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.

When we came up from the dive, we excitedly told Robby what we’d seen. He was so enthusiastic to possibly catch a glimpse of her that he strapped on tank and fins and went looking for a few minutes. Unfortunately, he didn’t see her.

After lunch and our one hour surface interval (during which Drew learned that a puttering boat on the ocean makes his stomach lurch), we dove our second site of the day… “Mohada”. While we were down, Wendy saw, among other things, two French parrotfish laying (as if asleep) motionless on the bottom. Their picture is below.

 

After our dives, we cleaned up and got directions to the tuxedo shop from Angel, who also suggested we make a side-trip to nearby Cabo Rojo lighthouse. He provided some great hand-drawn maps for us (great in Puerto Rican terms), which we display below for your viewing enjoyment.

Getting the tuxedo back to the shop was uneventful, and from there we started picking our way toward Cabo Rojo despite the fact that it was raining fairly hard. We talked for a bit about scrapping the idea and heading back to La Parguera, but we’re glad we stuck with it. Part of Angel’s directions to Cabo Rojo told us to stay on a road “until it becomes a dirt road”, which Drew took to mean stay on it for a long time. Angel said, “No, it’s actually a dirt road and it’s kinda bad, too”. One thing we learned — when a Puerto Rican tells you the roads are bad, believe him! The road actually did become a dirt road and, soon after, became undrivable because of all the potholes and, well, craters. We ditched the car and began walking up the hills over rough paths to get to the lighthouse.

In the picture above, you can see the beautiful white-sand beach on the right, a thin strip of land in the center, and the brackish water of the salt flats on the left.

In the Google Earth image below, you can see the lighthouse at Cabo Rojo and the cliffs clearly.

The lighthouse was spectacular, but what really caught our attention was on the other side of it. There was a breathtaking drop (about 200 feet) to crashing waves below just on the other side of the lighthouse. No guardrails, signs, warnings, attendants, or anything to stop a stupid person from running right off the cliff to their doom. It was amazingly beautiful.

We headed back to La Parguera and decided to stop at Paradise Scuba, the other dive shop in the little town, and the only one that allows guests to snorkel in the Bioluminescent Bay that is nearby. We were told to come back at 6:45pm. We went back to the room for a siesta and arrived at Paradise Scuba around 7:00, where we sat around the lobby eating empanadillas that were made by the shop owner’s wife. Despite the gentle rain, we left the shop around 7:45 to board the boat for the short ride to the bay. We were joined by 2 crewmembers, 2 Canadians, and 3 Americans. That group had been snorkeling all day.

When we entered the bay, we noticed that the water was glowing faintly when it was churned up by the boat. We got our snorkel gear on and jumped into the dark water. It was only about 8 feet deep. Whenever you moved, you are covered with tiny stars that glow for a second and then go out. You see, the tiny dinoflagellates get angry when provoked. They’re provoked by being disturbed in the water, and when they’re angry, they glow briefly. This website describes swimming with them as like “floating through stardust”. It is a singular experience; the photos on that site do not capture the beauty of it. We snorkeled for about 45 minutes then got back on the boat for the ride home.

Once we settled up at the shop, we stopped by the Chinese place again for some egg rolls, soup, and rice before heading back to our room to end our busy day.

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.

When the boat arrived at the site (Drew was amazed that Robby & Angel fine-tuned our location visually — just by peering over the side of the boat into the water), we donned our gear and splashed. We dropped down to 85 feet.

During the dive, we saw 2 large moray eels, several lobsters in holes, and a big grouper that we could barely see over the ‘edge’ of the wall. Robby also pointed out Pederson’s Cleaning Shrimp — tiny shrimp that, when provoked, will jump on your fingernail and give it a vigorous cleaning (go here to see a couple of these little fellows — they’re the spiny blue things in the picture).

After our dive, we had a one hour surface interval while the boat puttered toward the next site. During the interval, we enjoyed the sandwiches, cookies, and drinks that the crew had brought.

Our second dive was at a site called “Ledges”. During the dive, Robby pointed out a “Flamingo Tongue” on a sea fan. The top-left picture, below, is of that critter. Wendy saw a trumpet fish near the end of her dive (she clocked 1:08 on her dive computer!) and many black durgeons.

At Robby’s suggestion, we went with Orlando to Dave’s (a restaurant) for lunch after the dives. We enjoyed wings, pizza, and sandwiches in the open air restaurant. Drew was pleased that the restaurant offered free internet access. After that, we went to the room for a siesta then back to Dave’s for a drink and more internet to find the number for the tuxedo place. When we called them, no one there spoke any English but Wendy’s Spanish was sufficient to determine that we could return the tuxedo to the store in Mayaguez (about 30 minutes away) instead of the store in San Juan. We decided to do so the next day after our morning dives.

