Puerto Rico – by Karin Joan

Well, would you look at that, it’s time to blog again!

After Dominica (I don’t believe I blogged about there), we went to Guadeloupe, a lovely French island with yummy French food. Diving was free, and it’s a nature reserve for underwater life, so there were plenty of fish for us to see while we were diving. It was a lot of fun.

But then we moved on to Puerto Rico, an American island. Everyone speaks Spanish, but luckily they also mainly speak English, although it may not be very good. The food here is expensive, just like everything else, but hey, the island has a huge mall with almost anything you can think of! We went to the mall on the second day with the Yoshimas, we were all pretty excited. The mall was wonderfully air conditioned, and it was very big. Everywhere in Puerto Rico they have random artworks and the mall was no exception.

Sophia and Franci.

Sophia, Marie and Marike.

A lot of the shops only sold clothes, but at least they were (mainly) too expensive to even think about, so we could just walk past. *Whew*.

We were hunting around for stuff on my Dad’s list here and there, but then we saw…(pause for effect), The DVD Store. Of course we went in, it was like a magnet calling to us. In the end we did buy a couple of DVD’s which was awesome, since nowhere else in the whole Caribbean could we find any DVD’s to buy whatsoever, except in Martinique where it was super expensive. But here there were almost all the DVD’s ever, and it was epic. But we moved out of there to my Dad’s relief, and yeah, that was the only exciting shop in the mall. There were cinemas which we resolved to visit to watch the new Jungle Book sometime. And there were the awful clothes shop where I was forced into.

Of course, also the place we ate lunch. It was the first time ever that I had eaten at a Burger King. Their burgers were nice. But I like our homemade burgers better, because you make your own burger. But their burgers weren’t bad.

Oh and there was internet everywhere in the mall, not in the shops but in the big spaces between where you walk. FREE internet, FREE. And there were couches were you could go sit, and work on your laptop and work with the FREE internet. Plus there was even places where you could go and plug in your laptop! While sitting there working on your laptop, with the FREE internet! I must say that is totally cool.

Franci and my Mom enjoying the internet.

Other than the mall we found a couple of Geocaches, here and there. We walked a lot, saw Manatees, and had a nice time. Oh yeah, we went to a church!

We found a church on the internet, so one Sunday we went to go and check it out. Of course everyone was super interested because we live on a boat and all that.

My Mom in front of the Church Building

This church had more kids about Marike and Franci’s ages which was nice for them. Sophia went to Sunday school, and we went to a youth thing, at the same time. So we missed the sermons, which wasn’t so nice. There weren’t so many constant comers among the kids, But Alex and her sister Veronica, came every Sunday we were there. They have a few younger siblings, who went to Sunday school with Sophia. The names of the young youth leaders escape me, but they were cool. Oh and there was a guy with red hair who also came regularly. But the rest basically came and went. The last Sunday we were there, there was a guy a little older than Marike, who could do a bunch of card tricks.

Here we are buying cupcakes to support the Youth’s Summer Camp

Of course there was also a lot of adults in the church. We made friends with the Derries. (That’s not their surname, it’s the husbands name, Derry, and we just call them that because, now that I think about it, I don’t know what their surname is. My mom is bound to know.) Well anyway. They live in an apartment building which has a pool, So they invited us over a couple of times. It was nice because the water in the harbour wasn’t that clean. It was cleaner than usual but after Guadeloupe, I wasn’t willing to swim in it.

The pool wasn’t overly big, but it definitely wasn’t small. It wasn’t very deep either, but at least our feet couldn’t touch the bottom and our heads stick out at the same time, when we swam in the deep end. But honestly, I still prefer the ocean more. When swimming off of the boat, it’s a challenge to swim the five meters down to the bottom, pick up a hand full of sand and come up again. =) What do we do with the hand full of sand you ask? Well I throw it at Sophia, who proceeds to try and duck, then she goes down and get’s a handful, then I try and stay under the water so she can’t get me, but anyway that’s not important, just a game. Well the pool was Ok. And The couple was very Ok. It was fun.

Derry and Anne Kingsbury (My Mom gave me the surname) with us and the pool in the background.

Oh and I can’t forget to mention the church choir! I never learnt any of their names, except the black guy with the amazing deep voice! His name is Xavier. And there was the small woman with the very high voice. And there was the coloured guy, with the cool hair, who usually held the stick, like in an orchestra. The choir was cool. Oh and in this church everybody stood up in the middle and greeted everybody else. I think that a very strange custom, and personally I’m glad our church back home doesn’t do it. It makes me feel awkward.

Well let’s see – other than the church… Oh yes how can I forget! We stayed in Puerto Rico way longer than we planned to. (Obviously we were going to). And it was due to a problem with the masts.

The tangs cracked, and those are the things that attach the spreaders to the mast, and the spreaders are the things attached to the cables that hold up the mast, to keep it more stable so that it doesn’t just stand there. If my explanation wasn’t good enough, (which it most probably wasn’t) You can go and google exactly what tangs and spreaders are. But anyway, this represented a rather big problem, because although the mast could still stand even though the cables aren’t helping it, it is not very stable. So if sudden strong winds came up, even for a short while, the tangs might crack right through, causing the spreader to fall, then the cable won’t be of much help, which in what ever way you picture it, will lead to disaster. So we had to stay in Puerto Rico for a little longer, which then turned into a little lot more. Well it did get fixed in the end after all. But Still – it took ages. The guy who had to fix them asked us to move to a different anchorage place, so we moved. And yeah. He fixed them in about three to four weeks I think. But he is a very busy man, so he didn’t have so much time. But yeah…

What else is there to write about?………………………………… Ah I got it!

While we were at Fajardo, (The other anchorage place) we hired a car one Saturday and went to the caves and the Observatory. I think the Observatory was more exciting. Of course there was a bunch of things of how it took millions of years for the stars to do this and that, but if you just ignore that, it was actually quite cool. There were space rocks which they found, a couple of them was found in Namibia, one of South Africa’s neighbouring countries. And one of them was supposed to be a stone from Mars, and the little label said that it still held air from mars in air pockets hidden inside it.

Here we are with some of the Meteorites that they found.

This is one of the larger chunks of rocks that they have on display.

I don’t really have a lot to say about it. But if you were going to go to Puerto Rico in the future I would recommend going there. (There and the caves, although the caves also have the bunch of nonsense about the millions of years here and there.)

Well now I think that’s really everything, so over and out.