Day 5 - 4/2/24

 Getting to this a bit late today so I may not write as much as I planned but I'll still talk about today.

Today we started off at Huevos Fritos again, I got a sandwich for breakfast (it looks big but it just has a bit of ham and a fried egg in there) it was simple but has good texture.

Anika Rating: 8/10

But this morning at Huevos Fritos we came upon something unexpected. Clover went to the bathroom and came back, shocked. I asked what was wrong and they said the bathroom was 'so fancy' so I had to check it out for myself. And this is what I found...

I don't think fancy does it justice, it was awesome, but who knows what the darkness is hiding.

After that weirdness, we set off west towards Rincón which is known for having some of the best surfing beaches in the U.S. We're staying in the central eastern part of the island so it was about a 2 and a half hour trip. 

We stopped along the way to see the Arecibo telescope. Arecibo was once the largest single-unit radio telescope until it collapsed. It was a giant dish with the equipment suspended over it but there was an issue with suspension and the equipment fell. It'd be too expensive to rebuild and just generally not worth it for what it was, so it's been left in ruin. There was a visitor center but that was closed for renovations when we got here.

Here's a link to a video of Arecibo's collapse and a few of our photos: https://youtu.be/u34uwFOCM-4?si=X79337R5e1K4W6J7

Once we finished there we were back on route to Rincón but Google had rerouted us to back ways with our detour taking us so much out of the way. And that's when we started seeing the posters...

So many political advertisements and we could see the faces changing as we moved through the districts. So I decided to check out some of the details of Puerto Ricos political system. I would definitely recommend checking it out, they have a House of Representatives with 51 seats, 40 representing the districts and 11 that are floaters essentially then they have a 27 seat Senate. So many people representing an island, but it means they'll actually represent their people. Puerto Rico's culture emphasizes social life so strongly that politicians probably understand their people much better, that and their districts are so much smaller. And you want to know what their voter turnout is? It averages at 68%, voter turnout used to be an upwards of 80% there but it's decreased over time to grow closer to the 50% range, but all of that is still higher than the U.S.'s. Its almost like Puerto Rico actually operates as a participatory democracy. And this isn't even mentioning how open it is on political parties, the history on political parties coming to power in Puerto Rico is extensive and deserves more research but currently there are 3 main political parties but I saw a few parties outside this running. The three parties are the New Progressives, the Popular Democratic Party, and the Independent Party, from my bare research they used to have a Republican Party which at one point unified most people under a Union Party until a few of the Republicans under that umbrella broke off to form the Independent Party.

This was all just really interesting, voter efficacy must be really high in Puerto Rico and I think some continental U.S. states could take some notes.

Before we got into Rincón we saw a pretty big observation tower from the road so we got a few pictures from the top of it.

And at last we made it to Rincón and decided to get a view of the beaches from the lighthouse site. We saw a few surfers out there but the waves weren't reliable enough to see a lot but there were some really skilled people we saw working with what they had.

We walked around town for a bit and did some shopping before heading back to the car for the drive home. Next time we go out west we'll have to make sure we get started earlier.

We ended up getting dinner in Caguas at a place called Divos la Casa de la Tripleta. I thought I'd ordered a sandwich but I guess I didn't because a ended up with the sandwich meat on fries. Dad got a sandwich and had proved me wrong because I could've sworn I said sandwich. It was alright but it was way too big and I probably should've gotten a different meat.

Anika Rating: 6.5/10 (at least it was cheap)

Once that was done we decided to finally fulfill one of Dad's missions on the trip, to get Puerto Rican Rum. We knew where the alcohol was but we wandered around the store for a bit because we hadn't visited the supermarket yet and found some pretty awesome things.

GIANT avocados 

Papayas

Freeze dried Garlic snacks

Once that was over we returned home, fun fact dominos are a pretty big-time game in Puerto Rico. Dad had bought a wooden set earlier in Rincón so we played a bit. Dad beat us twice and Clover won once but I'll redeem myself next time we play! That's why I'm writing this so late, we played dominos for an hour and a half I think. But it was fun!

Thank you for reading and have a good night!