We love 3 day weekends!

Last week we finally got back to school after a month off. It was so nice to be here a week before school started so we could re-adjust to our lives. We had parent/teacher conferences on Tuesday and school started on Wednesday. The week was alright. We've got today off because of Martin Luther King, Jr. day so we decided to take a road trip for the weekend. We loaded up bright and early Saturday morning and headed to the north/northwest part of the island. Our first stop was at a beach where there's an old train tunnel. The surf was so high we couldn't go in the water. We walked through the tunnel and found another part of the beach where we climbed on the big rocks. It was so windy, I'm surprised no one fell in the water!

























After that we drove west for a while. Before we moved here, Courtney and I saw a show on the Travel Channel. There's a man that travels to all different countries, eats their food, travels around, etc. He's a famous Chef and has restaurants everywhere. He traveled to Puerto Rico and went to this place in Isabel. The legend is that a man named Jacinto was walking along the rocks when the ocean came and swallowed up his cow. Now there's a big hole in a rock where the ocean splashes up through the center. If you go to this hole and yell at the man to give you his cow and the water splashes you you're supposed to have good luck. We had been wanting to see this place and we found it on Saturday. We yelled and got soaked! It really was a neat place to visit. Here's Courtney & I standing near the hole yelling and then standing over the hole. You can see the water splashing up.

After the blow hole we ate lunch at a place called "Happy Belly's". It was a nice open air place right on the ocean. Unfortunately it was raining a little, the wind was chilly, and I was soaked. I'm paying for it now...laying here in bed, sick, as I'm typing this! Anyway...after lunch we drove to Crashboat which, if you remember, is the beach we went to when Joy was here. Courtney took his invention to the beach to be tried out. He invented the "beach pole" for when you're at the beach and have no where to hang your things. I took some pictures of him "installing" it and hanging his first item on it. It worked beautifully and really held lots of things. Come on down and you can hang your stuff on it!!

Step one: try to push the beach pole into the ground. Realize that the roots from the palm trees are huge and don't want to break.

Step two: try banging on the beach pole with coconut. If that doesn't work you can also use a filled cooler and bang it up on and down a few times.

Step three: once you've worked hard enough you'll finally get the first piece into the ground. After that you must put the top half on.

Step four: you're ready to hang things on your pole! We hung: Courtney's pants and shirt, my skirt and shirt, our camera, and our beach bag filled with things. It held a lot of weight and I think my hubby was pretty proud of himself.

After staying at Crashboat until sunset (we wanted to see the sun set on the ocean) we drove to our parador (hotel). It's the largest parador on the island and it was very affordable. We stayed in for the night because it was rainy and we were tired. We got up yesterday morning and drove to Camuy to the cave system. You have to take a trolley down, down, down, a steep and winding path. It was a little scarey because it was slick. Anyway...I tried to take pictures inside but the camera started messing up. (We think it was the humidity inside of the caves.) Inside the caves lives an estimated 1/2 million bats. Luckily we didn't see any. There's also a spot where water runs down the rocks and they call it the fountain of youth. We all drank from it to see what would happen! Here's us getting ready to go down on the trolley, Courtney & I in front of the fountain, through an exit from the cave, some stalagtites, and the Camuy river that runs underneath and through the caves. Katie and I always have to have a picture taken with giant animals so here we are with a Coqui.

The last thing on our list was to drive to Arecibo to see the Observatory. This is the largest telescope in the world. It was pretty neat to look at but not anything so exciting that I would want to see twice. Katie's going back in a few weeks on a field trip with 60 third graders...good luck on that one!

We also had an interesting experience with ice cream this weekend. There is an ice cream parlor here in PR that is famous for its wacky flavors. Just to give you an idea of what I mean, my husband and I tried beer flavored ice cream which was sitting right next to the beans and rice falvored ice cream. That was sitting next to the corn flavored and avacado flavored...get the hint? In the end we all settled for some pretty "normal" flavors...I was the least adventurous and stuck with good 'ole chocolate chip. Courtney had orange, Brent had coconut, Clate had pineapple and something else, Mendez had sweet rice, and Katie had cheese & strawberries (strawberry cheesecake). I'd like to try something more exotic next time...maybe...