jani

I spent a week in Puerto Rico for the First Annual Wikitravel Get-Together, and you can read all about it, from multiple angles like the refractions of a prism, right here: Get-together07

And here's a pointer to the one extended story I wrote myself, on the delights of public transportation on the island: Poco loco publico. (Don't worry, it's a little more exciting than it sounds. I promise.)

jani

It all started with an excuse. I "needed" to visit a conference of marginal utility (but serious potential for fun) in Puerto Rico, which would be located 11913 miles away from Singapore if there was a non-stop flight, which there of course isn't.

Amita June in the square in Old Ponce.

The church in the square in old Ponce.

The famous firehouse ("Parque de Bombas") in the square in Old Town Ponce.

evan

We've had some pretty intense driving around rural Puerto Rico in the last two days. Tuesday morning we hit the road westward from Ponce to San Germán, a small inland colonial-era city known for its architecture. It was a nice place to stop -- we took some good pictures and walked around the towns two plazas. But the unbearable Puerto Rican tendency towards traffic jams made the visit barely worth the trouble. We were glad when we got on the road again, south towards Parguera.

jani

This little island's got a lot of things going for it, but public transport ain't one of them.

My mission, should I choose to accept it, was to make my way from Ponce, Puerto Rico's second-largest city (pop. ~200,000), to San Juan, its largest (pop. ~2 million). One might assume this would be easy; one would be wrong.

maj

Arecibo ObservatoryWow, we've been going all out the last couple of days-- Yesterday we went from San Juan, over the hills and through the jungle to Arecibo and then over the jungle and through the hills to Ponce on the amazingly dry (as in dying cactus dry) Southern coast.

Sapphire

Yesterday, I asked the receptionist at the Hotel Melia about publicos and how to get to Fajardo. He promised to have the guy during the morning shift give them a call and reserve a place for me. He asked me "When do you want to go" and I told him no later than six. The reasoning for that was so I could catch a ferry out to Culebra. Unfortunately, I reverted to civilian time, rather than say 18:00 so I think he confused 6 PM for 6 AM.

evan

I'm in the extremely pleasant balcony hallway of the awesome Hotel Melia in Ponce, Puerto Rico. Everyone's getting ready to go for a trip to the west of the island, so I thought I'd take a few moments to blog about the last few days.