juanfigs

El Morro de Puerto Rico is one of the places most visited by tourist that go to Puerto Rico every year. First because El Morro is in old San Juan which is the area where most of the tourists stay or at least is really close to the most visited Puerto Rico Hotels. El Morro is also known as Castillo de San Felipe del Morro. The constructions started in the year 1540.

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.

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.

Brunch at the Parrot Café.

Amita June enjoyed the trip to the fort.

Maj, Evan and Amita June on the walls of the El Morro fort. Yes, that is the edge of the wall, and yes it does plummet to the sea. I'm not sure what we were thinking here.

On the prowl in Old San Juan.

Jani enjoys the chicken and rice.

Amita June getting a handful of arroz de camarones.

My asopao de camarones, a rich (and I mean rich) seafood soup with shrimp. Those are mashed plantain fritters on the side.

Maj and Amita at La Bombonera during the Wikitravel Get-Together kickoff lunch.

Me and Amita June on Condado Beach, a block and a half from our hotel.

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.

maj

This morning we tried to get an early start to cram as much in as possible. We started with another envigorating breakfast for sugared cereal and industrial coffee and grabbed a taxi into the Old City to check out the other amazing old fort overlooking the sea.

Sapphire

My Puerto Rican adventure began on April 13th. My flight left at 5:20 (AM) the next day, but I decided to get a head start, check my luggage and then sleep until 4 or so in the morning. Well, I didn't get to the airport around 11 and ended up leaving my guide papers and everything that would have been useful in my dad's car. Apparently, the airport checkin desks close at 22:00 so I couldn't check my luggage, but I did (after a hassle) manage to get the self-checkin-in kiosk to cough up a boarding pass.

evan

Maj, Amita June and I got off yesterday pretty well from Montreal. It was a bit of a rush at the last minute, since we decided to meet with our general contractor for house renovations just before going to the airport. (Yeah, I never thought I'd have a general contractor or do house renovations, either.)

 There was snow a foot deep in Montreal when we left. It's been a crazy April in Quebec, and a little bit depressing. I love snow more than anyone I know, and even I am starting to get sick of it. Spring already! C'mon!

evan

So, my friend Biella is from Puerto Rico, and I asked her for some recommendations for our trip. She was extremely thorough, and gave us this great list of suggestions (and permission to post it here). ---- Hey Evan Good to hear from you and sorry about my silence about PR. I have been meaning to write stuff to help you all orient yourself and now I will!

maj

So I'm having a surprisingly hard time finding any information about public transportation in Puerto Rico. Just about every source I consult says something vague about it existing and then just says "rent a car". That's just not practical for some folks who are, say, under 24 and/or Finnish. Does anyone have any experience getting around PR sans car? It sounds like it might be easier to find out actual schedules for longer distance (+30 min) trips. They're supposed to be fairly regular, with vans leaving from town squares. But how "regular"?