Vacation Day 1: Snorkeling in the Caribbean & Catamaran Adventures
(Spoiler Alert: Despacito is on repeat down here!)
So... It’s been a wicked long wintah! This year, my girlfriend Erica and I decided to go somewhere warm in February, and we booked a trip to sunny and warm Puerto Rico... just before the devastating category 5 hurricane Maria hit last fall. Instead of canceling, we decided to come anyway, and see what it’s like on the island almost six months after the storm.
Things aren’t good. More than 40% of the island of almost 4 million people still doesn’t have power, many businesses are still closed, and some buildings are completely destroyed. I’ll show you more about the damage and recovery later in the week, and share a few interesting conversations that we’ve had with local Puerto Ricans about the response to the storm. But today, let’s take a trip to the eastern side of the island, to Fajardo, where we went snorkeling. Get ready to get jealous!
We drove about an hour east of San Juan to the town of Fajardo, and met up with a great tour company, Castillo Tours, for a trip out to Cayo Icacos and the amazing coral reefs that surround the island.
After a 45 minute sail out to the island, we got an incredible chance to swim with tropical fish and see them living at home in the reef. It’s a lot better than the aquarium, trust me! And we learned something pretty interesting... a lot of these fish love to eat bread. At the captain’s direction, we tossed some regular baked Italian bread into the water near the reef, and hundreds of fish came up to eat it. Swimming with these guys was right out of planet earth. Check out this video to see what it was like.
Tomorrow, we’re heading into old San Juan, the historic part of the city, to see some of the oldest and most historic places in the Caribbean. See you soon!