Puerto Rico

Our second port of call was Puerto Rico. We arrived at the port in the middle of the day, and it was fun to see the old fort and city as we sailed in. The ship arrived at our other ports quite early in the morning, so we didn't really get to see too much from the boat. When the Spanish settled Puerto Rico in the 1600's, they built this fort to protect thier land. The walls are 18 ft thick, and on the cruise they told us that even today this fort would be difficult to take.

After we got off the boat, we headed up toward the fort on foot. After about a half hour of wandering through the streets of Puerto Rico, we made it to the fort (thanks to our GPS).

We came across this statue in our wanderings. We're not sure what it means, but it was pretty cool.

This is a really colorful town with vibrantly colored walls on all of the buildings.

After our self-guided tour of the Old City, we jumped on a bus with some other people from our cruise line, and set out half way across the island for our next excursion: the kayaking to the Bioluminescent Bay. This unique ecosystem supports single-celled bioluminescent dinoflagellates that lives in the water and lights up when thouched. We got to the gathering place just after sunset, and after kayaking up a dark river for about 20 minutes, we got to the bay. It was really amazing to see the water around our paddles and kayaks light up as we made our way through it. When we drew up water in our hands and spilled it on our legs the water droplets would be filled with light. We also tapped our oar on the side our our kayak to startle the fish and it was as if they were glowing in the water below. It was such a unique experience. If you are ever in Puerto Rico or one of the few other places that has this phenomenon it is well worth the trouble. We didn't get any pictures while we were here since we needed to keep things dark to see the luminesence best, but you can see some example of what it kind of looks like here. The pictures on the website don't quite do it justice but they kind of show what it was like.

When we got back to our ship that night we found this little guy on our bed. Sailing away from port.

Next time we'll share about our experience in St. Thomas, U.S.V.I and Half Moon Cay, Bahamas

Funny story:

Jen- I had a cavity filled on Friday. Long story short, I ended up getting three shots to numb my mouth. When leaving the office I noticed that I couldn't close my right eye because it was so numb. After I few minutes I could close it again, but was feeling my nose and roof of my mouth go numb among other things. I stopped at Walmart to pick up a few photos before returning home to let the effects wear off. When I got to the photo counter I tried to speak. I mumbled to the nice lady that I just had dental work done and needed to pick up some photos. I think I sounded just like someone who is deaf that tries to speak. I was surprised how much harder it was to speak just a few minutes after leaving the doctor's office. The woman understood me and asked for my name. I couldn't tell her. She asked me if I wanted to write it and I nodded. She gave me a piece of paper and a pen (that wouldn't write). Anyway, it all worked out, but was very embarrassing. I went home and waited for the effects to wear off. Kyle had a fun time laughing at me all afternoon. I also tried to drink some water later and couldn't swallow. The water all ran out of my nose. After a few hours I suddenly sounded like myself again and was finally able to have that drink of water. I've never been so numb before.