el yunque

i am terrible for not posting in FOREVER!! but.....i am going to skip a couple posts...i will get back to them for sure..but the rainforest was so amazing and i know my family is very excited about seeing pictures so i am going to post them first and then get back to my other posts!


anyhoo...the rainforest-el yunque- was amazing....actually amazing doesnt even do it justice! i am used to living in boone and seeing "roocks" but the rocks we saw were so much more amazing!!
we went to there with our friend Tyler aka texas (he is from texas and forever wearing his texas longhorns hat!) who has lived on the island for about 3 years and previously lived in St. Johns for years. We caught the 6:30 am ferry to Fajardo, rented a car and we were off! Tyler had to go to Sam's Club ( yes there is civilization on the main island!) anyways after sams club we  were off to the rainforest!
we went to the south side of el yunque where tourists dont know about. but tyler first took us to this rock colony/ waterfall, i am used to Hebron(a rock colony in Boone) and it is amazing! But this place we went was even more amazing! We jumped off waterfalls into freezing cold water and climbed up rocks among amazing scenery!! :) we then went further up into the rainforest to another waterfall! we had to scale up rock walls and everything and it was soo great!! :)

anyways, long story short if you ever come to visit chris and me, we will be going to the rainforest! : ) it really was that amazing!  These pictures dont even do it justice! These pictures are also unedited straight from the camera. But here they are none the less

this is the first place that we went to and tyler swimming in the water as a scale to the size of these rocks!! :) 

this is me scrambling up the side of the rock cliff! :) Watching chris and tyler run up it before me was very fun...they looked exactly like monkey's!! : ) I of course did not look like a monkey, i was naturally very graceful......ok maybe thats a lie but thats what it felt like! ; )

sooo beautiful!! : )


more posts to come soon!

just to update you....we have moved out of our house and are moving into a new one temporarily tomorrow!

miss everyone bunches!!


io

culebra!

i'm going to try to do some catching up on my blogging.

while xander was here we took an overnight trip to culebra. the sister island just north of vieques. it's a smaller island than vieques and has had tourists visit it for longer than vieques.  there are only about 3,000 people in culebra. we caught the 6:30 AM ferry out of vieques to fajardo, then caught the 9 am ferry to culebra. it was a verry long ferry ride and if you think about it we probably spent more time on the ferry than in culebra but we had a good time anyway. when we pulled up to the dock in culebra i could see that the shops at the water front were very pretty and i could already tell that culebra was cleaner than vieques and more geared toward tourists.

we got off the ferry and decided to go see if we could go check into our hotel. without any maps or guidance we found the hotel all by ourselves!!! (for the people who know chris and his sense of direction, you should know that this is an achievement!! even with a map he could get lost! :) we were able to check in and get ready for the beach. we then walked back to the ferry dock and caught a publico to flamanco beach. chris and xander were verry excited about going to flamanco beach because it is one of their favorite beaches ever! i was excited to see what they were talking about and see how wonderful the beach was. driving to the beach i realized that there weren't very many locals around and that there wasn't as much cultural influences in culebra as there was in vieques. it made me like vieques even more. we get to the beach and chris and xander tell me to prepare myself and get my camera out. so i got my camera and we walked onto the beach.... chris and xander had the biggest smiles on their faces and my jaw hit the sand. it was beautiful, even more so than they had described.

 

we picked a nice spot in the sand and set up camp. chris and xander were itching to go in the water and play in the waves, so i stayed with the stuff while they frolicked in the water. they were like kids out there, they were having so much fun!!

then chris and i walked down the beach to where an old tank is on the beach that has been painted and left there for many years. the tank was very cool, all rusted and painted over in contrast to the beautiful white sand and blue water. we took lots of pictures and then went and saw another tank that was up on a hill.

we then walked back to meet back up with xander and chris and i went to play in the waves. they were a little too big for me, i kept falling down. they were kickin' my butt!! (thankfully chris helped keep me upright)  but once i got the hang of it i enjoyed myself and i didn't want to get out! : ) chris and xan got back in and played for a little bit longer, and then later we packed up all of our stuff and walked down this path (more like hiked for 20-30 min) to the other side of the point of the island to a more private beach with better snorkeling.

we found a little shady spot and put our blanket down and ate lunch. (i know it doesnt look like shade but i promise if you went back into the trees it was very shady. this picture was taken right before we left.)

then we all got in the water about waist deep and some fish started swimming around us, i was not expecting them to be so close to the shore and they suprised me so i may have screamed a little and flailed and ran out of the water! ; ) chris and xander just laughed at me and everyone on the beach stared. but im ok with it.  chris and xander went snorkeling. they snorkeled for a while and came back to see if i wanted to go. xander took me out a little ways and showed me the fish and coral and pointed something out that i thought was an eel and again i got scared and turned back and swam away. on the way back in xander kept on looking for pirate treasure, sad to say we never found any. we all dried off a little bit and packed up our stuff again and walked back to flamanco beach and got a taxi back to the hotel. we then walked around the small town for a little bit and then got ready for dinner and went and ate at mamacitas one of the maybe five restaurants in culebra.

i had the baby back ribs and chris and xander had fish. we had a great meal and then walked back to our hotel which was right next door. we then watched some tv and went to bed in the air conditioned room!! it was wonderful! unfortunately, our bed was covered in plastic so every time we moved it sounded like we were inside of a chip bag. (reminded me of trying to sleep in the philly airport with the emergency blanket! :)  we woke up early in the morning, checked out of the hotel and went to eat breakfast at the dingy dock, which looks out to the main harbor in culebra. You eat at a dock -hence the name dingy dock- and these big fish swim up next to you looking for food, along with the fish swimming up next to you, people would come in from the bay by boat and eat.

