Observations of the Island, Trip to Ceiba and Survivalism in Guanica
Today we got up around 9, hung out a little and then went down to breakfast. Unfortunately we were a little late since we found out they closed breakfast at 10 and we got there around 10:30am. But they went ahead and served us. It was a good home-cooked style meal with fresh fruit for only about $8 for the two of us! And because we had been eating so much fried food here on this island, it was a much needed health booster.
Even though the US has an obesity problem, it seems that Puerto Rico has it even worse. I think it is for sure worse than Colorado which I believe is the leanest state. There is so much fried food everywhere, especially fried chicken, pollo frito!, places everywhere and many of the people look like they enjoy it a little too much!
Even the Chinese food places serve fried chicken instead of grilled chicken in the chicken and vegetable dishes, but the kicker was that they served it with both white rice AND French fries of all things which we thought was so weird. They also don’t have unsweetened iced tea. All the drinks are super sweet here. It’s also hard to get just a cup of iced tap water like we usually do when we eat-out in Colorado.
Anyhow, back to the trip. We spent some more time down at the thermal pool which is nice and relaxing. Then we packed up and headed out.
Today was a day of driving. We drove up the mountains, down the mountains, to the ocean and back again. We drove the ruta panoramica (Panoramic Route) and Highway 53, we took toll roads and back roads. We were definitely tourists taking lots of pictures everywhere we went.
We saw farmland -what looked like bananas or plantains and maybe coffee growing on the sides of steep green hills. There are some interesting plants and flowers on this side (eastern) of the island.
We went through Humacao and found a Chili’s very easily and were able to finally use our gift card! We also saw another lighthouse -we have made a little side game of trying to see and photograph all the lighthouses on the island.
Finally we arrived here at the Ceiba Country Inn and are trying to rest -again for the second time. Our first room was infested with some sort of biting bugs. So the owners moved us into another bugless room -thank goodness! The owners are nice Americans from Rhode Island. They have adopted like 3 dogs, all former strays. Poor things. Dogs and cats run around stray all over the place here and the females seem to all be pregnant or nursing.
The view from the place we stayed in Ceiba
Well, off to Vieques tomorrow!
Oh, I forgot, on the day we traveled to Guanica, when we also stopped by the Guanica Dryland Forest, we went for a hike because we saw a sign for the old Fort Capron ruins. So we decided to walk the 5 kilometers it said it was from where we could park. We got REALLY hot though and Britton took off his shirt and gave it to me to wear on my head as a type of hat. Then we kept walking and walking and hiking and walking but still we didn’t see any ruins.
Watch out for those spikes!
Finally we decided to turn around about an hour later when we saw thunder clouds and lightning. We tried to hustle to avoid the rain and I had to watch my feet to avoid tripping over the rocks. So as I was looking down I ran smack into a thorny tree branch and poked my eye. My eyelid started bleeding but at least my eyes had been closed at the time of impact!
Termite hive?
We also saw a huge nest of some sort that we can only imagine must be a termite hive. Britton developed some blisters on his shoulders from the sun and sweat. By the end of the hike we were super happy to the see the car (with A/C and water) once more.