Traveling to Puerto Rico

Traveling to Puerto Rico: What I saw, what I ate, what I learned

What I Saw

First off, the views.

We stayed in a neighborhood called Dorado, which is about 30 minutes outside of San Juan, and our AirBnB was right on the ocean. It was beautiful. We fell asleep and woke up to the sounds of the waves crashing on the beach. It was amazing. We also got to see some surfers every morning, but we only saw one really good ride of a wave.

The next day, we went to the Yunque national forest to do some hiking. The views were incredible. This picture really doesn't do it justice. You could be standing on the top of the mountain and look down and see all the way to the beach. The scenery was exotic, as there were so many plants in this forest that I had never seen before. It really felt like I was in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. I also got to see this little bird, which is native to Puerto Rico, who quickly landed on a flower bush. 

A lot of the trails in the Yunque forest were still closed from Hurricane Maria that hit the island a couple of years ago. They still have a lot of work to be done to reopen the trails.

The next glorious views we saw were in the old city, el viejo San Juan. The buildings were painted with beautiful colors, reminding me of rainbow row in Charleston. I felt like I was walking through a dreamland, and it filled my soul with joy.

The city also contains an old castle. We didn't have enough time to tour through the castle, but the outside of it was so picturesque, especially against a background of bright green grass and royal blue waters. It will be tough to decide which view I'd like to use for my next painting.







Another thing I saw were old roads, and a lot of closed businesses. There were also a lot of houses under construction or just boarded up. I think a big part of this was because of the hurricane. People are still trying to recover what they had when it hit. It looked like they won't be able to recover everything that was lost.

What I Ate

Plantains, plantains, and more plantains. (aka plátanos)

The signature dish in Puerto Rico is called mufongo. I was able to try both chicken mufongo and lobster mufongo (my birthday dinner). Yummm... Yes that is a big dish of butter.

Mufongo is a dish that is made by frying, then mashing plantains and cooking it with a broth or sauce. It is also mixed with your meat of choice. Some places also had options for sweet potato mufongo, cassava (yucca) mufongo, or trifongo (a mix of all three!).

What I didn't eat: gluten free chocolate cake. On my birthday, Luis and I tried our hardest to find a gluten free chocolate cake to celebrate. It was a challenge. We finally found one place, but then they didn't have any that day! I settled on some dark chocolate truffles from the Chocobar Cortes, which were really delicious, but so tiny.

What I Learned

I learned a lot of new vocabulary: veredas- trails, romero- rosemary, estacionar- parking. There were many more words, but I can't quite think of what they are in this moment.

I spoke in Spanish for pretty much the entire trip, which was great. When you go into a tourist shop or restaurant, they ask you, "Spanish or English?" I started saying, "It doesn't matter," but by the end, we both just responded to use Spanish. It's so cool that there are so many purely bilingual speakers. They have a Puerto Rican accent in Spanish and an American accent in English and it is just so cool. You don't see this many people in one area on the mainland that can codeswitch between the two so easily.

One of our Uber drivers told us about the private schools for young kids. She said that most of the private schools are "bilingual" but mostly teach their subjects in English, whereas, the public schools mostly teach their subjects in Spanish. This can already lead to disparities in the opportunities children have when they grow up, all because of whether their parents could afford a private school or not. She also told us that many people prefer to use the word "mainland" to talk about the U.S. as the Puerto Rico is part of the U.S. However, there were also many people who believed Puerto Rico should be an independent country. Their politics are very complicated.

Puerto Rico is filled with chains from the mainland. There are particularly a lot of Burger Kings and Church's Chickens, and we only saw ONE Starbuck's. The chains have slightly different foods, such as chicken tacos and burritos at Church's Chicken, but with many of the originals.

There is also CVS pharmacy. BUT, it has MAS. It's CVS y más. I don't know what the más is, but I will have to go back to Puerto Rico just so I can go into one of these CVS and figure out what this más is.

You can pretty much get to anywhere in Puerto Rico in less than 2.5 hours from San Juan. We were able to go to the east coast one day, then go all the way to the west coast the next day. It was a really good idea for us to rent a car, so we could see some different things.



The people of Puerto Rico are very proud of their culture, especially the food and the music. We heard reggaetón in almost every establishment we entered. One woman also told us her mother, who was probably 60-70 years old also loved reggaetón, but didn't love all of the songs, because of some misogynistic lyrics. There are many famous singers who come from Puerto Rico, like Ricky Martin! (our Uber driver said she knew him in school. She had a lot of information).


Overall, it was an amazing trip, and an incredible way to celebrate my 30th birthday. I hope to make it back there one day and eat some more mufongo and find out what that MAS is! I would also like to do some more ocean activities, like scuba diving or parasailing. They had a lot of these activities available, but we didn't have the time to do them on this trip. I will see you soon Puerto Rico!