Travel to Puerto Rico

Baggage claim, rental car, highway, exit, wrong exit, weird detour, frustrating traffic, hotel, complimentary drink, a shower that has no choice but to send a cascade of water onto the bathroom floor, and finally sleep.

Landing in San Juan, your first impressions are pretty much the same as arriving at the airport in any other large city. Lots of concrete, lots of signs, and all the anxiety associated with being tossed into the middle of a metropolitan area that was chugging along just fine until you arrived. Please don’t take this complaint as a hint of what is to come. This is not San Juan’s fault, but rather something I need to get out of my system before moving onto the good stuff. Of which there is plenty. (Note to self: Write Blog on the necessary evils of air travel)

After the initial crash-landing, you quickly come to realize just how accessible San Juan is. Not only San Juan, but the whole island seems to fit, as a tattooed map, in the palm of your hand. It wasn’t long before I was challenging Google Maps to take us further and further…

30 minutes to the next town? Okay.

How about that Eco Lodge in the mountains? The one Yelp reviewers had warned of “winding roads”, and “unmarked intersections”? Oh. Only a little more than an hour

Fine. Take us to the other side! All the way to the opposite corner where the tropical rainforest turns to grassy plains, and where I’ve heard called the only desert on the island. This must require the better part of a day’s travel… Nope. About two and a half hours. Maybe three if you take the scenic route and get lunch along the way.

This is why, despite all of the amazing things we discovered in Puerto Rico, the ease of travel is almost always the first thing we mention when asked, “So, how was it?” Nowhere else has it been so easy to make a must-see list, and actually complete it.

Normally we would have a fairly strict itinerary. But, for this trip, we only planned a few days. Land in San Juan, Spend a couple days in El Yunque, make our way to the island of Vieques, and then… who knows.

Before taking a cruise around the island, how about addressing some of the most common questions about our trip. For the most part, these are the same inquiries made of any trip off the mainland, but bear with me…

1. Puerto Rico is part of the United States, right?

I’ll save you the history, politics and geography lessons, and give you the Cliff Notes version. Yes. Since 1947 Puerto Rico has been a commonwealth territory of the US, complete with its own governor.