Sunday, Pouring Sunday

Our last weekend in Puerto Rico…I have to say there hasn’t been much I’ve been dying to see or do here. After multiple vacations to this lovely island there just isn’t much left to pique my interest. Also, it’s the last weekend of the travel year so it's going to need to be something pretty spectacular to make me want to get up early on a Saturday.

But, we had planned to see the Camuy Caves and Arecibo Observatory and after wimping out on Saturday we finally made the 90 minute trip on Sunday morning.

We arrived at the Camuy Caves with clouds looming. Everything I had read or heard said “if it rains at all they will close the caves”. Warnings from like every other person on trip advisor “watch the weather!!!”…well not sure who was in charge on Sunday but they had no problem taking us down in the pouring rain.

Had I come prepared with my quick-dry shorts and raincoat I would have been fine. I’ve spent many a weekend getting soaked to the bone and loved every minute of it. I was not prepared.

The caves themselves were pretty impressive. It was a much shorter tour than I had expected but hey we got to wear hardhats so that was cool…





Because Murphy’s Law was apparently ruling that day it had stopped raining for our entire duration underground only to start pouring again as we made our way back up. The Arecibo Observatory was about 20 minutes away and when we arrived my shorts and t-shirt were still soaked…and it was still raining.

We were told it was about 500 steps up to the observatory and that was when I had had my fill. There may have been a minor meltdown half-way up where I seriously toyed with going to back to the car to wait while they did the tour.

The Arecibo is the world’s largest radiotelescope. It was featured in that movie “Contact” and is ran by Cornell University to search for radio signals from distant galaxies in hopes of finding other forms of life. Yep, this $100 million dollar piece of equipment is there to search for aliens.

It was impressive as far as its size and its space-station quality aesthetics. The best part of the place was that we got to take pictures with an alien…that and MJ lent me $2 for an awesome coconut ice cream bar. I’ve still got to get the photos from MJ but will post when I do…of the alien, not the ice cream.

It was wet day with some mediocre sights but, when we got back my pants were fairly dry and we ordered a pitcher of margaritas at lunch. So, all in all still a pretty good Sunday!