we then went and waited for the ferry and took the 5 hour ferry ride back home through fajardo and then on to vieques. we had a really great time in culebra and want to go back soon. We have figured out a way to make a day trip to flamanco beach by ferry. we would only have about 3 or 4 hours at the beach and the rest of the day would be spend on the ferry....but for some crazy reason we are willing to do this! :)
here are some more pictures from the trip.

you may be wondering what this is....and yes it is a trashcan and yes i did take this picture for a reason! :) its looks like something out of a dr. seuss book! : ) these trashcans were everywhere by the ferry and i thought they were very cool! (i know my mom will too! ) 

here are some pictures that chris took.

sunset

our hotel on the right-posada la hamaca- which means inn of the hammock roughly...but i never found one hammock in the place! 

if i ever owned a store this would be my sign....open some days....closed others! : ) 

 

more posts coming soon!! 

my parents came to visit me last week and we had a very eventful couple of days so i have alot to post about....

i.o.

trippa burgers!!!

The trippa burger is an experience (one that should probably only happen once in your life).
Trippa burgers are only available in esperanza on the malecon friday and saturday nights. They are $7 each and probably weigh 7 pounds! they consist of ..... 2 hamburger patties with cheese, corned beef mixed with onions, hash browns, ham, bacon, chicken, topped with lettuce, tomatoes and pickles, all thrown on the grill and piled HIGH between two, now relatively small buns!! : ) These things are huge!  Chris and I had our first trippa burger "experience" back in december. We split one and could barely finish it! - This is the kind of burger that you can't carry up to your mouth, you have to take your mouth to the burger, or at least attempt to meet half way. You can't put the burger down either, because the bun gets so soaked with grease that it falls apart and you can't find the bottom part of the burger to pick it up. Sounds yummy right?!  I could only eat 3 or 4 bites and picked at the remains. Chris did the honors and finished it off, it was good but extremely heavy. I couldn't imagine eating a whole one and i like to eat! : ) When xan was here chris took him down to esperanza to have the "experience" for himself. As i said earlier, this experience should probably only happen once in your lifetime, however, our roommate, dewey has had probably a dozen burgers, craves them constantly, has had two in one sitting and has even eaten one for breakfast!! i dont know how he does it! But here are some pictures to prove of our experience and give you a glimps of the trippa burger.....buen provecho!

 

this is a cardiologists nightmare!!!

broken bone update

last tuesday chris and i said goodbye to xander at 5:45 AM and got on the ferry to fajardo for the follow up appt. with the orthopedic doctor. he got another set of x-rays done to make sure the bones were healing properly. after getting x-rays, we took the films over to the doctors office and waited for hours (we're slowly getting used to this whole island time thing). i've been used to "phoebe time" forever, but its different when you are on the other side ; ) chris would say, "i thought phoebe was bad, but try living in puerto rico". finally we get called back and meet with the doctor for all of about 5 minutes - long enough for him to shake our hands, show us the x-rays and tell chris that things look good and that he was fine and could return to work! : ) then chris did something he's never done, he willfully accompanied me into an all womens clothing store and cheerfully and patiently helped me pick out clothes. what a guy! then we returned to the ferry and we were remarking at what a fairly stress free day we were having .... but apparently we spoke too soon because the ferry broke and we didn't get home till 2 and a half hours after we supposed to be in vieques!
but we made it and that's all that matters!

 

this is actually his 2nd xray. it looks almost exactly like his first ones but if you look really really closely between the two bones there is a little hazy thing that is the callous that has formed around the bones. (the doctor pointed it out with his pen and i looked and nodded my head like i could totally see what he was talking about....but i have no idea what he was pointing at. I was expecting this "callous" to be more like an internal ace bandage that the body makes?!?! not some tiny barely visible line between the two bones.) But the doctor could see it and said it was all good so thats what matter. but this thing is supposed to hold everything together?! sounds a little sketchy to me, i think my idea of the internal ace bandage is a much better idea! :)  It is very rare to set a broken collarbone because there is nothing to really set it to, so chris' shoulder will forever look like this! doesnt seem right but thats what the doctors say so i guess we will believe them for now! :) He is doing great and his range of motion is almost back to normal and he is able to lift things and do more and more everyday! :)

Cantina La Reina

cantina la reina, the restaurant where chris and i work, asked us to photograph the restaurant. chris has more experience doing food photography than i do, so chris took photos of some of the food and i took pictures of different parts of the restaurant. one of the owners is a set designer for movies in hollywood and has decked the place out in mexican...everything (old photographs, wanted posters, paintings, bull whips and lots of tequilla)! the restaurant is really cool we get lots of compliments about the decoration and everything about it, so there are a lot of interesting things to photograph. not only does the restaurant look good but the food is- AWESOME! the whole package! the building used to be a restaurant called media luna, it's a bright red 3 story building in the middle of isabel segundo. the first floor is the main dining area with only 9 tables, a bar and a smoking patio. the second floor has a bar, pool table and 3 small outdoor seating areas. the third floor is a beautiful rooftop terrace with a large lounge area. a great place to watch the sunset, hang out at night and look at the stars. it's one of the only 3 story buildings in town, so the view is great. i really really like the restaurant, i think it's really cool and other people seem to think so as well. chris and i actually got to hang out on the roof for the first time when xander was here and it was a great place to hang out and talk. its just a very cool place all around, and even when we are not working we still like to hang out there! :)

anyways, here are some of the photos that we took for the restaurant.

ta-da here is the restaurant, photo by chris

this is the first floor bar

second floor bar

third floor 

the wall of crosses on the wall of the stairs

 

 2nd floor

churrasco steak with rice and beans and grilled elote

snakebites mmmmm!

tacos!

 tequila!

more posts to come soon! hopefully all of our pictures will be up on the restaurants website soon!