Day 5: Mostly Driving

Much of today was spent en route. We woke up late, checked out of our hotel in San Juan, and hit the road. We burned through almost a whole tank of gas during our first few days in San Juan, so we stopped at a Texaco on our way out.

That's where our adventures started. Now, I'm getting better at Spanish, but I am in no way fluent. Well, I'm pumping gas, and this lady comes up just spewing out all kinds of Spanish. I catch very little of what she's saying, but I can tell she was asking me to help her with her car. She didn't speak English. Despite the fact that I clearly was not understanding what she was saying (because I specifically told her in Spanish that I did't understand) she was persistent. I figured out she wanted me to open the hood of her car, and prop it up on that little kickstand thing. So I did. Then she opened her trunk and gestured to a bottle of vegetable oil. Now I had no idea where this was going. But I opened it up and it was just water. Since my car has a coolant leak, I have to top off the coolant tank with water every so often (I use water because coolant is super expensive to keep refilling). So I asked her if her car was hot, and realized she wanted me to add more water to her coolant tank to keep it cool. Which I did. And that was that. She thanked me a bunch, and even managed to say "thank you" in English. It's no big deal, but some old lady is driving safe and sound today thanks to me. And I did it all in Spanish. =)

After that, we headed toward the black sands beach near Aricebo, along the NorthWestern coast. Based on pictures, this beach looked SO cool. Based on my pictures, it was just pretty cool. lol The drive in, however, was awesome because we took this dirt road through a forest for miles - basically just driving through a tunnel of vibrant green trees and foliage. The ocean was literally separated from a forest/jungle by about 30 feet of sand. Where else can you find dense vegetation and an ocean so close??

Here's where we came out of to get to the beach. Crazy, right?

The black sands beach. Not too shabby. =)

I love this because the coast is like a palette of so many colors! Also my picture is kinda crooked. lol

Braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaains rock.

5 minutes of crawling through a jungle and 22 pictures later, I got a good picture of this pretty little guy.

From the "black" sands beach, we went to an outlet mall to shop around a little, and ate some not-too exotic food at the food court there. From there we drove our destination - Rincon. Driving in Puerto Rico is so nice, because the view is always stunning. It's like the surroundings are in high def: the vegetation is so green, and the clouds are so big and white and defined, against a sky that is so blue. Everything is just so vivid. And the countryside isn't very industrialized, so most of the time right next to a freeway is a seemingly unexplored and uninhabited forest.

Btw, we found out from Gabriel, our tour guide from yesterday, that cops basically never give parking tickets, or moving violations. Which explains why people make left turns on red from the right hand lane, and why they park on any side of street, or curb, even if it specifically says no parking. Knowing this, Fed and I have started to park wherever we want. It's awesome. F la policia! haha

When we got to Rincon tonight, in a kinda sketchy hostel/inn, we went to check out the beach. Here, the beach is SO different than in San Juan. Maybe it was just that we went after sunset, but it's a totally different feel. The waves only break maybe 10 feet before the end of the water; the rest of the ocean is very calm. There is nothing in the difference, or to the sides, so your entire view is just ocean and sky. It's so hard to explain, but we were only maybe 50 feet from the shore, but it felt like we were in the middle of the ocean. It was truly surreal. Tomorrow I will take some pictures, so hopefully I can show you what I mean.

We got ice cream down the street, where we tried CORN flavored ice cream. Really interesting to taste, because it tastes exactly like corn, but I don't think I could eat a whole serving of it. Apparently Maiz (corn in spanish) is a local favorite with some cinnamon on top. We talked to the girl that worked there, named Natasha, who spoke fluent English and told us about the city, and let us know about some stuff to do. We ended up taking a short road trip toward the University of Peurto Rico to get a lay of the land and campus. We'll see what Rincon has in store for us tomorrow!

p.s. Better late than never:
First world problems #2: There is so much food to eat and I have plenty of money, but I can't decide what I want.
First world problem #3: I wanted to go to a tropical beach with black sand, but I had to settle for a tropical beach with mostly normal sand.
First world problem #4: I haven't had a chance to eat in hours, because I've been driving in a car that I rented for my vacation.