Catching Up

I'm a little behind. I skipped writing about our activities on Monday in my emotional duress from the events on Tuesday, so I'll try to catch up.

On Monday, we drove down to the southern side of the island again, to the second biggest city in Puerto Rico--Ponce. It's named for Ponce de Leon, and the city really plays up its name. We went to the central town square where they have lion statues everywhere. Each lion has been decorated by a different artist. We took pictures by several of them, but didn't get them all, by any means.

 

At the town square, they also have an old firehouse called El Parque de Bombas. It's just a little building, but it's full of character. We saw an old fire engine and several old helmets and tools.

Looking down into the old well the firefighters used for their water supply. It's full of coins, now!

We're making it a habit to tour the panaderias of Puerto Rico, buy their fresh bread (or sometimes, not so fresh), and get a pastry or doughnut for the kids. So, we found a place in Ponce to get bread for our lunch. It was the best bakery so far! We had to walk about 5 blocks to get there, and in the humidity it almost did us in. We were all dragging by the time we got to the store. After making our purchases, Steve left to go fetch the car and give us chauffeur service while the kids ate their goodies. There was a funny little ride there ofTom and Jerry that the three younger girls all wanted to try.

 

We had our picnic lunch on the Carribean Sea again. We found a public beach this time with a little spot in the shade where the kids waded in the water (we didn't bring swim suits). We've found it difficult to find picnic tables in Puerto Rico. Even at the parks and public beaches, where you'd expect them, they are conspicuously absent. So, Steve held out his hands to be my table while I fixed sandwiches for everyone with the fresh bread. Delicioso!

 

Our last stop of the day was at an art museum in Ponce. It was a little sophisticated for the kids, but we told them we had taken them to the children's museum, and now it was their turn to "take us" to a grown-up museum. I don't think they were TOO bored. They found some art that they liked, and we took lots of pictures. I discovered that this museum is the home of one of my favorite paintings: Flaming June. I had no idea when we planned our trip there! So, that was a fun discovery to make.

The statue is holding a tooth in pliers. The artistic dentist?

The original Flaming June!

Now, I'm going to use my time machine ;-) and skip ahead to Thursday. We didn't do much beside laundry on Wednesday, and that's boring, so I'll spare you the details. Actually, on Thursday, we didn't do a lot either. It had rained all day on Wednesday, so we couldn't take the kids swimming as we'd promised to do. (By the way, I thoroughly enjoyed the rain! It was so great to see so much water falling from the sky!) So, on Thursday we took another "down day" and went to a swimming pool at the nearby hotel. The pool in our condo complex is being remodeled, so our condo owner got us passes to the pool at the hotel next door.

 

It was a really nice pool, with 4 separate swimming areas, 2 of them specifically for little kids. We parked next to the kiddie pool and let the kids enjoy themselves until they got hungry for lunch, about 2 1/2 hours.

I'm almost up to speed now.

We had to get a picture by the coqui frog!

Yesterday, we drove west to see Camuy Caves. I really enjoy caves, and Steve missed this site when he lived here before, so this was a must-see. When we arrived, we missed a tour by about 5 minutes and had to wait around for 45 minutes before another started. We sorely regretted our tardiness, as we ended up on a tour with a large group of school kids who were boisterous and noisy and made the tour very difficult, even for the guide. The guide said school groups and tourists are supposed to be separated, and only about 30 people are supposed to be on a tour at a time: we had around 60. So, it was just a little hectic, as you can imagine. They also gave us electronic players, like a self guided tour, that we had to balance with the live tour guide's explanations. I have a handicap, in that I cannot concentrate on more than one thing at a time (don't ever ask me to multi-task!), so the situation ended up being rather stressful for me.

But, in spite of that, I enjoyed the beauty of the cave. It was different from other caves I've visited because there were several large openings to the outdoors where plants and water dripped down. That was a gorgeous sight! The third largest underground river in the world runs through this cave system, although the rains from a couple of days before had swollen the river and knocked out the lights, so we didn't get a very good view of the river itself. But we could hear it! Steve had expected a large rushing river, but it was fairly small and calm. 

My camera gave me grief that day, so the photos aren't the best. They certainly don't do it justice!

At one point, we came to an area open to the sky above where several long tree roots hung down like vines and water dripped from the edge. (The guide said the limestone rock of the cave soaks up water like a sponge, so it's constantly dripping.) Leaves falling from the trees drifted lazily down into the cave to the underground river, exposed at this point, far below. It was the kind of thing I've seen in video games or movies, but never in real life. It was so beautiful! 

 

After the cave, we went to the Arecibo Observatory. This is a humongous dish that receives and transmits radio waves from and to space for scientists to analyze. It was featured in one of the James Bond movies (with Pearce Brosnan) and in the movie Contact. It was really neat to see this huge structure in person!

Unfortunately, by this point in the day, the kids were getting pretty tired. Jessie actually fell asleep in the museum while we waited for our tour of the dish. Megan wasn't far behind. She was like a wet noodle, hanging on me. But, she perked up when we got back to the car.

Our last stop was going to be another funky ice cream shop, located in a town south of the caves. But, we arrived 6 minutes after they closed! I guess we were just running a little bit late all day.

Today is another down day. We cleaned house and did laundry. The tide is super low today: the lowest we've seen. The "pencil" out in the water is completely exposed. But, it's the weekend, so there's a party going on down the beach and lots of people out walking the sand. Maybe we'll throw on our bathing suits and join them!

El lapiz - the pencil. We could walk all the way out there today in shallow water.