Taking the Plunge

I done lost my mind.

Mike arranged for us to go out to Cueva del Indio this weekend with a new buddy of his from work, Justin.  Justin had gone the week before and apparently it was not to be missed.  We were going cliff jumping.  Or, rather, Mike and Justin were going cliff jumping, and Lila was going to watch and take pictures.

We drove about 90 minutes west of San Juan to a tiny village on the water.  We explored the caves before heading to the cliff for jumping.  Unfortunately, the pictures don't do the caves justice, but they were really pretty spectacular.

The caves had all kinds of interesting nooks into which you could pop your head.  There were a ton of places to crawl into and look around.  Each time we looked up, we saw more and more bats, and there was a cool little tidal pool at the bottom of the caves.

Time to head back up top and check out the rest of the scenery.  The cliffs were absolutely breathtaking and created areas where the surf crashed against the walls of the cliffs.  I'm no expert photographer, but I tried to catch some of the beauty of the surf.

The water was so pretty pouring off the rocks.

I couldn't stop taking pictures of the waves crashing.

Walking along the top of the cliffs we saw some really cool water pools in the rocks.

Oh hello, friend.  We shall call you Frank.  

The water is so gorgeous and so incredibly blue!

But I'm glad we're not jumping into that!

And speaking of jumping, here are the boys planning their first jump.  

Here goes Justin!

And now it's Mike's turn . . .

That's my brave hubby.  Me, I was happy taking pictures.  Oh, but that was not to be the case.  I don't know what came over me, but I thought, "maybe I really can do this."  The boys agreed. 

M:  "Look, honey, it's not that far down.  I'll jump with you."

L:  "Ummm, it looks pretty far."

M:  "Ok, let's jump from a little lower."

L:  "Good plan."

L:  "What do I have to do?"

M:  "Just jump out.  Land with your legs straight."

L:  "What if I hurt myself?"

M:  "I'll help you."

L:  "Lulu will kill you if I get hurt."

M:  "I'm not scared 'cause you're not gonna get hurt."

L:  "She's gonna kill you."

L:  "Ok.  On 3.  1, 2, JUMP!"

L:  "I got water up my nose.  And my ears hurt."

M:  "I'm proud of you baby."

L:  "Ok, I did it.  Now get me out of here."

M:  "High 5, baby.  You did it!"

Like I said, I think I done lost my mind!

The kindness of strangers

Driving in Puerto Rico is interesting.  Rules of traffic don't really seem to apply, and you may get flicked off even when the other driver is the one in the wrong.  Roads aren't well marked, or sometimes not marked at all.  The iPhone Maps app sometimes tells you to turn onto a nonexistent street.

This last one happened to us as we tried to make our way out to Fort Buchanan to check out the Exchange and the base.  Also, Mike really wanted to check out the 9 hole course there.  He's eager to play some golf. Anyway, back to the driving.  We had made our way towards Fort Buchanan following the directions on our Maps app very carefully.  The next direction was to turn right onto Calle Buchanan.  I told Mike that I thought we'd missed the turn.  (I'm the navigator in this relationship, Mike's the driver.)  He turned us around and got us into the turn lane to turn onto what we thought was Calle Buchanan.  A street sign here would've been welcome.  I zoomed in on the Map and realized we were turning a street too soon.  We figured we could turn early and make a couple quick turns and be on Buchanan.  Wrong again.  The side streets were all gated off.  Well, damn.  We pulled back out onto the main road and that's when I realized the problem.  Calle Buchanan didn't exist.  Maps had us turning left into a parking lot.  I told Mike to pull over so we could get a handle on things and find another way around.  We tried everything.  I googled the Fort and got an address.  Maps couldn't give us directions between our locations.  I tried again locating us.  No such luck.

We sat there for 5 minutes before Mike flagged down a driver leaving the gated development where we had parked ourselves.  The driver was a young woman, probably in her 20's.  Mike asked if she knew where the Fort was.  She didn't, but got on the phone with a friend who told her.  She told us we could follow her back into the development and make our way to the base that way.  She then proceeded to turn around and lead us through the development and out the back gate which abuts the Fort.

Mike and I happily followed her through the winding streets and out we came right next to the gate at Fort Buchanan.  We were astonished.  There aren't many places in the world where a young girl would go out her way to help couple of strangers find their way.

