Another successful avoidance of Christmas

So veddy, veddy remiss in my blogging... It's like dieting. If you stop for a moment, you're lost.

So let's see... a lovely trip at Christmas to the Florida Keys and then on to Puerto Rico. We flew into Miami and breezed south out of there without so much as a backward glance. We stayed two nights at the charmless Marriott Key Largo. It was a bit too cool for swimming so we drove along the Keys and enjoyed the views. It's amazing that you're driving along the highway and 5 feet to the right is the Gulf of Mexico and 5 feet to the left is the Atlantic Ocean. This goes on for hours.

On Christmas Eve we drove on down to Key West and checked in to Alexander's, a gay "resort", typical of its genre. This one was co-ed so there was no nude sunbathing; no hot tub hanky-panky, unlike those 24-hour-a-day orgies one "hears about" in Palm Springs' gay resorts.
Key West is really charming but God it's dull. Quaint neighborhoods and popular Duval Street lined with bars and restaurants. Like Bourbon Street, when you walk down it the next morning it smells like vomit and piss. So I'm happy that I experienced Key West but I don't really need to go back. We did have a wonderful meal at Pisces Restaurant. In fact, we had 2 good meals there.

On to San Juan. Stayed at the San Juan Marriott, overlooking the Atlantic. Here it was nice and warm, we walked all over the old section (Old San Juan), had some fabulous Puerto Rican meals and even gambled a bit in the hotel casino. Old San Juan is very picturesque, we didn't even bother to go looking for the more modern downtown area. One day we drove to El Junque, the rainforest. We also drove to the little town where Hector spent his formative years. We found his street but weren't sure about the house so we stopped across the street and asked an old man who was gardening if that was the right address. I'll be damned if he didn't look up and say "are you Jorge Ramirez' son?" So we were hugged and dragged into the house to see the old wife, who spoke some incomprehensible version of Spanish at me the entire time. I spent a lot of time smiling and nodding.
After a few days there we headed toward our final destination, Rincon, a beach community on the western side of the island, pretty much where the Caribbean and Atlantic Oceans meet. We stopped at the breathtaking Arecibo Radio Telescope, which I'd wanted to see since an episode of NOVA a few years ago. Out in the middle of the jungle, in a huge natural depression, is the largest radio telescope in the world and it's just amazing. This is the place that has located many of the new planets and stars found in the last few years and also where NASA looked for communication from outer space as part of the SETI program. We hung around over an hour, just staring at the damn thing until its constant electronic beeping drove us off.

We made it to Rincon around 1pm and checked into the Rincon Beach Hotel, which was an instant disappointment. They first put us in a room with a view of a parking lot and the childrens playground. Then they moved us to a slightly better room facing the opposite direction. If you crossed your eyes and hung over the balcony you could see the ocean. And this room was $350 a night! So we grumbled and made some noises about changing hotels but after a few phone calls we realized that wasn't going to happen, nobody else wanted us at any price. So we walked down to the beach and it was so spectacular we changed our tune a bit. Gorgeous white sand with swaying coconut trees and a gentle slope down to the calm blue Caribbean. Heaven. Not another hotel in sight. So we basically spent the next 2 and a half days down there, reading, sleeping, eating, frolicking in the warm, gentle surf. The hotel food was decent, although the staff was apathetic, but the beach made it all okay. The hotel was occupied by a few European families and many, many Jews from New Jersey. They were fun to talk to, or at least listen to.

On New Years Eve we had a dress-up dinner at the fancy-schmancy Horned Dorset Primavera Hotel. Were back in bed by midnight and got up early on New Years Day to drive back to San Juan to catch our flight back home. All the cranky mommies and daddies with their awful kids were sitting around us the whole way.