Caja de Muertos

Another week at GPS, another weekend of fun in Puerto Rico! We had an interesting week at school (always do!) and Katie's friend Jodi arrived on Thursday. We went out for drinks on Thursday when they got back from the airport. On Friday Courtney & I went shopping for our trip on Saturday. The place we went to has no restaurants, stores, etc. so we had to take everything we could think of. You leave Ponce on a boat at 8:30 am and stay on the island of Caja de Muertos until 3:30 when the boat takes you home. It's about a 45 minute trip by boat and is worth the $17 a person it costs to get there! Caja de Muertos or "Coffin Island" has 2 different stories about why it is named that. The first being that it looks like a coffin when you see it from the main island or by boat...I couldn't see enough of it from the boat to tell you if that's true. The second being that Jose Almeida fell in love with a married woman and was reunited with her after he was done being a pirate and her husband died. She died some time later and he buried her in a cave at Caja de Muertos in a cedar coffin with a glass top so he could see her when he visited. He was later captured and killed and her body was taken to St. Thomas for a proper burial. Either way it's a nice place to visit and spend the day! There's a nice beach on one side, a protected beach on the other, and you can hike to the lighthouse at the top. We got there and spent the first half of the day swimming and hanging out. We then decided to take the hike. Here are some pictures..

Here's the beach we were at and a view of the boat we took to the island through the rocks. We put our things in a spot back in the rocks so it would be like having our own private beach.

Here's a picture of the lighthouse we were getting ready to hike to. You can barely see it on top of the mountain. The other picture is the trail we took. Once we started going up it was all rocks.

Here's the lighthouse at the top and the view of where we were before our hike. The beach we were at is all the way at the end where it looks like another mountain is. It was a long hike! The water and beach on the right of the picture are open, the area on the left is protected because it's too dangerous and that is where the sea turtles are when they come to shore. There is supposedly a wonderful coral reef you can snorkel at but the trail to that beach was closed yesterday. The water must have been pretty choppy there yesterday.

We went to this beach on the hike down from the lighthouse. They were calling it the Coast Guard beach. The water was so much more clear. We spent about an hour or more snorkeling. There were so many neat fish, shells, rocks, etc. to look at in the water. It was clear enough water that Courtney even went swimming & snorkeling! After this beach we had to finish our hike back to our things and got there just in time to haul our things back to the boat. The ride home was interesting. On the way there we sat on the lower level and it was a bumpy ride. On the way back we rode on the upper level. Everything was going great, lots of sun, talking, blah, blah, blah. Then Courtney says, "When we get up, don't look in the front row." There was a man in the front row throwing up on the floor! He never once got up and went to the trash, or hung his head over the side, or even got up to go to the bathroom on the lower level. He just sat there in his seat throwing up! How disgusting!! When we were getting close to Ponce we decided to get up and go down to the lower level so we could get off quickly. Who knows what might have happened if he were walking down the stairs behind us! His wife was rubbing his back and everything. I told Courtney if that had been him I would not have been so nice! Be looking for some good posts next weekend. Sharon, Wilbur, Nicole, and one of her friends get here on Thursday. I am so excited about our day we have planned for Saturday...you'll just have to wait to see what we do!