Our first morning on the beach in Puerto Rico was breath taking, and that soon became a theme of our trip, in more ways than one. This post covers our initial greetings with the island, which took place with Jeremy at our side and lasted for 5 days.
Let me introduce you to our temporary home! This is our casa at Vereda Del Mar in the city of Rio Grande. Here is what the front of our apartment building looked like.
Our unit is on the first level, the one with the palm trees outside our bedroom window. We were at the front end of the gated complex, which was pefect because we were close to the security gaurds; they could keep an eye on our place directly from their little office by the gates. The basketball court and tennis courts were in view from all our windows.
Pool was about 40 steps from our front door.
The beach, volleyball court and playground were down the path past a few more buildings of apartments, which I really liked. Some days the beach was really windy, but we didn’t feel the wind through our windows since we had the other buildings to block us.
To get anywhere from Vereda del Mar, we got to take this beautiful drive. Being amid the jungle foliage and having to dart the pot holes every 50 feet really made us feel secluded and away from all the tourist hustle and bustle.
Homes and other condos and apartments were nestled among the greenery of our neigborhood. This is the view from the top of the hill overlooking our neighborhood. Absolutely breath taking!
There was plenty of wildlife around us, including cranes, lizards, stray dogs, frogs, and iguanas. Interesting note about iguanas, we noticed them a lot during our first week, and then didn’t seem to see any for awhile. Maybe we got used to them, so it wasn’t so novel? I’m not sure.
Now for a look inside our apartment! We knew our place would be adorable from the pictures on airbnb, but it ended up being way better in person. I loved everything about our little home. It included a little kitchen, dining area, living room, porch with hammock and outdoor seating, bedroom, 1.5 bathrooms, laudry space next to one of the bathrooms, and absolutely every single thing we needed was already in the home.
There was a queen bed, bunk bed, and fouton beds, so enough sleeping for 4 adults and 3 children.
The boys prefered to sleep in the family room on their separate fouton beds because neither kid wanted to sleep on the top of the bunkbed and they couldn’t fall asleep when they were shared the large futon bed. Tanner took the big futon and Dallin took the smaller one. This worked out really well for us, and that was the sleeping arrangement for most of our trip. The bunk bed became a place for storing bedding, having quiet time and making hideouts, which I was really happy about.
This is the view of one of the big windows from our (my) bedroom. I grew to absolutely love this space! It was also the best room in the apartment to hear the coqui frogs singing at night, a cacophony of sound that took my breath away the first few nights and then became a magical chirping lull that put me to sleep every evening. I’m so glad I followed Dallin’s advice to record the coquis so that we can hear it anytime we want “back at our home in Minnesota.”
We began right away to establish an awesome routine with the boys. I’ll elaborate more on our routine later, but for now it’s worth mentioning that it included a morning walk on the beach, a yoga session in our living room, and studying Come Follow Me, which is a gospel curriculum in our church.
On this morning walk, when we got this shot, we realized it is a fun way to show the whole family.
Our first or second day in PR, we decided to try the public beach in Luquillo ten minutes from la casa. We paid, parked, and headed for the sand in hopes of eating some yummy food at the Kioskos. A woman in her swimsuit called to us in the parking lot for help. She was empty handed because she locked her keys and purse in her car. We of course helped her.
I felt so bad for this lady. She was really stuck, and all alone. We tried our best to pry the door open with sticks, because it hadn’t completely closed. It had closed just enough for the lock to latch, but we could still get our fingers into the opening. We drove to a nearby kiosk to see if we could get something like a wire hanger to pry into her door. A gracious storekeeper allowed us to have a wire hanger. We came back and tried, and tried, hoping to flip up the lock. Tanner gave some good ideas to try with rolling down the window since it was the kind that could crank with a handle. A few other people came by to help, too. Throughout all this, the woman was on and off the phone with her rental car company, and they said someone was coming. So we kept trying and waiting. No matter what we did, we couldn’t get the lock undone and still no sign of a rental car person. We waited and visited with the woman until our kids were too hungry. It had been two hours of helping her, and so we said we needed to get our kids some food. As we said our goodbyes, the rental car guy showed up and got her door open! What a crazy experience. We were glad we could be there for this friend that was all alone. She was a really neat woman. I tried to text her the picture of us together, but the number she gave me didn’t work. I hope she had a wonderful time on the rest of her trip!
We were excited to try out the famous Kiosks at Luquillo, so we settled into one of the restaurants and waited, and waited. Finally, our food came at 3pm, at which point we were famished! The food wasn’t that great, but we gobbled it up anyway. Once again, our day became much different than we expected! These were great life lessons for our boys, and we all practiced our breathing, and repeating the mantra “don’t worry, be happy” throughout the topsy turvy afternoon.
The next morning, we found this cute sand man on the beach.
Even though we had just gotten there, I put the boys to work on school stuff right away.
We enjoyed a nice afternoon at our own beach. Our first real day of being in the sand and waves!
This is what our walk back from the beach looked like every day.