For dinner, we dined from the local Chinese restaurant — Comida China (where they advertise “all our shrimps are fried”) — which seemed to specialize in Chinese and local (criollo) food. We had brocolli and shrimp and a garlic shrimp dish, all served with white rice and (unexplicably) french fries. We ate dinner in our room and took the leftovers out to the dock to feed the fish.

Robby could blow air rings

To view all the pictures from this trip, click here.

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.

After brunch and goodbyes, we were off on our trip to La Parguera, pulling out of Dorado around 1:30. Our trip around the ‘western road’ took approximately 2 1/2 hours, owing mostly to the traffic lights stationed every. 200. yards. once you hit Route 22. Overall, the roads were consistent with the notion that the infrastructure in Puerto Rico is the best in the Caribbean. However, judging from the number of auto body and tire shops we saw, there must be crummy roads lurking somewhere.

The route we took led us through some amazingly twisty roads (some of which were covered with free-roaming chickens). Finally, we found the little town of La Parguera. The town is very small and touristy (comparable to some small towns in Florida) and was mostly empty. Apparently, it is packed on weekends. Lots of little bars and restaurants around. Our hotel, the Posada Porlamar, was nicely appointed and well-maintained. Annette, the desk clerk, greeted us by name when we walked in. The room was a decent size (more than twice the size of our guest room in Dorado), clean, with a queen bed, and most everything worked (except the TV, the safe, and the telephone!). The small pool was warm and clean (the Spanish sign near the pool indicated the presence of a chemical to detect urine in the pool water!).

Directly behind the hotel was the dive boat, so you could nearly fall out of bed and into the boat. This was very convenient for us, especially since we had complimentary breakfasts provided by the hotel on the patio beside the dive boat.

The entire place was quiet and peaceful and mostly unoccupied.

While unpacking, we discovered that we’d accidentally taken Drew’s wedding tuxedo with us. It was supposed to be left in Dorado. Rather than worrying about it, we had a nice dinner at La Pared (The Wall) restaurant, which is connected to Posada Porlamar. The small restaurant was mostly empty. The food was delightful and the service polite. We had crema de pan, a cream of breadfruit soup; portabello with manchigo, proscuitto, peppers, and onions for appetizers. Drew enjoyed a whole fried red snapper (at the excellent suggestion of Lovey from brunch — thanks Lovey!) in salsa and Wendy liked her shrimp in garlic cheese sauce over penne. We had a very nice Irish Creme Flan with Pineapple, kiwi, and strawberry sauces for dessert before heading back to the room to get to bed early.

(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.

  

Once the wedding and photos were done, we drove back to the Hyatt for the reception. The guests were invited to stay in the lobby area while the wedding party went inside the hall to have more pictures done. Wonderful hors d’oeuvres were circulated — foie gras, pate, seafood, and more, along with champaigne, cosmopolitians, martinis, and other drinks while a small combo played live music.

The pictures of the wedding party done, the doors were opened to admit guests into the hall. Doug & Kelly and their families participated in the receiving line. Once through the line, guests found their way to their assigned table. We, along with all the other cool kids, were assigned to Table 19. It soon became apparent, however, that there were too many people assigned to our table, so Wendy went to discuss the issue with the wedding planner (she who shall not be named, for fear of summoning her), which didn’t want to do anything about it. Wendy reported back to Vince, Doug’s brother, and Vince handled the situation and everyone was happy again.

Not Table 19, but an example of how pretty the tables were. For some reason, Todd’s hair (left) looks very blue in this picture.

First Wendy then Vince dealing with the Wedding Planner.

Kelly, the beautiful bride.
Doug (r) loves Drew. Doug LOVES Drew.

Toasts were made to the happy couple, and Doug and Kelly had their first dance to Over The Rhine’s “I Want You to be My Love“, a beautifully simple song. Then the live music started. There was a great band that played at the wedding, playing a mix of English and Spanish songs, sung by male & female singers and backed up by a nice full band. Interestingly, Puerto Ricans started dancing the moment the live music started and barely stopped all night!

Dinner wasn’t served until 10:30 — we were extremely hungry by then (Wendy & Rob had composed “Endless Soup”, sung to the tune of “Endless Love” along with the band), and we appreciated and enjoyed the excellent menu that Doug & Kelly had put together for us.

