Of Puerto Rico and being handed the keys to "Jurassic Park."

So we got back from Puerto Rico Saturday evening. Whiplash. It was 85 and sunny on the beach on the PR, 24 hours before we landed in Chicago. Walking back to my apartment from the EL stop in shorts it was 30 and windy.

Puerto Rico was amazing. Just what the doc. ordered in terms of getting away from the stresses of my hectic working life. It was pretty much 80 the entire time we were there. We spent alot of time on a various number of different beaches, all of them gorgeous. If you've seen a postcard and that postcard has a beach pictured on it, then most likely the beach pictured is in Puerto Rico, regardless of whether or not the name on the postcard says Jacksonville or Venice Beach.

The water in Puerto Rico is blue, which is different than the poop brown color that the ocean is right off our coasts. The sand is most often white, which is probably the reason is so blue.

We spent alot of time snorkling, we saw alot of things Barracudas, Crabs, Sea Slugs (which we tormented until they "inked" their load (which we have video of here). We saw Puffer fish, Sting Rays and Regal Tang fish (which is what Dory was from the movie Finding Nemo - theyre alot less annoying in real life.)

Most nights we camped on beaches, sleeping to the crashing surf.

One day we drove west on the island to see the largest satellite in the world (Aricebo Observatory) which was featured in the movie Goldeneye and also Contact. It was pretty cool. We were planning on camping at a near by national forest, but when we got there found that it was closed (Like many other things on an island that apparently moves more slowly than here.) We found two guys working in the machine shop behind the main office, and asked what the deal was. They re-itterated that it was closed and told us that we were pretty much hosed since it was nearing dark and the next nearest campsite was quite a ways away. The looked us over and handed us the keys.

Yes, the keys to a national park in Puerto Rico. Pretty flippin' awesome. We have pictures. As you can see it pretty much looks like Jurassic Park, and since none of Jurassic Park was actually shot in Puerto Rico (sorry guys) we decided to tell people that we pretty much slept in Jurassic Park. It was a great night out, so we decided to sleep under the stars. Falling asleep to the sound of crickets, and Koki frogs....which we told ourselves were Brontosaurus and Velociraptor (what? I was home-schooled, I have an over-active imagination.)

On Thursday of last week we left the main island of Puerto Rico by ferry for the island of Vieques, where we snorkled some more and paid visit to a Bioluminescent bay. Which can sort of be seen here (but think, this is a small fish, imagine swimming in it!) I could "Hadouken" (for you old school 16-bit gaming geeks out there) my brother from a good four or five feet away and a stream of light would hit him. Pretty cool!

More jokes and relating, than can be related here. More fun than can be related here. I will always argue that its not what you do its who you do it with. And the thing that makes trips like this priceless are the people you go with. We went as a group of six, I didn't know three from the group before we left, but it was fantastic. A friend of mine David Chronic said to me once that "Scarcity creates community." Its always cool to put yourself in a situation with a group of people that you're all unfamiliar with, and with less than you have in the average day (essentially what you have in your hiking pack) and to live and learn from there. Pretty cool. Hmm...no wonder I like the idea of community living so much. Anyone else wanna move somewhere together?

peace,

matt

p.s. - here are the links to the photo albums which we uploaded from the 5 digital cameras that traveled along.

Kristen's Gallery
Nate's Gallery
Seth's Gallery