Departing Colombia

We got at around 5am had a quick shower and then ate some breakfast that Diego had prepared. Breakfast consisted of a big bowl of fruit with some yogurt over the top. The whole family was up to see us off including Erica, Juan and Sarah. Charlie rocked up, as we were going to the airport in his car, he was super surprised to see Sarah up and about at that time of the day. We said are farewells and made our way over to the airport. We had trouble checking in with the Volaris app and kiosks, so once again we found ourselves in the line for the checkin counter. Diego and Charlie waited in the airport the whole time that we were going through checkin. 

Once we were through checkin we waved goodbye and made our way to security. We ended up getting separated at security as the scanners did not agree that my face matched my passport. I tried a couple of different scanners with the same result. In the end I went to see if I could get some help. By the time I had done all of this Christine and Luke had long since passed through security. Once I finally got through security I took a look at my ticket and without my glasses on I decided that the B05 number was the gate number. I made my way down to the gate only to find that it was empty and had a flight to Mexico showing on the screen. I found my glasses, found a working screen, discovered that the gate was actually A2. By the time I arrived at the gate Luke, Christine and myself were the last three people in the gate lounge. We boarded the plane and the flight was smooth. 

US Customs

I read some of my Anthony Robbins Money Master the game book and have finally reached the part where he was interviewing a bunch of successful investors who were giving portfolio tips and advice. As we were disembarking I joked to Christine that as this was technically a US state, and based on our previous experience with US customs, I was expecting to see a long line and one customs officer at the end of it slowly checking people through. I was being facetious, but sure enough we found the line and indeed there was only one customs officer slowly processing people, we would wait another 10 – 15 minutes before more customs officers would show up to help clear the backlog. Once the line was moving we got through customs quite quickly. 

Anything but Thrifty

We located the Thrifty car rental place, which is right next to the Hertz rental place and probably associated. Now lets recall that we arrived at Hertz in Guatemala only to find that the car we had booked had been mysteriously cancelled and another place was recommended with a far more expensive car. At Thrifty the $200US car we had been quoted including insurance had suddenly become a $400US car with a truck load of added extras. The lady behind the counter assured us that this is common practice and if we didn’t like it we could suck eggs. At least I didn’t have to pay a deposit. We paid the extra and took possession of our car. The lady had recommended a couple of places where we could go for lunch, and we trusted her judgement as she appeared to be a connoisseur of delicious foods. 

The traffic

We navigated our way through the chaotic traffic to the suggested restaurant, well one of 4 or five suggested restaurants. We drove through dense traffic around the same block twice and found a paid carpark. Lunch was indeed delicious and not massively expense. Although there were a truck load of taxes on the bottom of the invoice.

After lunch we paid for our parking, this was the first time that we found that Puerto Rico doesn’t really use the $1US Coin, we discovered this after we unsuccessfully tried to feed it into the parking machine and it didn’t recognise them, then the lady who was manning the parking station came to take a look, and she didn’t recognise them either. The lady was unimpressed with our lack of knowledge in how the pay station worked, nor the fact that we tried to go out through the entrance of the car park as we didn’t realise that it had a separate hidden exit. 

Isabela

Having successfully navigated our way out of the car park, we then navigated our way out to Isabela, a town on the west coast of Puerto Rico, we had no trouble finding the accomodation, it was really nice with incredible views out over the ocean and a great little kitchen. We unloaded the car and then went in search of food to cook up for dinner. We located a grocery store a short walk from the accomodation. We picked up some steaks and some vegetables and headed back to the accomodation to cook up some dinner. 

After dinner we did a bit of Duolingo, wrote in our journals and relaxed after a day of travel. We managed to catch an early night in preparation for an exciting day ahead. 

Puerto Rico Day 22

We got up relatively early and made some breakfast. We then organised ourselves and drove over to Rincon Pools Beach. It took about an hour to drive out there. We found a cafe where we could pull in and ask where we could park the car, we wandered over to the bloke and asked in Spanish whether there was a carpark around, the bloke immediately panicked stated that he couldn’t speak Spanish and tried to direct us to another bloke who was working nearby. We switched to English and repeated our question. He relaxed and directed us to a place down the road where a carpark was situated beside the beach next to a bloke renting surfboards. When we arrived it was blowing a gale and the waves were massive. We had a walk along the beach and decided that we were going to have to give it a miss. 

We carried on to a place called Aguadilla and found a beach called Crash Boat. In contrast to the Rincon Pools beach this place was perfectly calm and crystal clear. There were a stack of stalls set up along the beach selling all manner of things, the only thing that we wanted to hire were snorkelling sets, alas that is the one thing these guys didn’t have. The vendors directed us to all manner of places but none of them had snorkelling sets, in the end we decided that we were just going to have a swim.   

There was a long jetty where we could jump into the warm Caribbean Sea. We would jump off the end of the jetty and then swim into the beach to repeat the process. We put the DGI into its waterproof housing so that we could take a look at the sea life lurking beneath the ocean, upon reviewing the footage later we found that there were all manner of colourful fish swimming around beneath the jetty. 

We had a go at running the drone and were somewhat successful. Alas there was a section that required authorisation and the drone would stop moving and just hover when it reached this zone. By moving the drone around and trying a few different shots we were able to roughly work out where the authorisation zones were. We still managed to film some great shots. 

We ate lunch at the restaurant across from the beach. Christine and I danced some salsa to the great salsa tunes that the place was playing while we waited for our lunch. The whole restaurant erupted into applause when we finished our dance. While I am on the subject, there was salsa and bachata music being played everywhere around the island. It was coming out of the cars passing by, out of the houses, out of the scooters cruising around or even out of people just holding their phones as they are walking around. I was in my element as there was great salsa and bachata music everywhere, what I didn’t see and was hoping to was people dancing salsa in the streets, the only ones doing that were Christine and I. 

We stopped at a huge shopping mall on the way back to the accomodation, it had a Wall Mart and a Selectos. We were hunting for fresh ingredients and although Wall Mart had them, they were all in bulk. As such we collected some bits from Selectos and then continued back to the accomodation. 

Back at the accomodation Luke went off looking for gym while Christine and I went to see if we could get an avocado. We didn’t find an avocado, we did however find a cucumber, we also had a look through a market and had a convo with a bloke in the grocery store. 

In the evening we made up a dough, prepared tortillas, cooked taco mince  throw together and made a salsa. After our tacos we went in search of a bar where they had free salsa lessons on a Wednesday evening. Alas the place was empty according to some people we had met on the beach earlier in the day. We went out and met up with those guys at a Karaoke bar, we chatted for a while and then decided we needed to get some sleep in preparation for tomorrow’s adventures.