Living La Vida Puerto Rico Style (WITH PICS!!)

We jetted off to Puerto Rico on June 4th at 12:50 AM. (Yes people, I said A.M.!) We had a lay over in Atlanta at 6am and then arrived in San Juan around noon. So yeah, we flew ALL NIGHT!!! Sadie did much better on the plane than I ever expected her to do. She didn't sleep much, but she was happy for most of them time. Ryan was nice and let me crash at the airport while he visited Cinnabon.

Sarah (Ryan's co-worker), Allison (Sarah's friend) and Lisa sleeping during our lay over in Atlanta

Sadie and Alena Wong...rockin' some sweet airport transportation

We didn't do much on Thursday as we were all exhausted from the trip. We got settled into our Dorado beach house, Sadie and I went to bed and Ryan went and did some grocery shopping. Our house was nice, right on the beach with spectacular views.

This is the backside of our beach house. Ryan and I had the room with the upper right deck. Pretty good sunrise view! (And yes, we saw the sun rise EVERY morning as Sadie awoke as soon as it was even the tiniest bit light in our room)
Sunrise

Our own little beach below our beach house.

Our Puerto Rico Roomies:

Allison and Sarah

Jason and Laura

Kevin and Talyn (minus Alena)

Neal Alana & Cedric


On Friday we drove over to Luquillo Beach and spent the day frolicking in the waves. Sadie absolutely LOVED the ocean and the sand. We enjoyed some local food for lunch that we bought from the beach-side vendors. (fried carne tacos, rice and beans, etc.)

Sadie and Ryan swimming at Luquillo Beach

Saturday we went to a local farmers market and got some fresh fruits and vegetables to make dinner. Then we were going to go and visit Old San Juan, but we picked up our lovely house guests, the Grahams, from the airport and they were muy tired so we just took them home and let them crash. We spent the day reading, napping, playing games etc.

Sunday we went to the Dorado LDS ward for church. It was really fun because it was Testimony meeting all in Spanish. I had a good time trying to figure out what everybody was saying.

Monday we drove out to the Arecibo Observatory. It is this massive satellite that they do space research with. It was also featured in such movies as Golden Eye and Contact. Pretty cool! Then we went to Toa Alta public beach...not the greatest beach we visited, but we still had fun.

Sadie and Lisa playing in the cloud making machine at the visitor center

Ryan at the satellite

Tuesday we went hiking in the El Yunque rain forest. It was really pretty and super fun. We hiked La Mina trail to a waterfall. On the way back we found a little pool in the river and took a swim. We turned the rocks into a water slide. SUPER FUN!!! We also hiked to El Bano Grande which used to be a big swimming pool. No swimming allowed now, but it was fun to see.

Ready to hike!

Waterfalls are waaay better than bathtime!

Top of our slide

Middle of the slide (minus the bamboo leave sled (ouch))


And into the pool! The white water actually made you go under the rocks and then you would pop back up in the pool. I would tell you it was fun, but I chickened out and stopped myself before I hit the water. This is Ryan. He thinks it was fun.

Tuesday night we kayaked to a bio-luminescent bay. We started rowing around 8pm. By the time we got to the bay it was completely dark. When you stuck your hand in the water it would glow! And when you took your hand out of the water it would sparkle like it was covered in diamonds. The most amazing thing to see was when fish would swim by and jump out of the water, there was a glowing trail behind them. This was one of my favorite adventures of the trip.
Wednesday we took a ferry to the smaller island to the east, called Vieques. We were going to go to Culebra because we heard that it has "the best beaches in the world." Sadly we missed the ferry--no worries! We caught the boat to Viesque and the beach (Sun Bay Beach) on Vieques was as beautiful as can be imagined.

Ryan and Sadie on the ferry.

Lisa and Sadie enjoying Sun Bay Beach. Notice the sand (nearly perfect) Notice the ocean (very blue) Perfect beach! We had mucho amounts of fun.

You can't really see it from the picture, but Sadie is COVERED in a layer of sand. She was having LOTS and LOTS of fun.
Waiting for the ferry back to San Juan. Apparently, the ferry runs on Brewster time a.k.a. very late

Thursday we packed up the beach house and headed into San Juan to the Ritz Carlton for the start of Ryan's work meetings a.k.a. the A.G.M. (Annual General Meeting) were we met up with the rest of FAST enterprises. We are so big now we had to book out the entire hotel. We were quite the sight. The Ritz Carlton was a beautiful hotel.

Friday and Saturday we hung out at the hotel pool and beach. Friday night was the AGM formal dinner and dance. Ryan and I had lots of fun dancing and hanging with the Utah fasties (other fast employees. They call themselves fasties. I don't know why...computer geeks I guess??? ha ha) Saturday night was the family event. We took buses to Old San Juan and visited El Morro, an old Spanish fort built in the 1500s. Then we had a festive dinner complete with dancers, traditional singers, vendors, etc.

Ryan and Sadie swimming at the Ritz
Lisa and Sadie, under the umbrella at the pool. Waiting out the rain...it rained everyday for at least a few minutes and then it would be sunny for the rest of the day.Here we are dancin'(??, I never said we were good) at the formal dinner & dance. Notice my awesome red shoes. They were my favorite part of the outfit.

Sunday we were up at 3:45 AM getting ready to catch our plane back to SLC at 6AM. Again, Sadie did fabulous on the flight. She even slept some.

We had a fabulous time in Puerto Rico. As we were getting ready to go, I thought that Puerto Rico was going to be like Hawaii or the commercialized parts of Mexico. I was very surprised that everything was in Spanish and hardly anything is catered towards tourists. It was a much poorer country than I expected, but just as beautiful.

Here's a shout out to all our "roomies" in the Dorado house. We had a super fun time. We are glad you guys don't hate us after this trip...well, at least we are still on speaking terms :)

Next year we are heading to Marco Island, Florida ,USA. WHOO HOO!!!