Puerto Rico Adventure - Day 8

[Composed August 5th, 2024]

Today was our travel day back to the US mainland. We had a special breakfast to celebrate J's birthday. If there's a better way to start the day than with Ben & Jerry's, I've yet to find it. After ice cream and waffles, we finished packing, crammed kids and suitcases into the rental car (sorry J's lap and G's legs) and headed to the airport for our flight.

The flight itself was uneventful, but we were dumbfounded when we caught sight of the arrival boards in baggage claim when we landed in Tampa:

Out of the 45 flights scheduled to arrive, only 6 were on time. This was thanks to hurricane Debby, which had made landfall north of Tampa just hours earlier. Debbie had doused us with rain in Puerto Rico and Tampa, and yet, we somehow managed to execute our trip as planned. Man, we were lucky!

We hugged it out as Dad picked up the Tampa kids at the airport. Before we knew it, Shira, J and I were in a hotel in Gainesville enjoying our last night of vacation before we dropped J in Jacksonville.

In a last act of souvenir buying, J and I did some shopping in the Puerto Rico airport. J opted to buy a set of travel dominoes; inspired, I did the same.

As we chill in our hotel room, J's been showing Shira and I how to play the domino game All Fives (or are we playing Muggins?), and it's awesome. In the past, "playing dominoes" meant playing a simple kids version where the goal was to chain together tiles. This is fun for little ones, but hardly a riveting experience.

All-Fives, however, introduces scoring. And with scoring comes strategy and decision making. The result is a game that's easy to learn, but includes decision making to keep the players engaged. No wonder playing dominoes is so popular, it's a ton of fun!

Thanks J for opening our eyes!

Puerto Rico Adventure - Day 7

[Composed August 4th, 2024]

This morning, as we prepared to leave the house for our last day of adventure in Puerto Rico, I explained our goal: optimize for serendipity. Of course, serendipity is by definition random. But we could play our part by heading some place new with few expectations.

We charted a circuit that would take us South-East until we hit Punta Santiago Humacao Nature Reserve. From there, we planned to follow the coast North and then East to our Airbnb. While we had plans to tour the Nature Reserve, the rest of the day was left open.

Our hike at the Humacao Nature reserve started with sighting this guy:

I know what you're thinking: that's a chicken; hardly an exotic species. In fact, that is a red junglefowl, which are considered to be among the wild ancestors to domesticated chickens.

D identified that we were dealing with junglefowl thanks to Cornell's Merlin app. The app bases bird identification not on visual means, but by song.

Junglefowl, the origins of which Charles Darwin puzzled over, are generally smaller and more brightly colored than their domestic cousins. I get the smaller part: a natural diet and lack of human meddling explains that. But why brighter? Wouldn't the bright feathers and prominent comb make them easier to spot, and therefore be eaten? Apparently, the colors and comb help attract mates. So, like most males I know, when given the choice they'll gladly choose sex over safety.

Our hike at Humacao reserve started in hot, humid, green tunnel conditions. At one point, T found a fine looking coconut and asked if she could bring it home. Flippantly, I responded that if she was willing to carry it, it was all hers.

The hike took a delightful twist when we rounded a corner and found ourselves face to face with the Caribbean Sea. The water was too rough to swim in, but the beach was fun to explore.

Inspired by our breadfruit experience, one of the kids suggested we try harvesting some of the coconuts on the beach. We searched around until we found a couple that gave a sloshing sound, suggesting there was delicious juice inside. We then spent a good 15 minutes trying every means possible to open up either of the fruit. We had no luck. If we had been shipwrecked, we'd have starved long before we got the meat of those coconuts. Undeterred, I tossed them in my backpack with the hope that I'd get them open when were home and had a kitchen full of utensils to throw at the problem.

We made our way to one last spot in Humacao: a WWII pillbox situated on a cliff overlooking the sea. While it's not likely that this particular bunker saw much action during the war, German U-Boats absolutely operated in the area. Here's a map of ships hit by U-Boats during the war.

Heck, U-539 sunk the Pillory a mere 4 miles off the coast of Puerto Rico.

From Humacao, we made our way along the coast back towards our Airbnb. I kept hoping we'd drive by some hidden gem, but it wasn't until we hit the famous Luquillo Kiosks, that we had a proper stop.

We started exploring the kiosks by doing some souvenir shopping. D picked up a wine stopper which had a colorful parrot perched on it. At first I was like D, what are you going to do with a wine stopper? But then I realized the souvenir was a genius pick: not only would the parrot be a reminder of his photo shoot from earlier in the week, but the wine stopper could vary well be part of a a future shabbas table. Not to mention, it made us both think of Uncle Ron, who's on a mission to get the entire family to enjoy a nice merlot.

After shopping we made our way to one of the food kiosks, and enjoyed some fried coconut fritters and virgin piña coladas. Kicking back in the outdoor seating, drinking, noshing and reminiscing, it was truly a perfect moment.

From Luquillo, we made our way back to our Airbnb, but not without one more stop at the supermarket. While in the supermarket, I picked up a flat head screwdriver to help assist us in getting into the coconuts we'd collected.

Once home, I did manage to get one of the coconuts open. I poured the liquid into a glass and carefully took a sip. Yuck. I spat it out. I'm not sure why the coconut was such a dud, but it was clear that we weren't feasting on foraged coconuts tonight.

T, for her part, had a better plan. She borrowed as sharpie and went full Wilson on the coconuts, giving them real personality. She asked if she could bring them home, but a quick glance at the TSA website suggested, no:

Passengers flying from Hawaii, Puerto Rico, or the U.S. Virgin Islands to the U.S. mainland cannot take most fresh fruits and vegetables due to the risk of spreading invasive plant pests.

But what does 'most' mean? Digging deeper, we found this USDA list, which had coconuts on the allowed list.

Coconut (with or without husk)

This was good enough for Shira and Myself. T had our blessings to bring her new coconut family home. Well played T!

So, did we get the moment of serendipity I was so seeking today? In fact, we did. When we pulled into our Airbnb, two local boys were playing basketball across the street and J and D went over to join them. It was delightful to watch the four kids, whose only common language was play, have a fun time playing basketball. I love that this beautiful moment didn't happen in some distant part of the island, but occurred across the street from our Airbnb. Oh serendipity, you sure do like to mess with me.