The main band took a break and a Plana band came in to take over. This was 6 or 7 drummers with a whistle-blowing, blond-haired, dreadlock-wearing guy who seemed to be the leader. They played their ASSES off, and were quite awesome. The entire room was dancing and sweating and dancing.

After dinner was over — after midnight — Doug & Kelly cut their cake, tossed the bouquet and the garter. Kelly was very funny during this… The band leader was encouraging single women to come up for the bouquet, but he was doing so in Spanish. Kelly took over — in English — and called people up specifically… “Lydia! I know you’re not serious about that guy you’re dating, so you’re single. Get up here now!” and so on. VERY funny.

  

 

There were little wedding cakes to bring home. Wendy & Drew were wiped out, so we left the party around 1:30am and made it back to our guesthouse to find out that the power (and air conditioning!) were both out. Fortunately, power was restored about 45 minutes later so we went to sleep comfortably.

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.

We entered through Puerta de San Juan — where old ships came in — then walked up to Catedral de Juan Bautista to thank God for our safe journey.

Along the way, we stopped at a vendor’s booth to get some plantain chips — both garlic and sweet flavors, and a snow cone (shaved by hand from a big block of ice!). We were getting both hot and hungry, so we started looking for a restaurant to stop in and get the local flavor. We found Italian and Mexican places and lots of shops (who comes to Old San Juan to go to POLO?!), but nothing offering Puerto Rican food. While the girls went to pee, Rob & Drew were approached by a homeless man with a forearm that was open and infected from wrist to elbow. He begged for money and said over and over, “My arm! My arm! I wish I would die”.

Once he left us alone and the girls returned, we found our way to AMBROSIA, a restaurant serving Puerto Rican food. Here’s what we had: Yucca with chicken & bacon, Mofongo with steak, Arroz con pollo, and plantain lasagna. Everything was uniformly good and Drew realized that he likes Mofongo quite a lot! Mofongo is made from green plantains mashed with garlic and pork fat rendered from salted pork or bacon. It is fried and formed into little balls, or in the case of Drew’s dish, a cup into which the steak filling is placed. Jose, our server, suggested a “flan-like” dessert made with milk, sugar, coconut, and cornstarch. It was very subtly flavored and was good & cooling on the hot day. After lunch, we trekked up to El Morro, the cemetary, and La Perla.

See the little dog in the shade of 500 year old walls?

The cemetary was beautiful, but then we noticed a homeless man wandering around the graves, and that many of the graves had been vandalized (some were covered just by plywood.)

We didn’t have time to go into El Morro, though we would like to have seen it. We wandered around the market that had been set up under large white tents and listened to live music being played by a band. We finally found our car and headed back to Dorado to get ready for the wedding.

The wedding is covered in its own article, here!

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.

Drew quickly learned that driving in Puerto Rico is crazy and that driving behind Doug in Puerto Rico was suicidal. We got significantly lost owing, in part, to the ironically-named NeverLost system installed in Doug’s van.

We finally arrived at the tuxedo shop at 1:15pm, hungry and frazzled from the drive. My fitting went pretty smoothly, even with the PR cutie following me around saying, “Drew I need your pants!”, so I went down to the Subway sandwich shop that was “1/2 a block” away (more like 2-3 blocks, but who’s counting?) to get some food for myself and Doug. When we got back to the tuxedo shop, we found out that they were missing parts of Doug’s tuxedo. Since it is important that the groom have his tuxedo, we decided to drive to another store to get the missing pieces. So, once again, we ventured out into the Puerto Rican traffic, on our way to the other location. Problems mounted while we were at the other store — the moved slowly, seemed to have to discuss anything & everything with two or three other employees before anything got done, and our group was getting hungry and cranky, aware that the wedding rehearsal was scheduled at 4:00.

Drew didn’t have any way to get in touch with Wendy — Costa del Oro doesn’t answer their phone most of the time, it seems, so even if he’d remembered to bring the number (he didn’t), it would not have helped.

Back at Costa del Oro, the power went out during a pretty big rainstorm, so Wendy couldn’t swim in the pool, lay out and sunbathe, or even hang out in the room in air-conditioned comfort. She sat out on the patio and read. And she was getting hungry — our original plan was that we’d be back in time to have lunch.

Finally, around 5:45, we roared back into Dorado. Doug went straight to the church to try to catch some of the rehearsal (scheduled at 4:00, you remember), while Drew went to the guesthouse to fetch Wendy. Fortunately, Wendy knew something was going wrong with the plan so she got ready for the rehearsal and was waiting when Drew arrived to get her.

