Puerto Rico

It was an average day at school and while everyone was working, I started to pack up! Why am I doing this? Because I am going to Puerto Rico! I packed up and walked to the office where my parents picked me up and we were off to the airport! The reason why we are going to Puerto Rico in the middle of the school year is that we got invited to a wedding! My mom's friend invited us. So we decided that this will be a vacation/wedding trip for all for us. I was super excited and couldn't wait to get there. We then got on the plane and took off. The take off sequence never gets old. It is great. The flight was around 4hrs so we would arrive around 8:30PM. The flight that we were on was a newer plane and had an awesome entertainment unit with 100s of movies to choose from, needless to say the flight flew by ha ha!

Fast-forward 4hrs and we were there! The first thing that we all noticed when we stepped out of the plane is that is was HOT. Although it is 8 o'clock at night, it is 80 degrees! And for a kid who lives way up north in America walking into something that is 80 degrees and just 5hrs ago it was 30....means that this is hot!

When we arrived at the hotel is was really dark and we couldn't see much but when we woke up the next day and looked out the window finding that were a few meters distance to the ocean... was amazing! So we couldn't let this perfect day go to waste we "quickly" got changed had food and ran to the pool/ocean. We got set up at the pool and we

all went swimming for a little bit and soon realized I had a "buddy" who wanted to jump in and cool off with me....he likes pineapple ! After hanging at the pool for a bit and sharing some pineapple with my new friend I decided to go for a walk with my mom on the beach and the beach water. It's like bath water. It was so nice, so instead of the pool we went to the beach were we swam for around 5 hrs.... Yes 5 hours. That night we went to dinner at this amazing sushi place, the sushi place was small but the food was very good. I also got to try fried ice cream for the first time! It was really cool because what they did they had a ball of fried ice cream and when you cut it open all the ice cream inside is there. It was super good and really cool. After dinner we headed back up to our room and all feel fast asleep.

The next day would be the best day because my dad made a reservation to go...(drumroll) snorkeling! We woke up early and headed to where the boat would be picking us up and took a short boat ride to a small uninhabited island. When we got in the water it was amazing! There were so many fish and corals. It was super cool. One of my favorite fish was a flat fish that when on the bottom was camouflaged,

its called a flounder, and sometimes you can spot them on the bottom of the ocean. Also when the flounder moves it looks really cool, because it uses its side fins to go through the water. I got lunch and from this point I hadn't really had have true Puerto Rican food, and it was so good! Okay so the bread is so much better than the bread that we have here (USA) it tastes amazing, it has a little sweet flavor to it, but not too sweet. Okay that was my story on bread lets get back to the snorkeling trip. Later our guide took us out deeper into the ocean which was a whole different experience that is hard to describe in words, the ocean snorkeling was a little bit deeper and there was much more fish and coral. With this we could really see the whole ecosystem. We would be pulled by the current and we saw some pretty cool fish, we once saw this lobster that was probably a good 2 or 3 feet long, it was huge. Then we came up to my favorite coral, imagine a coral but really tall like 13 feet, but its thin, so 13 feet high and 4 or 3 feet wide. It was beautiful. Later that night we got invited to dinner. We went and the food was very good. They had an assortment of different types of food and I tried a plantain for the first time! And it was just a smaller version of a banana but I definitely recommend to try it if you like bananas.

On Sunday was the wedding day, the wedding was held on the beach, for kids it was kind of boring, but I hung out with a few other kids and I got to ride around on a golf cart!

On Monday we headed to Old San Juan. San Juan is the capital of Puerto Rico, we stayed in the old part called viejo san juan (Old San Juan). We met up with Javiar who did the best walking tour of the city (highly recommend him) not only was it a blast he was the world champion unicyclist and he gave me lots of great tips as I just started unicycling! So back to our tour with Javiar.... Old San Juan has a rich history because of the location of Puerto Rico it is a very desirable location for settlers, over the years there has been many battles over who has control. All over the island is artifacts from the past, one of them is an old 42 foot wall surrounding Old San Juan, this wall was built to defend off attacks but it took years to build and by the time it was finished it was obsolete. Another artifact would be La Fortaleza, La Fortaleza is now the governor's home, but it used to be a great fortress. La Fortaleza was the first of many forts to be built in Puerto Rico. But not all of the artifacts are from war, the hotel that we stayed at El Convento used to be an old convent (A place for nuns) but it has changed over the past 374 years. When it opened in 1646 the nuns lived in peace until 1903 where it was closed, and changed into a flophouse for the next 40 years, until 1959 where someone bought the flophouse and turned it into a hotel which is what it is now. You see that this is only a fraction of the rich history in Old San Juan, but San Juan also has a really neat chocolate store, the chocolate that they have is different than normal chocolate that you'll get. It comes in a half circle and its very good. We also got to see one of the world's thinnest house it is only 5 feet wide! San Juan is possibly one of my favorite towns with the rich history.

It has been a great journey through Puerto Rico and getting to explore the capital and learn about the rich history. I will definitely recommend a trip to Puerto Rico, I will see you guys next time but for now. Goodbye!

p.s Some additional photos below of Old San Juan and our guide Javiar

Our guide Javiar, the lobby of our Hotel and Old San Juan