San Juan, Puerto Rico - Day 5

San Juan was my favorite port of call. We were up super early for our half day ziplining adventure with Acampa Nature Tours.  We literally had to be the first ones off of the ship to make it on time. While we were ziplining, the rest of the family went to visit the famous hotel, El Conquistador and part of El Yunque. As soon as we were on the island, you saw the name "Papo" everywhere. I think Papo enjoyed that.



When we were greeted by our tour guide, Ramon, he asked if any of us were Puerto Rican. We explained that we were Cuban and from Miami and that Blaine was a quarter Puerto Rican (Blaine's maternal grandfather is Puerto Rican). The guy just laughed and started talking to his assistant in Spanish about how this white boy was crazy. Blaine just listened and didn't say anything.

The ride to the rainforest was pretty bumpy. I rarely get carsick and I definitely did this time around. The roads were also very mountainous, narrow, and steep. The ride was about an hour long and I just ended up falling asleep to avoid feeling worse. Once we arrived, our tour guides explained how all the equipment worked and what our schedule was for the day. We had to hike to the top of a mountain at about 1000 ft elevation. On  the way up, we saw the frogs that are unique to Puerto Rico - the coqui. The coqui doesn't have webbed toes and is one of the only animals with a bi-tonal call. Let me explain: the "co" portion of the call attracts a partner while the "qui" establishes their territory. So the females here the "co" part and the "qui" is heard only by the males. We also learned more about the fauna of the rain forest. At one point, we came across some termites. Our tour guide explained how they were edible and a good source of protein. He put his finger down in the middle of their nest, waited for them to crawl up on his finger, and put it in his mouth. I think everybody in the whole group tried, including Papo, Bruce AND Damaris. Blaine and I are pansies. If I ever needed to survive in a rainforest, sure. But not while on vacation.

    

  

Anyway, we had to climb waterfalls to get to the top of the mountain and I fell - twice. If it weren't for the tour guide helping me, I would've never made it up that waterfall. My shoes kept on slipping on the rocks. The moss on the rocks combined with the mud on our shoes is a recipe for disaster. But we were guided wear to step and to step into the water instead of the rocks. We were completely soaked. I didn't expect this tour to be that intense! We felt like we were on Survivor or something. Pretty cool. We finally made it to the first zipline. We had 6 to take before we were back to the base of the mountain. It was very fast and it felt great. I felt like I was flying. Ramon would go first and catch us on the platform on the end of the zipline. We learned how to spin on the 3rd zipline.

By the 4th zipline, Blaine asked Ramon where his family was from. By this point, Ramon noticed that Blaine did speak Spanish. He said that he lived in San Juan, but that his family is from Sabana Grande. Blaine went on to explain this his grandfather is from Sabana Grande. Ramon then started laughing and asked, "So you really do have family from Puerto Rico?" Blaine then proceeded to tell him that his grandfather's last name was Sepulveda. Ramon's eyes got huge! He stuttered as he said "My name is Ramon Sepulveda!" He said that he's been giving tours since 1996 and he's never come across another Sepulveda. Apparently, that last name isn't common and Sabana Grande is a very small town. The rest of the tour he kept on shaking his head saying that he couldn't believe this white boy with blonde hair and blue eyes could possibly be related to him. He kept on calling Blaine "primo" (Spanish for cousin) the rest of the time.

Blaine and Ramon. I am to blame for the spot on the lens. It had some mud on it and I didn't notice!

While we were on the 5th zipline, it started raining - hard. So hard that Ramon told us if we didn't get out there soon, we'd be witnessing a flash flood. We already starting seeing the water turn brown and little streams started forming. But we made it back in time just fine. We had to wash ourselves with a water hose and change in some car garage. We were dropped back off in Old San  Juan and only had a little bit of time to get food before the ship left. Ramon recommended that we go to "El Jibarito" Restaurant for lunch.

So we started trying to get directions right. Thank goodness all of us speak Spanish. We had to ask several people and walk around quite a bit before we found it. The city was full of brightly colored apartments and cobblestone streets. People say that it reminds them a lot of Cuba. I guess getting lost wasn't that bad. Once at El Jibarito, I had garlic chicken mofongo, which is a mashed and fried green plantain dish. Damaris had a yuca mofongo, which I had never had or heard of before. It's probably one of my new favorite things ever. We ordered and ate the food in less than 20 minutes. We were starving but we also needed to get back on the boat before 3:00 PM. We ran all the way back. We really want to return to Puerto Rico soon. We were only there for 7 short hours. It was not enough time to explore all that Puerto Rico has to offer!

Thursday night they had a big party on the Lido deck. They played music, made a massive conga line of over 300 people, and just had numerous games and activities going on. We were there for a little bit to kill sometime before the midnight buffet. The theme was Mexican. So I was pretty disappointed in the midnight buffet. On all previous cruises, it was amazing. They had a ton of ice sculptures all over the buffet; this time they only had one. Before they would display the food beautifully and creatively and served really good food. This year it was just OK. They barely had any fruit displays and the food was just there. I barely ate. I don't know what happened that caused Carnival to downgrade on the midnight buffet. It's something that everybody always looks forward too!