I got back yesterday from a little jaunt around the island. I spent a couple of days with Jose Maldonado my environmental science teacher from high school and my summer employer for a couple of summers in his excellent tropical ecology camp. He has an awesome house in a town called Vega Alta (around 45 minutes outside of san juan) where he ran the camp. He has the tons of fruit trees, some nice land, and a pack of dalmations, including one that loves to rest her head on your lap even if you standing up.

We were trying to get to Culebra which is one of the most beautiful islands in the Caribbean and I would say the only one you can stay at cheaply because camping is relatively inexpensive (just went up in price, but more on that later). There was a HUGE storm here on Tues so we did not make it to Culebra till Wed late afternoon but it was so worth it even though Micah and I had to get home Friday early.

We snorkeled twice on Thursday and it was by far by best snorkeling experience here in PR. We saw a leather back turtle at 8 am while snorkeling in Flamenoc beach and then later on saw a bunch of squid (they are night creatures so it was surprising) and sting rays along with lots of other cool fish. The snorkeling is not the “best” in the Caribbean but it is truly not bad. Also, there is this one section next to Tamarindo beach that does not allow fishing anymore and since I went five years ago (they started the ban 3 years ago), the fish are a lot larger.

Micah and I were also adopted by two Puerto Rican families who felt sorry that we basically only brought a tent, dry food, towel, and snorkeling gear. And people in Flamenco tend to recreate thier homes when camping so we were like the pauper campers for them. So they fed us, gave us drinks, and made sure we were up at 5 am to catch the early ferry back to Fajardo.

Back in San Juan, I frustratingly discovered that healthhacker.com pointed to an inactive DNS which meant my site was down and I had no mail. After being gone for four days it felt like being locked out of my house and though it is back up, mailing is slowly trickling in. Very frustrating to say the least but at least I had a nice few days before hand.

This weekend I hope to get up a site for budget travel in PR. It is sort of an oxymoron because this is not a cheap place to live or travel but there are cheap ways to get around and eat and have fun so watch out for my page soon!