The past two months have been wonderful thanks to all of the visitors I've had. My family was here to celebrate Christmas and then my mom spent a fun week with her girl friends... which also brought Bravos into our life!! My dad came down next for a week with his friends. Then my old roommate Sarah and a friend of hers spent a week with me. All of the fun was topped off with a visit from my boyfriend, Michael. I'm still adjusting to living on my own again.
Conor, Kevin, Me, and my dad on Christmas night.
BRAVOS! The newest member of the Beltz family.
Sarah, Catherine, and I at one of our many delicious dinners.
When Michael was about to leave, I was getting antsy to get off this crazy island for a little. I ended up having the best 24-hours since I have been here :)
The trip started off a little rocky. But what else would you expect when trying to leave Vieques?? The four of us (Brittany, Dio, Michael, and I) met at 5:50 am to take the 6:00 ferry to Fajardo. We bought our tickets the night before and figured 5:50 would give us plenty of time since the ferry is usually at least an hour late. Of course this was the one day the ferry not only left on time, but left early! We watched it pull away as we arrived at the terminal. We hopped in the car and drove to the airport. We were able to get an 8:00 flight to the main island. Phew. Once we were in Fajardo, we rented a car and began the beautiful drive to Charco Frio.
Self-timers are great. We needed a picture on the side of the road.
Charco Frio is a part of the rainforest mountain range. In order access, you need to call a Puerto Rican family that opens their driveway gate for you and lets you park on their property. Dio has been coming here since he was a kid, so he knew who to call.
We began the walk along the trail.
There were so many areas of bamboo forests.
The colors were amazing...
The forest was so untouched and natural. We brought a trash bag to collect garbage but really only found some single flip flops that people lost in the extremely muddy trail.
We made it to the river.
This is the first jump.
Michael swinging into the water...
Dio's turn...
It took me some time to build up the courage to jump... but I finally did it. After this point, we hid our things and continued walking through the river and climbing rocks. I wish I could have photographed what we saw! It felt like we were in a natural water park. We slid down rock slides and swam in natural pools. Michael even jumped off a 45 foot cliff.
After such an exciting and exhausting day, we checked into our hostel in Old San Juan.
We had a beautiful balcony overlooking the street.
After some shopping in town, we found a great vegetarian restaurant (something we don't have in Vieques!!) A tofu dinner was such a delicious treat.
We checked out at 7am and this time we did not miss the ferry :)