As we were heading back to the church, we were stopped by Kelly and told that we’d missed the rehearsal. All the groomsmen and the groom. And that we should follow her to the rehearsal party instead of going to the church. We followed Kelly to “Villa Daddy”. We were greeted by uniformed waiters, a full bar, and a garage full of people cooking (well, frying — those Puerto Ricans love their fried food!) delightful little appetizers like plantain slices stuffed with beef (and fried), breadfruit (fried), corn sticks (fried), and cheese blobs (also fried). Everything was very tasty, and the party was extremely nice. We chatted with Melody, Rob, Julie Anne, Kent, Luli, and Antonio, in addition to meeting darned near everyone else. Unfortunately, in our rush, we forgot the camera so we don’t have pictures from the rehearsal party. The main dish for the evening was a chicken & rice dish with red peppers, white asparagus, and peas & spices in a tomato base. It was quite like risotto and the translation of the name is “slide”. Perhaps Kelly will tell me the name in Spanish! After dinner, there were speeches, toasts, gifts passed around, and lots of hugging and crying — good crying.

After the party, we decided to drive by the church to make sure we knew where it was — not a big deal, since it was less than a mile from our guesthouse. We just had to remember to veer right instead of left at the Jesus sign.

On the way home, we stopped at GRANDE, a grocery store to look for pillows. We had no success, but stopping at the Walgreen’s landed us two pillows that made sleeping much more comfortable. We picked up toilet paper (since the half-roll that was provided to us wouldn’t last forever), kleenex, and some candy. We talked to a cute little blond kid in the candy aisle who had opinions on each-and-every candy selection in the aisle, and avoided a pushy pan-handler outside, before heading home to bed.

Our trip started out a day earlier than planned. Our flight was scheduled for 7 AM Thursday morning, leaving out of Indianapolis. We had planned to leave home about 3 AM to get there in time for security delays, parking, and all the associated travel things. Wendy’s voice teacher reminded us that there is an hour time change (which would have made us an hour early to the airport; a nuicance rather than a disaster). During our pre-trip grocery shopping, our pharmacist happened to mention…

The next morning we fed the other pouch to the little yellow cat before breakfast. While doing so, we met a couple from Florida who were interested in him… they were considering buying a carrier and taking him to a nearby vet for a health certificate so they could take him home with them. Reassurred about the little cat’s future, we quickly grabbed a bit of coffee cake and some juice from the hotel breakfast bar and loaded up our gear into the airport shuttle.

The shuttle to the airport was without incident, as was the flight to Miami. There we were delayed 20 minutes as there were no flight attendants for our next flight. When we finally took off, we were next to a very nice lady from Monserrat (their national bird is the oriole, which is all we know about Monserrat) and her seatmate who had brought along about 5 little bags of things with her (we don’t know what these things were) which she insisted on holding in her lap the entire flight, rummaging through them at various times, much to the curious scrutiny of the lady from Monserrat.

We landed in San Juan at 4:20, just a little behind schedule. Our bags were on the baggage carousel, along with those of 3 other flights — all jumbled together. We changed clothes and washed up a bit in the grimy airport bathroom to be ready for the rehearsal dinner (we knew we’d miss the rehearsal, which was supposed to begin at 4:00). There was a phone to call the rental car shuttle, and unlike Mexico and Punta Cana airports, nobody was trying to carry our luggage for a dollar’s tip here. The shuttle rocketed us through San Juan’s Thursday rush hour across the highway to the renal car office. There were approximately 8 employees behind the desk, but only “Johnny” was actually working, so that it took nearly an hour and a half for us to actually get our car, a newer Toyota Corolla. The car was beaten to tatters, the white paint on the front & rear bumpers looked speckled with black. This was a premonition of the driving situation in Puerto Rico.

We headed out into traffic, following Doug’s directions and our trusty map out of San Juan toward Dorado 40 minutes west of the city. This was our first experience with Puerto Rican driving, and it was an education. Puerto Ricans apparently don’t believe in turn signals (even less than in the states), they use the shoulder as an extra lane, and the lines in the road are just there as a suggestion… if they can fit another car in between the lanes of traffic, they’ll just drive right through. It’s not a speed contest; since there are so many cars jammed into the lanes nobody can go very fast. The middle lane seemed to be the slow lane, and the right or left lanes were used for passing at random intervals. Most of the major highways are toll roads, and again, the lane lines are meaningless heading into and out of the toll booths.

