puerto-rico

Tuesday morning dawned bright and clear. Wendy & Drew were down at the patio for their standard breakfast — waffles & pancakes. This time, the meal included a piece of plain bread, unbuttered. We boarded the dive boat, delighted to discover that it was just Angel, Robby, Wendy, & Drew on this dive.

The boat headed out to “The Steps”, which is trenches running parallel to the wall. Angel decided that he would dive with us today, and we left Robby happily reading on the boat during our dives. We saw several moray eels (both green and spotted), a load of barracuda, butterfly fish, and two pufferfish,

We also saw a furry sea cucumber. When Angel saw it, he made a beeline over to it and scooped it right up. We swam down to see what he’d found. It looked really pointy, but was actually extremely soft. Kinda cute in a weird way…

Angel was diving deepest with Wendy about 10 feet above him and 10 feet behind. Behind her, about 10 feet up and 10 feet back was Drew. We dove about 15-20 feet in from the edge of the wall; it dropped away on our left. Whenever we’d see anything interesting, we’d scream into our regulators to let each other know we were slowing down or stopping to explore or observe. By the time we’d done that a few times, we knew Angel must be getting tired of it — he sees butterfly fish every day, so what’s another one to him? But to us land-lubbers, it’s pretty exciting.

So Angel moved pretty slowly when Wendy started screaming into her regulator and pointing off to the left, toward the wall. Drew had followed Wendy’s pointing finger and was also screaming. Angel rolled pretty slowly, first looking at Wendy then letting his gaze travel in the direction she was pointing. Even from 20 feet behind and above him, Drew could see Angel’s eyes get huge as he saw what we were seeing, sailing in from the blue water.

On Monday morning, we rose at 7:00am, checked in at the dive shop, and sat down on the patio for a waffle (Drew) and pancake (Wendy) breakfast. The plates came out with waffles/pancakes only. Nothing else. It was warm and decent for eating pre-dive. We were joined by Orlando, a diver originally from Ponce (a little town nearby), stationed in Arkansas with the Air Force. Tomorrow he was going back up to Ponce to celebrate his daughter’s birthday with their family, but today he was diving with us.

Orlando

We met divemaster Robby, a blonde surfer-dude-type from Knoxville and Angel, local-boy shop owner and captain of the boat. Both were younger and cooler than we’d expected (not that we had any expectations going in…). Both were extremely knowledgable about diving.

Robby (l) and Angel (r)

We loaded our gear and boarded the boat for the 20 minute ride out to “The Wall”, our first dive site. There were only the five of us — Angel, Robby, Orlando, Wendy, and Drew — on the boat.

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In the morning, we packed up our belongings and checked out of Costa del Oro. When we went downstairs to the office, there was no one there to help us check out. Finally, we located the lady of the house out near the pool. Despite the fact that she spoke no English at all, we finally checked out and headed over to the Hyatt Dorado Beach for a wonderful brunch that Doug & Kelly’s families hosted. There was a breakfast bar, pasta bar, made-to-order omelettes and waffles, a carving station, cereal, and wonderful fresh fruit. Mimosas flowed like water.

The view from the lobby of the Hyatt

Doug & Kelly arrived at the brunch about an hour late (they’re on Puerto Rico time, after all). It was amusing to watch Doug & Kelly attempt to enter through various sets of (locked) doors before one of the hotel staff finally opened a door and admitted them to their own brunch, to gentle laughter and welcoming applause from the guests.

Wendy & Drew sat with Mel & Rob, Todd from Vegas (hey Todd… did you pick up Guild Wars yet?), and Michael & Lovey (neighbors of Kelly’s family). We had a great conversation with this group of nice people, and Michael gave us much better directions to La Parguera, which worked out beautifully.

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(All of Drew’s pictures from Doug & Kelly’s wedding are here. Check their site for more pictures!)

After a hot day in Old San Juan, Drew & Wendy hustled back to the Costa de Oro to get ready for the wedding. We got to the church on time — as in, about 30 minutes before the wedding was scheduled to begin — and we were the first ones there. Noticing that we were unable to locate the unlocked door, one of the nuns directed us (silently) to the entrance to the church.

Since no one else was there, we had the chance to explore the church a little bit. The first thing that we noticed was that there is an effin BIG JESUS at the front of the church. I’m told that it is the largest (or second largest) sculpture of the risen Christ in the world, and I believe it. The only things missing were a smoke machine and laser beams from his eyes, and “Jesuzilla” would have dominated the earth!

Jesuzilla. See the people below him? One big Jesus, eh?!

People started arriving and plans were discussed (all the groomsmen had missed the rehearsal, remember).

The wedding was beautiful. We didn’t get many pictures during the ceremony because Drew was involved with the wedding (and therefore not able to snap photos), and Wendy’s seat didn’t give her a clear view of the proceedings.

  

On Saturday morning, Drew & Wendy got up at 8:30am, had a continental breakfast of rolls & coffee at the pool bar, and headed over to the Hyatt to meet Kent & Julie Anne to drive into Old San Juan. They decided not to go, preferring instead to spend the day with Doug. We met up with Rob in the lobby and he checked with Melody (who was swimming) and they agreed to join us. We left the Hyatt around 11:30am and headed toward Old San Juan.

With the exception of the event that will forever be called “Drew’s Toll Booth Crime” (our directions said that we should stay in the LEFT lane, so we did… Directly into the ePass toll booth lane — which offered no option for throwing in the $0.70 to pay the toll, so we broke the law), the trip into Old San Juan was uneventful. Since it was Saturday, the traffic was light (well, by Puerto Rico standards, which means it was insane by USA standards).

Once we found our way to Old San Juan, we parked in a municipal parking structure. Rather than trying to remember the name of it, we snapped a picture:

We parked, got out, and got our first view of Old San Juan. Below is a poor-man’s-panorama of the view of the waterfront.

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We woke up pretty early on Friday morning, feeling refreshed from a decent night’s sleep. The terrible pillows notwithstanding, we were comfortable in our little tiny room at Costa del Oro. We washed up, dressed, and went downstairs to see what their definition of a “continental breakfast” might be. At the poolside bar, we ate muffins and doughnuts washed down with caffe con leche, all while watching the Three Stooges on the nearby television. Then we had a quick dip in the pool. Wendy laid out to sunbathe and read while Drew got ready to go into San Juan with Doug to pick up tuxedos.

Doug was supposed to come get Drew by 10:00, but around 11:45, Doug showed up with his van full of other groomsmen & attendants. It became clear that there was no way Drew was going to be able to wedge himself into the van, so Drew decided that he’d follow in the rental car instead.

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