That afternoon, we got to explore El Yunque Rainforest, which is basically across the street from our neighborhood. It is part of the United States National Forest System, and it’s the only tropical rainforest that is a US national park. We enjoyed driving on the main road of the park, seeing the views, climbing an observation tower, and seeing several waterfalls. The boys loved playing with rocks and exploring the small river that flowed from one of the waterfalls.
It was such a beautiful, clear day!! We could see to the beaches and then to the ends of the earth. The air was so fresh, fun to take it all in with some deep breaths.
Jeremy had fun with the panoramic feature on his phone.
Jeremy climbed up a hidden pathway to see the top layer of the waterfall. Can you see his red shirt?
This was our first homemade meal in PR, and it was delicious. This meal was also special because everyone helped prepare it. I cooked the meat, Jeremy made the rice and beans and the boys made the salad.
The boys chillin’ after dinner.
Jeremy fell victim to the sand flees, which give you really tiny bites that itch about 5 times more than mosquito bites and last about 3 weeks. I was giving him a hard time about it, and then I fell victim to them a week or two later, and ouch! Talk about taking your breath away. Hard to breathe when these buggers itch so badly!
Morning yoga was something we got into our routine right away while Jeremy was here.
Dallin was a little nervous about the yoga, but he liked it after the first try. It took Tanner a little longer to accept it, and I knew there would be some resistance from him getting into it. At home in Minnesota, I had tried a couple years earlier to do this, but I simply did not have enough time or patience to withstand the whining in order to make it a family habit. Well, here in PR, we had ALL the time in the world! Truly a gift to literally have no other obligations.
Tanner soon realized that we were actually doing yoga every day, and we weren’t moving on to anything else until we got yoga done. Days 1-3 were kinda rough. Day 4 was much better. Day 5 there was only a few attempts to be lazy during some poses. Day 6 Tanner was excited to try new routines. By the second week, both boys looked forward to yoga time, and the only arguments we heard were about how close they could get to the computer and which yoga adventures we were going to try that day.
A few times per week, Tanner would be in a mood and try to do the opposite of the yoga video or pester Dallin. When that happened, I just stopped the video and waited for him to get his emotions regulated, no matter how long it took. This was such a freeing thing to be able to follow through on! And at the same time, it was very difficult to be patient and actually not have other things to do while I waited for him to join us when he was in better spirits. PR truly forced all of us on multiple levels to get into good habits.
For those curious, we followed videos from a YouTube Channel called Cosmic Kids, and we’re still following it because it is amazing. Both Jeremy and I did the yoga adventures with the boys every day in PR, and we feel it helped immensely with many needs, including breathing and getting good sensory work in each day. Now, back at home in MN, they are keeping up the yoga practice by doing the Cosmic Kids adventures with and without us on Saturday mornings and other times during the week. Such a joyful success!! WOOHOO!!!
On our fourth-ish day there, we took a day trip to Culebra Island, which is off the Northeast tip of PR, still a part of PR. Jeremy and I loved Culebra when we came here together 10 years earlier, and we looked forward to reminicsing and showing all the beauty to the boys.
The logistics with the ferry ride wasn’t too bad getting there.
Once we arrived, we rented a golf cart, which is one of the main ways to get around the island. We had to wait a long time for the cart rental, and I reminded the boys once again, that doing outings and traveling always involves waiting.
The boys did not like the waiting, but they LOVED the golf cart, especially taking their turn to take shotgun. We were all really excited when we made it to Flemenco Beach because it is consistently rated one of the best/most beautiful beaches in the world. Here we are walking up to it.
Tadah!!! The water is absolutely gorgeous turqoise blue and the sand is a very fine white sand. There is natural shade from the trees, too, which is a big deal for Jeremy who gets sunburned easily. The waves are not very big here, so it’s really easy to swim in. We had to breath in deep a few times to really believe that we were actually there.
I took a picture of Jeremy while he enjoyed the shade.
And then he took a picture of me.
We sat in the shade together while the boys enjoyed the water and made sand castles with their bare hands.
This was our view of the kids.
After awhile of relaxing, we took a walk over to see the famous tank.
This island (and the Vieques island) were used for US Navy and military tests from the time of WWII up until 2003. So old equipment still exists around these islands. An artist painted this tank, and now people climb on it and take pictures.
Next we headed over to Zoni beach, which was our favorite place in PR from when Jeremy and I came here before. Unfortunately, the tide was super high, and the boys were tired and whiny, and there were other people there. So what we had hoped would be a wonderful romantic moment to reminisce the past, well, it didn’t exactly happen. We learned an important lesson: Trying to take our kids to places so that we can re-live past experiences is a lost cause. We had to learn this a few more times throughout our stay and it was hard to accept sometimes. But I’ve come to understand that trying to re-live the past is actually not the right way to honor or cherrish those experiences. Instead, it’s best to focus on making new memories with the present time that we have and the people that we’re with. And in the end, you’ll have double the treasured memories. Fortunately, we were able to make some cute sand castles and catch a few amazing photos before leaving Zoni beach.
