Day 4 - 4/1/24

Today we left Puerto Rico

April Fools!

Today we started out by switching up our morning routine and finding a new place for breakfast. We intended to get takeout but the place was too inviting to refuse. This place was called Huevos Fritos (Fried Egg) and it seemed to be pretty newly opened but the food came out fast and was amazing. Also Dad got a coffee and the latte art on it was too cute not to include.

I got pancakes with fried cheese on top (I'd been looking to try some for some time). I never expected for it to be a 3-cake stack and didn't end up eating it all. Probably should have gotten bread because Clover and Dad said their toast was really light, they sell warm bread in almost all of the markets and convenience stores so I shouldn't have been surprised. 

Anika Rating: 10/10 

Our quest for today was to find a beach so we could rest our tired feet and at the same time we wanted to explore the south side of the island. So we did, and immediately we started to notice a few differences between Central and Southern Puerto Rican. Most notably the lack of trees on the mountain, they were covered in short grass and little scraggly shrubs. Dad guessed it was because of Hurricane Maria in 2017, it hit the Southeastern corner of the island first before continuing through. There was also more of a crop I didn't expect to see, a variant of cotton! The plant was taller so I don't think it's the same variety as the ones in Virginia but it was still curious.

Before we made it to a beach we drove through a few little towns along the coast, one of which we stopped in to take a look at the Freshwater side of things. We'd been seeing fields of mangroves wiped out (which Dad once again guessed was the hurricane) so we just wanted to take a peak. Only to find signs warning us there were Manatees in the area! We didn't see any but we did see a few cute little crabs.

Soon after ended up at a beach called Bahia Jauca which was really just an access to the beach between two little houses. The water was calm and you could practically walk across the whole cove with how shallow it was. Clover and I jumped in and enjoyed chatting and swimming for a while before we had to get out or we'd get burned, at least I finally got a bit of a tan.

We were only a short ways off from Ponce, the largest city on the southern coast of Puerto Rico so we decided to explore it a bit. Mostly the historical district because there were some pretty cool buildings there but we did do some further investigating when we saw there was supposedly a castle further up the mountain.

But before the castle, we were parched from our swim so we ended up stopping by a roadside merchant to buy some limeade. It was a good combination of sour and sweet, scurvey wouldn't be getting us today!

With drinks in hand, up to the castle we drove. Apparently it was a museum but it was closed today much to our disappointment. But that doesn't mean we didn't get some amazing pictures of Ponce from the top! 

(This is a picture of an abandoned hospital we stumbled on at the peak)

Once we were done there, we drove to a beach in Ponce just to find it was mostly gravel but that was fine, it was late enough for us to start thinking about dinner anyhow. So we started driving back towards Caguas.

But that's when our troubles began. Apparently just about every restaurant closes at 6PM on weekdays and it was already 5:10 when we started looking. We tried to get into a Lechonera place, it was closed. Not even mentioning how few Yelp reviews there are on most places which makes it hard to tell what places are actually good. Yet after almost an hour (including our time to drive back to Caguas) we finally reached an end to our quest, La Placita Tropical, a Latin American place. Yet this is where the day gets interesting with a change encounter, but before I get into that I'll talk about the food. I got essentially chopped fried chicken on Mofongo, Mofongo hadn't really been the best so far but they laid out hot sauce so I took a chance. And honestly the hot sauce really helps with the flavor, would definitely recommend. It was so much food I couldn't finish it all.

Anika's Rating: 8/10

Now for the chance encounter, I wasn't really expecting anything when I walked into the place, there were a few people in there so we were able to just order and sit down. But what we didn't expect, was Sammy. Sammy was born in America, raised in Puerto Rico, then lived in mainland America for most of the rest of his life. He suddenly came over and just started chatting with us, he was a bit drunk but he was extremely nice. He told us a bit about the local culture and how accepting it was, he helped us out with translating a menu a bit, all around he was just really nice. He told us a lot about himself too, he'd made a career off of boxing in the states and had five daughters which is crazy to me, I couldn't imagine raising that many children. He bought Dad a drink and came over a few more times after our earlier conversation just to say hi again, he was social with lots of the other customers and the staff too. I wish I could be confident like Sammy, so yeah, that was definitely interesting.

But while everything with Sammy was going on, something else was developing. Clover had needed to go to the bathroom badly when we got to the restaurant so they had to make a snap decision on an order. And they got King Crab...at a cheap roadside Latin American place... As you may have expected it was definitely fake and Clover had to steal off of Dad and my plates for dinner. But the funniest part of the whole thing was Clover knew that there was a function on Google where you can take a picture of words in another language and it'll translate!!! Dad and I had been having a hard time translating the menu through Google's browser and somehow Clover messed up their order even though they knew how to figure out what the rest of the menu was. This is a lesson, make sure to use all the information at your disposal even in a snap decision. 

So that was how today went, thank you for reading!