Ballin' in Dalian: save a gato in san juan

everyone clap your hands, zach and i made it back safe and sound from puerto rico! it was a trip well done. this is the first time that we have done some really serious travelling on our own--getting through puerto rico's interior on remote mountain roads is not easy stuff. zach has apparently been describing our itinerary as "aggressive", which i kind of have to agree with. but it was worth it, and we were smiling on the shuttle to the airport, unlike the grumpy couple sitting behind us who had already botched their trip within 1 hour of being in puerto rico. sucks to be them...so here begins the tale of our one week trip to puerto rico, which had enough adventure in it to fill several trips to puerto rico :)

us in culebra, a small island off of Puerto Rico

DAY 1 and 2: SAN JUAN!

as zach will probably mention to anyone he recounts the trip to, we were up before 6am three times during the trip. the first time was to catch our uber-early, direct flight out of DCA into san juan. because of this, i was very tired on the plane ride. i've found that on most planes i am just about the right size to use my arms as a pillow on the tray table and lay my head on them so i can sleep. i'm not sure if this is considered rude or not, but the only thing i can see that's bad is sometimes my arm slips and hangs over the tray table into someone else's space. however, if i'm not feeling the tray table, i might lean back, take off my shoes, and squeeze my feet in between the seats in front of me--just enough to hold them there but not so much that the person in front of me can see my feet. i'll sit in a number of strange positions on planes trying to get comfortable. if that's rude, then so be it.

this is a good depiction of how i look on a plane, i happened to find it in san juan

so i did the tray table trick on this plane ride and fell asleep, which i know for sure not only because when i woke up my arm was hanging near someone, but also because i had a dream. usually i have pretty unusual dreams, but this dream was probably the most boring dream i ever had. my dream was that the plane landed. that's it.

view of San Juan from the plane as you land

so actually it really wasn't a boring dream because i had really been looking forward to this trip. especially right after the planning was done, i was so excited to get out of here and go. usually zach and i make all our our plans last minute but this time i made sure to get everything done far in advance so we could have our prime choice of lodging, prices, etc. this experiment worked out perfectly except that i wasn't used to waiting so freaking long for the vacation to come, and that was hard.

but once i got there it was marvelous

san juan is a beautiful city! old san juan, which you can see in the picture above, is small small small. you can easily walk across the entire thing in like 15 minutes, and the tip, which again you can see in the picture above, is an old spanish fort.

el morro, the spanish fort

i ended up booking a hostel in old san juan. i was a little wary about lodging in san juan--i wanted a step up from couchsurfing (which is what we did on our new years vacation to charleston/savannah) but i didn't want to get sucked into the whole caribbean resort thing and pay $300 a night so i could have as many yellow and white striped towels as i wanted. and no i am not just making random things up, that is the deal at the caribe hilton, the resort that zach and i snuck into.

yes caribe hilton, i will swim in your giant pool

it wasn't our original plan to trespass into the resort. in fact, we spent the majority of the day at a very low key beach popular with locals, sharing one very small bath towel from the hostel to lie on. however, after accidentally rolling into the sand for the 5th time, i thought it might be nice to take a walk and check out the rest of the area.

part of the local beach

very quickly we realized that resort heaven was right around the corner from our modest little beach. the receptionist at the front desk of our hostel had already planted the seed in our heads about sneaking in--she had suggested that we do it and told us that caribe hilton couldn't do anything about it.

the balcony was the best part of the hostel

forget you caribe hilton

so we walked up to the gate on the side of the hotel and tried the door, but it wasn't opening. to complicate matters, a hotel worker was coming up behind us with a big crate of towels. zach, being his devious self, asked me if i had the key. not knowing what to do, i stood there and shook my head with a guilty smile on my face. luckily the hotel worker didn't seem to care if we were actually staying there or not, and pressed some button to open the door. suddenly, zach and i were guests at the caribe hilton. we spent the rest of the day lying in a hammock under palm trees and relaxing in a jacuzzi. the only thing i was worried about was that we were the only people there with out a yellow and white striped towel, which was slightly suspicious given that each person there had like 5 towels all to themselves. i eventually went up and asked for one, and was granted it. when we exited, the towel did as well. we didn't really go into any gift shops while we were in PR, so it turns out that the towel was our only souvenir from the whole trip!

no caption needed

the resort was nice for a few hours, but i'm so happy zach and i didn't spend our whole time there, which i'm sure many people do. there is so much more to puerto rico (and san juan) than the caribe hilton. zach and i took a walk on a mostly deserted beach and found part of the spanish fort crumbling into the water. ever since living in ireland and seeing the old castles there, i am obsessed with crumbling things, especially ones that are just being left to themselves, so i was very happy to find that.

i should issue a word of warning about san juan (and puerto rico in general)--there is a lot of trash, there are lot of stray cats, and there are a lot of dogs that are likely not stray but wander around everywhere as if they were.

the cat issue is an interesting one. on the first night we were there, we unknowingly went for a walk into el gato's prime territory. there were cats EVERYWHERE. at first it was just a few, which we thought was weird, but after a while we realized the place was infested with feral cats. it was really creepy because it was starting to get dark and there were rocks lining the shore, so they were hiding in the rocks and randomly popping out. to make matters worse, zach and i are both allergic to cats, and not really big fans of them in general. it was the most uncomfortable i have felt in a while.

los gatos

it was clear though that these cats were not really feral in the true sense--they were much too healthy and pretty looking. this is all thanks to the most powerful non-profit in puerto rico, the Save A Gato foundation. the Save A Gato has an "exclusive agreement" with the National Park Service to manage the cat colony. according to their website:

Save A Gato manages the colony of cats on the Paseo del Morro and the rest of Old San Juan. We manage them through T/N/R. This stands for trap, neuter, and release. Cats are first trapped, then with the help of local vets we are able to neuter, vaccinate, and de-worm the cats. The cats are then returned healthy to the Paseo to lounge and sunbathe on the rocks.

painting depicting old san juan's cat infestation
that you can buy on Save a Gato's website

the whole thing is really hard for me. on one hand i understand that this is a very humane thing to do, on the other hand, this organization is expending a lot of energy and capital on a bunch of nasty cats. personally, unless i was working to save endangered animals or something like that, it's really hard for me to imagine working in the non-profit world and trying to better the life of a cat rather than a person. maybe i don't know anything though because they are definitely doing a good job:

non-profit dollars are at least not needed for efforts to revitalize the slums in the city--leave that to donald trump, who is apparently buying a portion of them. that is what a man from the slums told us as we were overlooking them. he said the area was donald trump's "new toy", and ended by saying, "we are going to kill him." donald might want to rethink his new toy. at any rate, these are the prettiest slums i have ever seen:

the last thing i'd like to add is that it's very important to eat some mofongo while you're in puerto rico. if you know the right place to go, which zach made sure we did, it will look like the picture below. mofongo basically consists of fried and mashed plantains filled with your choice of meat or vegetables. it's so yummy, and as i'm writing this i'm getting a mofongo craving...hmmm might have to go to new york for that.

and that is the end of the easy part of the trip where we walked everywhere or took the bus. then comes the car, and the trouble begins...muhahah

so in conclusion...

san juan is a place where you can find giant murals of birds on buildings, and everything is brightly colored.