On day four, we had breakfast in the hotel. I had fresh fruit and a Puerto Rican pastry. That was something that surprised me about Puerto Rico–they have good pastries. Maybe even great pastries. Really, this is a country that understands all the important aspects of good cuisine: pastries, fruit, tomatoes, garlic, coffee, peppers, seafood, and lots and lots of fried pork. Can’t beat it.

My favorite dishes were fried pork chunks (that is what it was called on the menu) and also shrimp in a creole sauce that wasn’t really creole–too much lime, not enough Tabasco, but delicious anyway. Kyle had a fillet of an unidentified freshly caught white fish in the same sauce that was awesome. We also ate a loooot of plantains and yucca. A common dish is mofongo, which is deep-fried mashed plantains with pork and tomato sauce. And of course, there are sandwiches like the Cubano to be enjoyed.

So the food in Puerto Rico is great, although A. expensive–it is hard to have dinner for under $50–and B. better when simpler. We ate at a few fancy restaurants and were unimpressed. The food we really got into were the dishes from cafeteria-like places filled with Puerto Ricans and no tourists.

That day we did the Bacardi tour at its headquarters. I have to say: skip it if you ever go to Puerto Rico. Imagine a Disney ride mixed with a liquor advertisement and you’ve pretty much got the idea. They built a fake distillery to give the tour in, so you’re standing among pretend barrels and stills–which for some reason you can’t take a picture of–while they pipe in recordings of steam and hammering sounds. Then they make you watch a video of Latin models dancing and pouring rum over their heads and let you smell chemical approximation of their different rums. Clearly, some PR person ran amok in the making of that tour.

After that we hiked in a rain forest! This was another first for me. It was El Yunque National Rain Forest, filled with hundreds of different plants and birds. (And not much else. There are only four snakes in Puerto Rico, none of which are poisonous, and very few indigenous animals. Lots of lizards though.)

It was misting in the rain forest, but while that obscured the view, it also meant no other tourists were around and we had the whole forest to ourselves. It was really cool. I have never been in a forest like that before. There were so many plants and the birds make the coolest sounds. We stayed there until nearly dark just looking at the plants and listening to birds while the mist blew over us. Pictures:

Giant waterfall with me in front of it.

Leaf on the ground

Lookout tower

Plants

Me hiking in a rain forest

After all that, we went back to the hotel and smoked a cigar. Scandal! Here is Kyle with a cigar. He looks tough.