The roads aren't marked, and when asking for directions you'll usually get sets of landmarks rather than streets to mark your travel by, but if we keep running into strangers like this one, we'll always find our way . . . eventually.

House Hunters, Intl.

We flew to San Juan bright and early Wednesday morning.  Of course, we hadn't even been in the air an hour when Mike was already being a hero.  The flight attendants came over the PA system asking if there were any medical professionals on the plane.  Because of his background as a rescue swimmer for the Navy, Mike jumped up to see if he could help.  He could, and he did.  (That's the really short version.)  We left the plane with the thanks of the flight attendants, the pilot and the guy Mike helped.  We also left with 6 mini bottles of Sauvignon Blanc in our bags.  Score!

As luck, or karma, would have it, we were upgraded to a suite with a living room and full kitchen upon check-in at our hotel.  The property is gorgeous, and we are loving what we have decided to call our Second Honeymoon.  Hotels have maid service.  Maid service is a really beautiful thing.  I can't say enough about maid service.  Can we just live at the hotel and always have maid service?

I think the Coast Guard may have a thing or 2 to say about that ... and so we must house hunt!

And house hunt we did.  Mike had been doing a lot of research online and we had appointments lined up with 3 realtors.  We had barely unpacked our bags when we were out seeing our first prospective apartment in San Juan.  The ocean views from this 10th floor apartment were just stunning.  The property was beach-front, and even had a small pool.  The apartment itself was a bit of a let down.  We needed to see more before we could really get a sense of what our housing budget would allow.  Thursday morning we were lined up to see more apartments.  That morning we would be looking in the Condado area.  The first apartment had everything we were looking for:  views of the beach and the laguna, a nice pool downstairs, 2 bedrooms/2 baths, a washer & dryer and a dish washer.  It also had a mirrored wall in the living room and mirrored closet doors.  Not our favorite feature, but we should be able to work with it if nothing else wows us.  We saw a few other places in Condado but none compared to the first from that morning.

After lunch on Thursday we checked out a couple of places in Old San Juan.  Old San Juan is the historic area of San Juan, and is within walking distance of the CG Station.  Mike would be able to walk to work which would be great.  The area has such charm and we were really excited that we might find a really great place right in the middle of the action and so close to the Station.  We quickly came to learn that unfortunately, many of the primo places have already been snapped up by other Coasties moving to San Juan.  The places we saw were "rustic" at best.  The second Old San Juan apartment we saw didn't even have an oven.  The bedrooms and living space were really small and our furniture wouldn't fit, let alone the TVs.  Even still, we considered the apartment.  The terrace on this apartment almost made it worth it.  It was huge and overlooked the Governor's mansion and the San Juan bay.  Like I said, the views were almost worth it, but not quite.  Two more years of squeezing our stuff into a too-small apartment just isn't worth it.  We said goodbye to the views and after waiting out a helluva storm and some near-miss lightning strikes, we headed over to check out the Coast Guard Station.

We saw one more apartment after Mike's first day of work, but our minds were already made up.  We called the realtor from the mirrored wall apartment and told her we loved it.  We sign the lease on Monday and will move in on August 1.  We've been warned not to let people know we have a guest room, but the cat's already out of the bag on that one.  Besides, we're actually really looking forward to having friends and family come for a visit.  Just try to wait until our furniture arrives--sometime mid to late August, we think (we hope!!).

Check one thing off our list, this couple has found our international apartment!

Bienvenidos a Puerto Rico!

We've known for some time that Mike would be stationed in San Juan, Puerto Rico, but yesterday it all became very real.  It was real when the movers came to our Manhattan apartment and packed up our furniture and it was real when we both had our last day of work in New York.  But yesterday, it was really REAL.  Our bags were packed and we had said our farewells to family and friends.  We had our one-way tickets to San Juan.  We got up early and made our way to the airport.  We were really moving to Puerto Rico.

Mike and I were at a welcome happy hour at our hotel last night when I told him I had been thinking of starting a blog about our adventures in Puerto Rico.  We thought it'd be fun to chronicle our time here and give our families and friends a place to keep up with us and what we're up to.  We'll blog about the food we eat, the places we go and island life, in general.  We hope you enjoy!