On our way back to the island’s town, we tried going up a really steep hill. The poor golf cart couldn’t make it! The engine puttered out, and we started going backward. I hopped off, and Jeremy was able to get it up by driving in a zig-zag pattern. We made it back okay, and found a cute restaurant outside of a lady’s house. She cooked everything and her friend helped. She made me this delicious fish with mofongo. I ate almost everything including the eyes, which really grossed Tanner out, haha.
Just when we thought our time on the island was up, we found out that the ferry was delayed for about 90 minutes. This wasn’t surprising since the ferry system has been really unreliable due to a port being damaged from hurricane Maria, so we knew the schedule changes often. Sure enough, this was another chance to think flexibly when plans don’t go the way we expected. We took the boys to a really cool park and played there while the sun set.
Playing at the park made the waiting easy. When we came back to the dock, there were more delays, and waiting got harder and harder. We kept being told it was on it’s way, not to go anywhere. Tanner and Jeremy took a walk to keep distracted, and that’s when a fight broke out at the bar. So that became Tanner’s first time getting to see drunk people doing what they do best! I’m sure he’ll never forget it since he was pretty shaken up by it all. Still no ferry, though. We debated about booking a room to stay the night on the island, I certainly wouldn’t have minded! But the ferry finally showed up (at about 10 pm) and we headed home. It seemed like an eternity to get to Vereda del Mar, but we made it!
The next day, we laid low at the casa and taught ourselves how to make this beautiful PR meal of pork chops and arroz con gandules (rice with piegon peas). The rice was especially delicious, kudos to Jeremy who made it. We had enough rice to feed us for a few more days, and it got even better with time.
The hammock quickly became a tool to help Tanner calm down and get his breathing under control when he was triggered.
And sometimes it was just plain fun to be in it with his little buddy brother.
Heres another great morning walk on the beach.
Tennis and basketball with Daddy.
We attempted to go snorkeling on the shore down the street some private houses.
We all had our own goggles and snorkels. I made a social story for the boys about snorkeling since they both were worried they’d get eaten by sea creatures. We read it before going, and it seemed to help. Jeremy was able to show Tanner how to breath in and out of the snorkel and move around in the water. They went around looking for fish for about 30 minutes! They said the water only took Tanner’s breath away a few times. I was able to get Dallin to stick his head under the water and breathe in and out once, but that’s about all. We did not find many fish because the area was just a field of sea grass, but we sure found a lot of neat treasures on the shore.
That evening, we went to a Puerto Rican baseball game at a stadium in San Juan. This was a Puerto Rican league that takes place during the off season. A lot of minor league baseball players from the states come down to play on various teams in this league.
Knowing how much Puerto Rico loves baseball, we thought the place would be packed, but since it was an off season game, there were only about 300 people there. (Yes, we actually counted everyone in the stadium). Once again, it wasn’t what we were expecting, but we had fun anyway. In fact, we were just glad to get to the correct place, because a few days earlier we tried to attend a game, but google took us to the wrong stadium. Second time is a charm, I guess!
Things were in our favor when it came to price. The parking was only $2, adult tickets were about $6, the boys got in for free, and we were allowed to sit anywhere we wanted! We chose seats right behind home plate. The main difference between this game and ones in the states is that they played the PR anthem in addition to the US National Anthem. That’s the only difference I noticed as a very ignorant baseball viewer.
Tanner was really interested in all the stats and details of the game. Jeremy was loving this, and got to teach Tanner more about things like why the pitcher was pitching differently to different players and stuff. Dallin and I were just interested in big plays that we could cheer about. The mascot came over to say hello and danced for us, and there were a few big plays. We stayed for about an hour and then went home. We knew we would not be able to stay long since the game started at bedtime and the field was an hour away from home.
The evening was a fun experience to check off the bucket list!
We had a fun walk on the beach during Jeremy’s last morning with us. The boys found sticks that were perfect for baseball bats, and there were plenty of coconuts to be used as balls. Dang, they had a blast! Tanner especially was pumped about beach baseball!! There were a few times he broke the stick. This became a common activity during our walks on the beach.
Dallin is running the “bases.”
Looking for more coconut baseballs.
We found a yummy restaurant in our neighborhood called La Vida Cafe. Their signature thing is to put sweet plantanes and avocados on burgers. YUM! This place became a regular destination for us.
Then it was time to take Jeremy to the airport. The boys cried when he left because they knew that we wouldn’t see him for 3 weeks, which would be our longest time away from him ever. I knew it was harder for Jeremy to leave us than it was for us to see him go. He was not sure how things would pan out with me alone in PR, and he certainly didn’t want to leave the warm weather and all the fun. This guy made a lot of sacrifices for us to be able to do this trip, and the 3 weeks away from us was probably the biggest one. Thank you, husband. I love you. I owe you big time.
As I drove off on my own to embark on our first adventure in PR without him, I couldn’t help but think about the amazing times we had with Jeremy during our first week on the island. He really takes my breath away!!