Our directions to “Daddy Garrity’s” home took us into Dorado. The roads are not named, but numbered… is it 696? 6696? 694? Somehow we found the correct road and turned into the gate surrounding the community where the rehearsal dinner was being held. At the gate (the one with the anchor out front) we were instructed to tell them we were there for the Garrity wedding, which we would have been happy to do had anyone been in the guard booth to tell. The gate was deserted, and even pressing the button and yelling “HOLA!” into the speaker elicited no response. This is when we learned that my cell phone service does not work in Puerto Rico. The only signal I could get connected me with a Spanish recording which was saying something about my credit card, but didn’t actually let me place a call.

Now it is growing darker. We don’t know the name or location of our hotel (Doug promised us he’d get us there after the party, and we shouldn’t worry about it). We can’t get into the gate, we can’t call Doug or anybody else for that matter. We decided to go up the road a bit further to see if we could find a pay phone to get through to Doug and Kelly. At next gate, we told the guard where we were trying to go. He called someone on his radio, and directed us to wait on the path ahead. Soon, another car arrived and led us down a golf cart path (really!) to another gate, which he clearly had the opener to activate. We scooted in behind him and found ourselves just on the other side of the first gate which wouldn’t open for us in the first place. So now our directions led us around to the Garrity house, which we knew by the “Villa Daddy” sign on the gate.

(Let us digress for a moment to mention that EVERYTHING in Puerto Rico is gated. The houses are gated within the gated communities. The driveways are gated, and the little houses without driveways are barred over the doors and windows, right up to the third floor. We think this is supposed to make us feel safer, but somehow it does not.)

There is no parking on the path outside the gate to Villa Daddy, but fortunately after we have turned around to try to find parking, we noticed Doug’s brother, Vince, just inside the gated yard. Andrew called to him and he opened the gate for us to drive in and park on the lawn, which seemed rather quieter than we had anticipated. Doug came walking around from the beach and seemed very surprised to see us. It seems that the rehearsal dinner had been changed from Thursday to Friday night, but we had not been informed, and though I had sent them our flight information per their request, Doug and Kelly didn’t realize we were arriving on Thursday at all. Kelly was having a quiet night away from the Villa, but Doug was heading out with the boys. Andrew was far too tired from flying all day to go out on boys’ night, and all we wanted was to find our hotel and check in. Doug promised to lead us to our hotel, which is called Costa De Oro.

We followed Doug down the main road to the Hyatt, which is where most of the wedding guests were staying (it is a lovely hotel, but three times the price of our little guesthouse). He was picking up the rest of the guys there, and gave us directions to our hotel, which was suppsed to be “left out of here, left at the Gulf station and you’ll see it“. So we left Doug and his boys and headed out to our hotel. It is around 8:00pm. We turned left at the aforementioned Gulf station and drove on down until we ran out of road. Indeed, we did not see it. We prowled back more slowly, thinking we must have missed the sign. Tired and frustrated and not seeing the sign, we stopped at the Gulf station to refuel and ask directions. Wendy’s Spanish is rusty at best and Andrew’s is mostly there to ask for more food, but Wendy managed to get across to the cashier what we were looking for. She said she wasn’t from around there (and completely missed Wendy’s humorous retort, “I’m not from around here either!”) and didn’t know where it was, but directed us to another man who told us that the guesthouse was indeed down that road, but we also had to turn left at the second street down (unnamed) and that was actually the street is was on. So we turned left at the unnamed street, and finally found our signless guest house at the end of the cul-de-sac.

They were expecting us, and check-in was uneventful. Our room was tiny but clean. The cold water taps did not work, but fortunately the hot took more than 10 minutes to heat up, which gives one time to use the cooler water out of the hot tap. The bed was firm and the pillows were so thin as to be useless, but at least it was ours. The manager brought us our ration of two towels and half a roll of toilet paper, turned on the AC, and left. And there we were.

Doug had told us about a restaurant he liked in Dorado, and since we had not eaten anything since Miami (expecting a rehearsal dinner, remember), we headed out. Our first meal in Puerto Rico was Chinese, at a tiny little roadside place called “Jewel of Gold” (as opposed to “Jewel of China” which is what Doug had thought). The service was slow but the food was quite good, which remained true for most of the vacation everywhere we went. On the way home we stopped at the 24 hour Walgreen’s and bought an alarm clock and a 4 pack of Charmin Ultra. We looked in vain for better pillows, but finding none, returned to the noisy poolside room at Costa De Oro and fell asleep, ending our travel day.

We’re back!

We were in Puerto Rico to celebrate the wedding of our friends Doug & Kelly and to have a dive vacation for ourselves.

The pictures are being uploaded to the server as we speak and we will work to caption them and write our articles as soon as possible. If you want to get a jump on viewing the pictures, go here.