My first hand at a green thumb

After we bought a bottle of mojito from Don Q, we thought we'd pop into the supermarket to get some mint and club soda... never thought that it was be this hard to find mint!!! The only stuff they has was in a massive box at $8!

So I thought, well how hard can it really be to grow mint? Its technically a weed (so I've been told), so it should grow like one too - we picked up a little seedling for just $2, I got some pots on sale after Christmas for $1, and we nursed it - and now its out of control already!

We have mint to open a mojito bar...

The other two plants are jalapeno and bananas peppers.. the jalapenos are growing quite well too, but we've yet to see any peppers..

Parque Nacional Isla De Cabras

Yesterday - being Three Kings Day - meant that the entire island was shut down - not a single store was open.. this holiday is bigger than Christmas and New Years put together!

We decided to take the truck for a spin and head out to Parque Nacional Isla De Cabras, which is located directly across the bay from Fort El Morro in Viejo San Juan.

This National Park is not accessible by public transport, and is heavily dominated by locals (as opposed to tourists which overrun the forts). Puerto Ricans are very proud people - evident by the way they dress, the items they purchase and where they choose to spend their time. They are also very family-oriented, yesterday being a perfect example of that.

We were almost the only white people there (including our little white puppy!), but there were many large families having their BBQ's, playing hispanic music and genuinely just enjoying eachothers company and having fun in their surrounding environment. This was Alpens first time outside at the beach, so we let her have a little run around and of course lots of sniffles. She loved the soft grass and the rocky areas - but was so scared of the water! She didnt want her little paws getting wet and always ran away when a wave came.

It was such a beautiful afternoon too - warm and very stormy, but without the rain. The sky was black and threatened to break open any minute - but that little bit of sunshine kept us going and after a few hours, we went home - tired, happy and an exhausted little puppy in our back seat.

Bananas

Something we've noticed that here in the heat and humidity bananas ripen about 10 X quicker than back home! Even after buying a banana rack (which helps to slow down the ripening process), our bananas still go from yellow to brown overnight.

The skin goes awfully thin too, and the start to peel themselves!

"Silver Truck"

After 2 and half weeks of waiting, endless phone calls that werent returned, endless emails that werent returned, rude customer service, constantly being hung up on and not called back, being put on hold for long periods of time, false advertising ('door to door' service all of a sudden became port to port only) among many other things by broker Total Car Shipping - finally brought Geoff's Silver Truck to us at San Juan! Of course with all these mishaps, we expected the worst and the car was not delivered to us in the same condition than we dropped it off - the center console was ripped off, the ashtray was broken, the passenger outside mirror was cracked and there was a rock chip in the windscreen. We've lodged a complaint form and staff at Seastar took photos, we'll just have to wait and see what comes out of it!

Our time spent at the port in Puerto Nuevo was an experience too. We got bumped from one window to the next, got told that we still had to pay the fees (Thanks Total Car Shipping for passing on the information to Seastar that the fees and charges had been paid for in total, in advance), and ended up in a tiny room where staff didnt speak any english.

We began trying to indicate what we wanted when a lady behind us got up to help translate for us. She (and her family) ended up helping us for the following 4 hours - we needed to go to another part of Puerto Nuevo to pay the taxes, which wasnt actually as painful as we thought. It was a small room again, but the lined moved pretty quickly and we were served in spanish without too many misunderstandings. We ended up having lunch with our new found family at Wendy's before getting a lift with them back to the original office where we could show the forms (once again) and finally collect the truck!

Our first trip - which we've been dreaming about for the last 3 weeks, was to Costco. We've been breaking our backs carrying groceries and goods via public transport so it was exciting to finally have a vehicle and just load up. As you can see from our photos, it was a big shop, but we dont need to head out to Costco anytime soon now.

K-Mart

Just thought I'd add in that we take a ferry to get to K-Mart!

All our photos...

Started a photobucket to share all the photos, warning there are many duplicates with differences only being in exposure, focal point etc. Just an image dump for people who want to see more than the 4 or 5 that are on the blog or facebook or for the people who dont have facebook and want to see more:

http://s800.photobucket.com/home/Geoff-Michelle/allalbums

Alpen

We've been searching the last few days on the internet to see what sort of dogs are available here in Puerto Rico - they LOVE their chihuahuas and pitbulls...both of which breeds Geoff and I dont care for.

Then, on Clasificados Online (the online trading post for Puerto Rico), we came across this lonely 2-month old German Shepherd... well one thing led to another and although we dont have the car yet, the owners were nice enough to take the three of us home - so we have a new addition to our family now! this is going to be a big learning curve for me as well - I've never had a dog before and especially a puppy...of course little Alpen peed the moment she walked through the door! So, the new rug has been rolled up and put away until she is house trained.