the Hacienda only to be turned away at the door. Why, you ask? Because I had a tank-top and shorts on!!!!! Seriously, you can do almost whatever you want in PR but I guess you can't wear a tank-top and shorts to the Hacienda.

We drove all the way home and changed. We even threw some extra clothing in the car in case we still weren't up to dress code haha.

A lot of this stuff has been very frustrating but we just take it as it comes because we know we will laugh about all of this someday!

An encounter with la policia!

Joe and I have already been pulled over down here. (What do you expect? Driving down here is INSANE!)




We were driving on what we thought was a two-way street (complete with a yellow line down the middle of the street). To us, that means it's a two-way street, right??? Well we quickly found out that is not always the case in Puerto Rico. We were actually driving the wrong way down a one-way street! OOOOPS!! That lane that we were in was a bus lane. Fortunately the cop was very nice and thought we were just dumb tourists. Maybe we'll learn someday!

Another Problem in PR....

Finally...electricity!! Little did we know there were more problems to come. Shortly after our power was restored we had another little mishap. Joe flushed the toilet and all the water leaked out from the bottom of the toilet while our shower backed up with water. GRRRRREAT! It was late at night so we just cleaned up the water on the floor and planned on calling our landlord in the morning.

The poor guy already had to deal with us not having power and now...toilet problems. He felt terrible. He and his friend showed up that morning and tried to "fix" whatever the problem was. They ended up flooding our apartment much worse and eventually decided to call Roto Rooter. While our landlord and Roto Rooter worked on our plumbing issues, Joe and I headed for Luquillo Beach and forgot all our problems.

Luquillo Beach

Fortunately...when we returned from the beach the problem seemed to be fixed and all the water had been cleaned up.


PS-Luquillo Beach was beautiful. Clear water, soft white sand....what more can you ask for?? It's times like that when I love living in Puerto Rico. Other times....not so much! :)

Powerless

The day after we arrived (while I was locked out on the porch) a utility truck pulled up. This actually happened right as Joe was letting me back in the house (LOL). A minute after the truck pulled up, our power went out and the utility truck left. No power in PR is no fun! It's HOT!

We called our landlord and he had no idea why the power would be out as our neighbors seemed to have electricity. He called the power company and after a couple hours on hold (seriously!) he was told that his automatic payment hadn't gone through last month because his name was misspelled. He was assured that they would be back to restore our power within a few hours. Well, this is Puerto Rico and often things don't happen as promised (we are just getting used to it). Needless to say, we didn't get power that day or night at all.

Our landlord gave us the keys to a vacant apartment upstairs so we could sleep with some air conditioning. We hauled our air mattress up there and slept in the cool room. Our power wasn't turned back on until that evening and we were without power for over 35 hours. Welcome to Puerto Rico!

The reason we're here!

Here I am in front of my school. I need to remember this is why we are here....not to lay at the beach everyday :)

Orientation was this past week and I finally got to meet all my new classmates. It's great to start making friends down here. There are a lot of couples that moved here together so we have a lot of people to hang out with. We are all experiencing the same things...culture shock! It's been so nice to share our stories and hear those of others. It makes us realize that we aren't alone here!

School starts Wednesday, August 12th......wish me luck!!

Locked Out!

The picture is a little dark but this is our front porch. It's basically like a jail cell. Well...the morning after we arrived at our new place I was on the phone and ended up getting locked on our porch. I walked out of the house and shut the door behind me only to find that the door was locked. I couldn't even get off our porch because I didn't have keys to get out of the main gate. Joe was sleeping and his phone was on silent! I just sat out there for an hour and waited for Joe to wake up. Fortunately I had my phone so I just called some friends while I waited to be let in! It's a good thing that wasn't a day that Joe slept until 1pm! Good times in Puerto Rico!

Here is a picture of our front door.....just because I think it's cool!

Arriving in Puerto Rico--Day 1

After a couple long flights we landed in Puerto Rico. We paid someone $2 per bag to help us get our stuff out to the taxi area (rip off!!!). We had no idea how we were going to get everything to our apartment because there was no way it could all fit in a taxi.

I called our landlord to let him know we would be arriving at our apartment soon and he offered to pick us up from the airport! What a relief!!! He has an SUV so we were able to get all of our luggage in there and make it to our new home in one trip. So far day 1 was going great! Our landlord even drove us to pick up our rental car. (He has been a huge help here!)

Things started to go downhill for us at Dollar Rent a Car. When we booked the car online it told us we had to pay $209 for a week. However, when we picked up the car we were told the actual price was $517!!!!!! We were assured that if we returned the car early we would get a full refund for the unused days and we expected to return the car early as my car was going to be arriving in PR in just a couple days.

Packing Up and Heading Out


July 28, 2009

We each had several bags/boxes/golf clubs to fit into the car and it just BARELY fit. It was hard to decide what to bring with us on our new adventure. Most of our goodbyes were done at this point, now we just had to get to the airport and head for the Caribbean. (We had no idea how we were going to get all this stuff from the airport to our apartment when we arrived in San Juan....)



Matt and Sara drove us to the airport in Moline and they were our final goodbyes. We were on our own after that and I must admit it was a little hard to walk away.

.....Leavin on a jet plane.......Next stop: San Juan, Puerto Rico