San Juan

On Thursday we docked in San Juan, Puerto Rico. As the boat was pulling in that morning there was an amazing view of one of the forts that was used to guard the island. I wanted to get up early to see the fort as we pulled in and that was really fun and pretty.


We had a trip planned with a company there to take our group to the rain forest. So we went to our meeting place and waited for our tour guide to come. We then loaded into the van and heard a little about Puerto Rico while we took the hour drive to get to the Rain Forest. We stopped at the visitor's center and got a picture of the whole group. The place was starting to get really crowded so we hurried into the van. Normally their is a tower and a waterfall that you stop at on the way up, but our guide decided to skip those on the way up so that we could beat the crowd on our walk through the rain forest to the waterfall that we could swim at.

Most of our group went on the hike through the rain forest, but some people stayed with the guide and got to learn about other stuff. Our guide made Tammy a nice hat out of a leaf, but it looked better on Mom. Dan even got one for himself. We had a nice hike and really enjoyed being next to the river as it was flowing down. There were so many pretty spots to stop and enjoy.

We got to the waterfall and it looked like so much fun. There were a few people already there, but it wasn't too bad. We all got in the water and were having a blast. We even got mom to go in and get pretty close to the waterfall to get a nice group picture. When we got ready to leave the waterfall we realized how crowded it had become while we were in the water. We were so glad that we had been able to beat the rush. Our hike back was uphill a lot and we were pretty tired by the time we reached the end and were ready to get back into the van.

We headed to a tower that gave us an amazing view of the rain forest and the rest of the island. I got some great pictures. Here I am with my brothers. This is the picture of mom where she is hiding her face from the sun and she just looks so cute! We next went to another waterfall and then loaded back in the van to head home. A lot of us called home during that trip since we were in a US territory. I was really glad to be able to talk to Scott for a few minutes. I really missed him on this trip, that was the only hard part about it.

When we got back into San Juan the tour guide dropped us off in town. Most of the group went shopping while Dave and Tammy went to check out the fort. I was torn between the two but finally decided to go shopping, but not before I took a picture with the fort in the background.

That night on the boat during dinner it was my turn to give my mom her birthday present. The whole cruise was about mom turning 60 so every night we had a gift for her of 60 of something. I was with Lanae and DaNae before the cruise looking for 60 of something and we decided to do something random and ended up with multi-colored paper clips! It was even discussed that night at the table that they might even be useful for scrap booking!

That night there was a party on the top deck after the evening show. We didn't stay for too long but we did go up and check it out. We were eating food and enjoying ourselves. They started playing the YMCA and Mom started dancing with us, well chair dancing! It was a fun night!




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