As I've commented before, getting there is NOT half the fun. I swear airline seats are getting smaller all the time.
We took a red-eye flight on American Airlines that left LAX at about 1:00 AM. We had a layover of about three hours in Dallas, where we had breakfast, and then went on to Puerto Rico. We got there at about 4:00 PM Puerto Rico time, which is noon California time - there's a four hour time difference. (Four hours? Yes, Puerto Rico is in the Atlantic time zone, which is one hour later than the Eastern time zone.) We then had to wait about an hour for Ashley and Carlos's flight to come in, and then had to wait in a long line to get our rental car.
We had dinner at a little restaurant not far from the airport called La Casita Blanca. I failed to get a picture, but I snagged this image from Google Street View:
We then drove about an hour to get to our resort, got ourselves checked in and settled in, and fell into bed. It had been a long and exhausting day.
So, before getting into the trip log, a little introductory information. In the first place, Puerto Rico (w) is a U.S. territory - not a U.S. state, and not a foreign country. You don't need a passport to go there, the currency is the U.S. dollar, and its residents are U.S. citizens, although they can't vote for President, and they only have one non-voting representative in Congress.
A brief digression: When we went to Spain a few years ago, and visited Gibraltar, I remarked in my trip log "Gibraltar is interesting. It's not Spain, and yet it's not quite England, either. Of course all the signs are in English, and there are British pubs, but the cars drive on the right side of the road, and the streets are winding and narrow, and well... there's just a sort of European feel to the place."
Well, I felt a similar kind of cognitive dissonance in Puerto Rico. Yes, it's part of the United States... but it's a Latin American country, nonetheless. Just about everything I saw - the buildings, the streets, the architecture, the infrastructure - reminded me of the things I've seen in my travels to Mexico, Colombia and Costa Rica.
On the eastern coast of the island, just a little south of the town of Humacao, is the resort community Palmas Del Mar (w), which includes, among other things, the Park Royal Homestay Club Cala. This hotel is part of our timeshare network, and that's where we stayed:
Here's a map of the island - the red dot shows the approximate location of the resort:
Driving into the resort, you go past this interesting sculpture:
Out in back of our building, there was this fountain - unfortunately, it wasn't fountaining:
The preferred method of travel around the resort grounds appeared to be:
Golf carts
And every night, we were serenaded by the coquís (w). What are those, you ask? They are tiny little tree frogs, which make a lot of noise. They're named for the mating call of the male frog which sounds like "co-KEE co-KEE." Here's a sample:
They were a lot louder in real life.