Flooding

On Wednesday, we got the shock of our life when we went upstairs only to find about 3cm of water covering our entire top floor - including our nice new bed :-(

We went outside to find a broken pipe and most probably a blocked drainage hole - which didnt help by the fact we were having torrential rains. I ripped the curtains off the rods and started blocking the top of the staircase - we didnt want downstairs being ruined as well. I started bucketing water off the balcony whilst Geoff went out with the truck to try and buy a tarp to cover the open area on the balcony. It took his 40 minutes to go just 2 blocks because all the highways were closed the roads were absolutely chaotic - seems like we werent the only ones with the flooding problem!

After a couple of hours of shovelling water, we felt it was ok to go to sleep - only to be woken at 5:30am with water almost coming in through our bedroom doors again - another hour of shovelling water and thank goodness that was the last of it...for us anyway.. there are many parts of San Juan that are swamped and are still under flood warnings until Saturday.

Rincon

Yesterday we decided to get out of the city and head into the country - all the way onto the otherside of the island. We've been interested in booking a vacation rental on the beach on Rincon to host our wedding, but we wanted to see it first.

We took the express way there, over the northern part of Puerto Rico, which proved to be interesting. We didnt know that we needed cash for the tollways, so we were stuck at one of the gates, with a lineup of cars behind us beeping their horns and trying to get our message across to an attendant who didnt speak a word of english.

Geoff had to get out of the car, go to the police station and was told that he should come back in the next 5 days to pay the .75c that we didnt have with us at the time. It seemed kinda funny to go all the way back for .75c, but I guess it was lucky that thats all that happened. (We ended up taking the expressway back home, instead of the scenic route and paid then).

We made it to Rincon, and it alreay felt a lot better being out of city and the highrises and being surrounded by lush green forest. All along the roads there were little stands selling fresh fruit and veggies, mavi juice (drink made from mavi bark - its very sweet and fizzy and is similar to root beer) and hot food. The house ended up being gorgeous, so we booked right away and headed to the beach for a swim and a play with Alpen. Geoff ran with her up and down the beach several times whilst I went for a swim - the water is so warm here!

As you can imagine we all crashed hard that night after a long day of sunshine, beach and warmth. I cant wait to go back to the west side!

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!