MEHcus's Puerto Rican Adventure Part 1: Get up and go

Super long post alert.

As many of our regular visitors know by now I spent last week in the heart of Puerto Rico with my SO. Let me just say that Puerto Rico is freaking fantastic, seriously, you should go. It's beyond gorgeous, the entire country is covered in green, and the people couldn't be nicer if they tried. We had an amazing trip. I'll break down our entire adventure in a series of posts throughout the next day or so.

Day 1: It began 24 hours earlier than expected. Ashley works for an airline and has free flight benefits as such. If you've ever flown standby, you know it can be a bit of a hassle. Our original plan was to leave Saturday morning on the 7am flight. As our luck would have it, mother nature was having none of that. We woke up around 2am Thursday night and just so happened to look at the flights, quickly realizing that everyone had begun to move their Saturday-Sunday flights up to late Friday night or early Saturday morning flights in an attempt to miss the imminent weather. If we wanted to get out we'd need to leave immediately.

So we shot out of bed, finished up the last bit of laundry, I gave myself a haircut, started packing bags, frantically sent off emails to extend our airbnb and rental car reservations, and were airport bound about 5am for the first flight out Friday morning on about an hour of sleep. Thankfully we were able to catch the 7am flight out and were in Puerto Rico by about 1. We grabbed our car, stopped off to pick up some groceries (after stopping in to eat the best Wendy's burger of my life) and headed to our airbnb about 1.5 hours west of San Juan in the little town of Quebradillas to start our adventure. The rest of the night was spent getting settled in, walking down to the secluded beach next to our rental to checkout our home for the week, and relaxing in the hot tub overlooking the ocean. (Big shoutout to @Dave for being a super understanding boss and letting me jet out last second without any hassle or advanced warning.)

Day 2: We went in to the trip with out any concrete plans. Basically we had a list of things we wanted to check out and decided we'd figure out what we felt like doing each morning. We made an awesome decision for our first full day by driving about 45 minutes inland to a fairly unknown (by tourist standards) waterfall called Gozalandia. This drive taught us a few things: 1. We would be driving at least 30 minutes for anything we wanted to do. 2. Not all roads in PR are all that well taken care of (fun story on this coming on Day 4). 3. Most roads are the size of a one way street but have full speed traffic coming in both directions. 4. And the roads are curvy as hell with constant changes in elevation - but the scenery is breathtaking.

The entrance to Gozalandia was steep. And wet. And filled with potholes. And we had a tiny rental car with no power. The first attempt to get the car up the hill ended in me putting the car in reverse, saying an audible prayer, and hoping for the best as we slid backwards back down the hill toward a plethora of trees and a ditch. Deep breath. We made it. Okay, try again. On the second attempt I hit the hill with some speed and made it up fairly easily only to get to the top and see a Prius. I felt ashamed.

5 bucks later and the car was parked. We grabbed the cooler filled with goodies (aka booze) and made our way down to the waterfalls below. There were two different areas. One waterfall that was perfectly set up to be jumped off of and another that was equipped with a rope swing. We set up shop at the first one and were greeted with open arms by all the locals. Literally. They took us in, invited us to come chat with them, share their food and drinks, and show us the underwater hidden caves. This was our first taste of Puerto Rican hospitality, a theme that persisted throughout the trip.

After swimming around for a bit I started my assent up the waterfall for my first jump. Turns out it would also be my last. I had my GoPro with me and was using my head mount. As I hit the water from the first jump I felt the straps of the mount slip off my head. Uh oh. A few frantic dives to see if I can find it and I realized I was in trouble. The water is about 25 feet deep, murky and I don't have any goggles. I tried to find it for about 30 minutes with no luck, the water pressure was destroying my ears. Thankfully the locals were the nicest people ever and joined in on the search only to locate it after about 3 tries. Crisis averted.

We hung around for a few more minutes and then headed over to the second waterfall to check out the rope swing. The waterfall was a bit smaller than the previous one and not ideally set up for cliff diving but still just as beautiful. We took a few turns on the rope swing, GoPro in hand this time, and then followed the flow of water down stream to check out the scenery until we got to the top of the waterfall we were previously at. I can't say this enough, the view was amazing.

All in all we probably hung out here for about 4 hours before heading back to home base. I highly recommend making the trek to Gozalandia for anyone planning a trip to Puerto Rico. The drive to get there alone is worth it. It's the perfect place to sit around for a day relaxing, playing around in the water, doing some cliff diving and meeting with the locals in a way that you won't be able to do in a more tourist centric place like San Juan.

Days 3 and 4 coming up next. Whenever next is.