Day 2 started out bright and early at 8:15 am with everything repacked, ready to eat choose from a variety of foods for breakfast right in the hotel. Eggs, potatoes, bacon, waffles, oatmeal, yogurt, toast, bagels, donuts, fruit, juice, coffee, etc. Everyone found something they liked.
Soon our driver and our guide showed up, and we were off for a full day ahead.
First stop: Old San Juan
Adryanna got sick, so Cristian took over as our tour guide for the day. He did a fabulous job guiding us through the streets of Old San Juan and explaining so much of the history of everything we saw. This picture in particular shows one of the first theaters ever built in the Americas.
The streets are all blue bricks, which makes the city very unique.
All the buildings are painted in vibrant colors, never repeating a single color on either side.
We all really enjoyed seeing some "wildlife" we're not used to seeing climbing up the trees.
We learned the historical significance of many different statues.
And a little shopping made everyone happy to buy something for their families.
All of the street names had some significance. like Calle Sol having little suns on the buildings and Calle Luna had little moons. I found my favorite street: Calle de la Tranquilidad (Street of Tranquility), with the ocean right in the background.
After a little bit of walking up and down the many streets of Old San Juan, we ended up at San Cristobal, an old castle used during the wars of the Americas. A castle with an absolutely beautiful view of the ocean.
After San Cristobal, we continued our walking tour through the streets of Old San Juan to our lunch destination.
Everyone found something they liked to fill their stomach and quench their thirst after a morning under the hot sun. I enjoyed trying sorullitos, little cheese-filled cornbread snacks that reminded me a little bit of a Colombian dessert.
After a nice break to refresh ourselves, we continued our walk to Spanish class, which was surprisingly outside in a little plaza (thankfully in the shade).
We all enjoyed the vibrant colors of plants and art along the way.
The home of a famous artist
I just noticed the hole cut out in this plant stand, likely for the colony of stray cats that freely roam the streets. When San Juan began to populate, they had a waste problem, that led to a rat problem. So they brought in cats to take care of the rat problem, and they've had a cat colony ever since (now over 500 years later!)
Those cats were the highlight of Spanish class!
Our teacher, Victoria, did a fabulous job using nature to give the kids a very hands-on Spanish class. She held their attention fully and kept them very engaged in their learning. She also did a great job using both languages to teach them both the language and the history.
We all loved learning about the flower from the ahleli tree (the Tree of Heaven).
After Spanish class, we walked some more to meet up with our driver to take us to another part of the island, Fajardo, about two hours away, to settle in for the next two nights.
Hasta luego, San Juan!
After a long drive, we pulled up to a place called Pure Adventure for a two hour (3 mile) night kayaking tour to experience the bioluminiscent bay. (According to AI, "A bioluminescent bay is a body of water where microscopic organisms called dinoflagellates produce light, creating a glowing effect. This phenomenon is most notable in Puerto Rico, where three such bays exist:
Mosquito Bay, Laguna Grande, and La Parguera. " We went to Mosquito Bay, lathered in layers of bug repellants!
The "extra" kid here was Mason, the 11-year-old from Colorado that got paired with me in my kayak. Kayaking with a partner requires quite a bit of communication, and let's just say that was quite difficult with someone you don't even know!
Our nearly 3 hours of kayaking at night proved to be quite the adventure, and unfortunately, the "glows" were not as noticeable this time of the year due to several factors. There were quite a multitude of kayakers all paddling through one little canal at the same time, and some of us had to be "towed" by the guides because we weren't the greatest at kayaking. We did get to experience a little bit of the glow by covering us with a tarp to make it as dark as possible and then gently putting our hands in the water. It looked like sparklers under water!
By the time we got back to where we started, we didn't know we were going to have to walk in waste deep water to get out, so we then drove back to our second hotel completely soaked. We got back at like 10:30 at night and rushed everyone through the showers while we ordered pizzas from room service for dinner. The pizzas came around 11:15, and we all made it to bed by midnight. Thankfully we had a 9 a.m. meet up the next morning and did NOT need to repack everything.
I failed to get a picture of our hotel room, but I was thankful to have my own queen bed this time rather than a pull-out sofa (though I missed having a separate space from the girls).
Greicy and I started the trip out in teacher mode with our teacher relationship with these kids, but we soon had to switch to Mom-mode as the days went on as we realized they needed more than just a teacher/student relationship on this kind of trip.
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