In which Roz and Layla reach the Caribbean and celebrate by having a terrifying adventure.

By Roz

The next morning we went downstairs in some trepidation, prepared for battle. But whatever one prepares for doesn’t happen. Instead, after breakfast, we told the guy at the desk that we were checking-out. He didn’t enquire why (alas all the reasons I had rehearsed!) and said that he’d phone if there was going to be a charge for leaving early (no call yet). We then got a cab to Fajardo, which took about 45 minutes. We gazed at the mountain of El Yunque, which we plan to climb later on in the trip, with interest and a touch of fear…

Our new hotel took some finding and the bedroom hardly glamorous. But the people were super-nice and we felt very jolly. The owner drove us down to the beach (though it wasn’t a long walk, she clearly felt that our request for very detailed directions was a cloak for laziness). We drank beer and ate some very delicious cheese cubes (put like that it doesn’t sound so delicious!), some corn sticks and some fries (I didn’t claim this was a nutritious meal!) by the water, surrounded by palm trees, and felt jolly. We then set off for a mini-hike through a sort of forest, to a distant beach. We almost felt intrepid and contemplated that it really had quite a few similarities to our hike in Borneo (other than there being no pouring rain, and us not being miserable this time). As we walked, we contemplated whether this might substitute for El Yunque, later on, but concluded that it would be a bit of a stretch… We spent an hour or so frolicking in the water. We gazed with some awe at the man about 100 meters further out than we were who appeared to be walking on water (until we realised he must be on some kind of snorkel ledge).

We walked back, and stopped off for another beer (and some of the cheese cubes) before retreating up the hill to our hotel to change. But we weren’t changing for a glamorous evening of wining and dining. Instead, we were off to try and get on a night time kayak. It seems that there are a few places in the world with bioluminescent micro-organisms and Laguna Grande, here, is one of them. The idea was that we’d kayak over to the lagoon and then we would see “fireworks” in the water. This proved to be true – more or less – but in our excitement at the thought of seeing the bioluminescence, we had forgotten that we’d be kayaking in the dark – something which proved to be quite scary, if exceptionally memorable. We set off through (what felt like) quite choppy waters, and headed to dark bushes. This was the mangrove swamps, through which we kayaked, only knowing which way to go through sound and the faint glow of a luminescent stick that had been tied to the back of each boat. This proved not to be an entirely infallible method of kayaking, and Layla and I found ourselves bashing into the mangroves on a regular basis. But it was – in retrospect anyway – fun and we then found ourselves out of the mangroves and in the lagoon. The luminescence was less brilliant than we’d anticipated, but still quite exciting (we later heard that it glows more brilliantly on some nights and our night was one of the less good ones). There’s something nevertheless very alluring about scooping up a handful of water and letting it trickle through your fingers and seeing the falling water sparkle like diamonds. We headed back into the pitch black swamp with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm and felt both intrepid and relieved when we found ourselves through the other side and back in the choppy waters.

On dry land there was a hiatus where we had to find someone to drive us to an ATM to pay (and then back to our hotel). However, once this was over and we were again dry we headed out, despite the late hour, to La Estacion restaurant (having been given a lift by the very sweet hotel boy). It was a converted gas station, with a jeep dashboard bar and was generally very cool. The vegetarian platter was very tasty, and Layla indulged in an apple turnover type thing for dessert. All very satisfactory (as was the lift home by the same sweet hotel boy).

This morning we were up unpleasantly early for breakfast to get to the ferry terminal for a boat to Culebra, the island on which we will be spending the next three nights. Alas there had been some confusion about our vegetarianism, and we therefore found ourselves faced with the intriguing breakfast combination of French toast and steamed vegetables (cauliflower, broccoli and carrots) and had to resort to smuggling out the steamed vegetables to dispose of in a bin later, to avoid offending. The French toast was good though. We arrived at the ferry only to learn that our boat was sold out. Gloom ensued. Layla insisted we stayed in the queue to at least buy tickets for the next boat (3pm). And hurrah that she did, since a few more tickets were magically found and we are now on the 9am boat, looking forward to the next part of our Puerto Rican adventure.