Craft Beer Festival 2012

I'll admit, I was skeptical at first.

My friend, Lisa, had invited me to the Craft Beer Festival.  The boys would be out of town, and it seemed like a fun girls night so I checked with my friend who would be visiting that weekend to see if she was interested in going (of course she was!  she loves craft beer!), and told Lisa we were in.  Now, I'm not the biggest beer drinker, but I looked at the festival as an opportunity to broaden my beer horizons in 1-2 oz. doses.

We set out on Saturday night to find the festival.  I drove, and Lisa navigated.  After a wrong turn or two (no drive in Puerto Rico is complete without a wrong turn), we spotted a gas station with lots of tents set up, and lots and lots of people milling about.  "That can't be the beer festival, right?" I asked the girls.  No sooner had the words come out of my mouth was I saying, "That HAS to be the beer festival, right?"  Like I said, I was skeptical.

Oh, and did I mention it was raining?

We parked the car and started to head to the gas station ... I mean craft festival when a van pulled up ready to drive us to the entrance so we didn't have to walk in the rain.  We walked in the gates, and discovered that the beer festival was totally legit.  Most gas stations in the States have a McDonald's attached, or a quik mart.  This one had a biker store, tattoo parlor and pub.  Aside from the concrete parking lot which caused all of our feet to hurt by the end of the night, it turned out to be the perfect locale for the event.

Almost immediately after arriving, the rain stopped and we found Lisa's friends that we were meeting up with for the night.  And, we got our first taste of the beer.  Each tent had 2-3 tables each featuring a different brewery.  The tables were filled with large tin ice tubs packed with all the different beers the brewery had to offer.  Chocolate stouts, India Pale Ales, Hefeweizens, Pilsners, Lagers, flavored beers and ciders (hello, watermelon beer on tap in the pub!).  There was something for everyone.  

We spent the next 4 1/2 hours wandering around the gas station parking lot (we kept laughing that were hanging out at the gas station) sampling beer after beer after beer.  They had buckets to pour your sample out if you didn't like it, and we made use of those buckets pretty frequently.  We also kept returning to the tables displaying our favorites.  I'll admit, I stuck to the lighter beers and the flavored beers for the most part, but I also tasted my fair share of dark beer and stouts.

Morgan and I had been wondering what the food situation at the festival would be.  She had been to a number of these types of events, and was concerned because there often wasn't enough food offered.  Why did we even question it?  This is Puerto Rico, after all, and roadside food is something this island knows how to do!  There was fried food aplenty, and let me tell you, it was fantastic!  I don't even remember everything we ate, but I do remember the churros at the end of the night.  So. darn. good.

There was just something so typically Puerto Rico about the whole night.  Five chicks hanging out at the gas station.

I should've known it would turn out to be an awesome night!

Photos courtesy of Morgan McGinn, fabulous friend and photographer extraordinaire (and the gal missing from the above photo)!

ZipLining!

Last Monday we went on a fantastic zip-line adventure.  (Smily face!  Mike was able to join us!!)  First thing, we got outfitted into our harnesses (and proceeded to take goofy pictures of each other.)  

The pictures mostly speak for themselves, so I'll leave the commentary to the minimum.

Oh yea, we OWN the harness!

And here is where Mike decides to photo-bomb Andy and Emily's self portrait.

Time to set off.

And there he goes.

Now it's my turn.

Some Andy action shots.

The view from above.

It's Emily's turn now.

Here is what happens when you don't make it all the way across.  (More on this later.)  This happened a few times on the shorter zip-lines (and on one really long one) because we didn't get enough speed going.

And this is how you make sure to make it all the way across.  After seeing that Emily had a hard time making it all the way, our guide offered to hook our harnesses together so we'd have more weight to make it across.  And he promised a fast ride.  Yes, please!

Inbound Emily!

There goes Mike!

At this point in the day, we've finished our first 8 zip-lines, and it's time to get ready for LA BESTIA (or THE BEAST)!  Here we are at the edge as we wait to get suited up.

For this last zip-line adventure, we will get harnessed in Super Man style.  What a fashion statement it is!

After we all got suited up in our new harnesses, we decided to take some pictures of our awesomeness.

The Beast is the highest and second-longest zip-line in the world.  And it is AMAZING!

Here are the boys ready to tackle the Beast!    

Now it's time for the girls to go.  As you can tell by this video, we had some technical difficulty.  (See, there's more than one way to make your way across.)

Duro!  Duro!  

Emily got a personal escort the remaining few feet to the platform.

And thus concluded our amazing zip-line adventure!  We had such a good time!  If you're in Puerto Rico, you should definitely make the time to go zip-lining, and Toro Verde is a great company!  There are so many adventures to choose from - zip-lining, rappelling, canyoning, mountain biking, and probably a few more I'm forgetting.  Mike and I are already planning what we'll do on our next day there.

Finding La Mina Falls

When my sister, Lillie, was in town we went hiking in El Yunque.  It was near noon in late July and it was stinking hot and humid.  We had started down the trail towards La Mina Falls, but gave up about 30 minutes into the hike without ever finding the Falls.

This time when the Hoopers and I went hiking (Mike was working again, more sad face), we did things a little differently.  For starters, it wasn't July so the temperature was much more bearable.  We also started at a different trail-head which was a shorter, easier hike.  We also were a little smarter about what we wore (i.e., bathing suits) so we could take a dunk in the waters under La Mina Falls.

There were 2 pools to wade in.  Since the lower pool was less crowded, we headed that way to splash around a bit and cool down after the hike.

Emily tried to get me under the falls, but I wasn't so into that given how cold the water was.

The cold didn't stop the Hoopers from goofing around for a while.

Andy vs. the water fall.

I think the water fall is winning (or at least too cold to take on for long).

The Falls are totally winning.  

Ok, so these photos were so much fun to shoot.  Great subjects who love having fun!

The Falls are gorgeous, and the pools are really refreshing after the short hike.  I think next time we'll bring a cooler and spend the day.

More adventures to follow!

Hoopler (or is it Millper?) Time

Our good friends, the Hoopers, visited us this past week, and boy did we make the most of our time!  The best part is that I was able to sit back and relax while Andy took the leading in planning our day-trips.  We managed to cram in a trip to the Bacardi Distillery, hiking in El Yunque, swimming in waterfalls, exploring Cueva La Ventana, taking a boat ride at Lago Dos Bocas, exploring Old San Juan, and a ziplining tour.  On top of the great sight-seeing, we ate and drank like kings and queens.

Friday morning while Mike was at work (sad face), Emily, Andy and I headed out to Bacardi to take the tour of the distillery and enjoy some tasty beverages.

There's just something vacation-y about day drinking.  And, of course, day drinking is only made better when it is free and in a beautiful setting.  As part of the tour, we were each given 2 drink tickets so that we could taste any of the Bacardi rums.  Bacardi Peach Red with passion fruit juice was my drink of choice, and it were good!   

The property was absolutely gorgeous, the weather was perfect (read: slightly overcast with a nice wind to soften the heat) and the tour was actually entertaining and enlightening.

After the tour, we enjoyed our second free beverage (rum daquiris for all of us) while taking in the scenery.  

Next up was a visit to Old San Juan to grab a bite to eat at Pirilo Pizza Rustica and meet up with Mike.  Free rum and a goat cheese, arugula and prosciutto pizza.  Hoopler time just doesn't get any better!

Monday Mo' Funday

Mike and I woke up at 4:30 this morning to get on the road and head to Playa Santa in the Guanica province.  We were tired, but we were pumped for our first scuba diving trip in Puerto Rico.

We arrived at the marina (never making a wrong turn, by the way!) at around 7, and Mike schlepped our gear to the dock.  

I mean, I carried the bag later in the day, and it wasn't that heavy.  Just kidding, that ish was crazy heavy!

The other 2 people on our trip no-showed, so we were off.

It was an absolutely gorgeous morning!  We knew it was going to be a good day, and we were ready to get the show on the road!

Our first dive was at a spot called Fallen Rock.  Before we began the dive, I needed a bit of a refresher on the mechanics.  The last time I dove was almost 6 years ago, and I wasn't exactly confident.  After a bit of a stutter-start, we were 55 ft below the water, floating above the coral reef.  We coasted around checking out the reef before we took to the wall.  The wall is where the reef dropped off to over 1500 feet.  We hovered at about 80-90 ft, and saw some pretty great stuff.  Mike got in a little bit of trouble from the dive master for going too far down, but on his way back up, he did spot the first of about 5 green moray eels we would see.  Soon, Pancho, the angel fish, found us and followed us around for the rest of the dive.  Pancho was content to hover just a few feet above us, playing in our air bubbles and flirting with the boys.  We also saw quite a few lion fish, which are beautiful, but apparently destroying the reef.  The lion fish eat the native fish and disrupt the ecosystem.  During the 50 minute dive, we also spotted a lobster and a couple of barracuda.  (These aren't our pictures, as we didn't have an underwater camera, but this is a sampling of what we saw.)

We surfaced for an hour before making our way to Las Posas for our second dive.  Las Posas was a relatively shallow dive.  We stayed at around 50 ft, and explored more of the reef looking for nurse sharks and more reef fish.  We didn't spot any sharks, but the visibility was so great, and the colors of the fishies were so bright, that it made up for it.  We spied french angelfish, banded butterflyfish, spotfin butterflyfish, a 4-5 ft barracuda, yellowtail snapper, schools of french grunts, sargeant majors, blowfish, a  baby spotted moray eel (and when I say baby, I mean teeny tiny), and so much more!  

Given that today is Miami Gameday, I threw the U some love and Mike about lost his regulator from laughing so hard!

No, that's not me, but it's kinda fantastic that this is in our new Miami commercial so I'm totally stealing it!

Today was just a really great day day.  And while we wished we had an underwater camera, it is on our shopping list.  For now, these are a few iPhone photos we took on the boat.  Such a gorgeous day.  Such a great dive.  Such a Monday Funday!

Until next time, peace out from the Millers