MEHcus's Puerto Rican Adventure Part 2: $3 potholes and a beast

Time for Part 2 of my Puerto Rican Adventure, Part 1 can be found here.

Day 3: The least adventurous day of our trip, from our time on the western side of the island anyways, that turned out to have one of the better endings. On Sunday we took off and headed for the Camuy River Cave Park. Basically if you've ever been to a cave park or to any caverns then you've already seen something like this. Don't get me wrong, it was gorgeous, the tour guide was very informative, and the overall experience was good. Not a bad deal price wise either, I think it only cost the two of us about $25. There was simply nothing overwhelming about the place as a whole. But the good news is we've got a bunch of pictures!

We did that first thing in the morning and it only took us a couple hours which gave us the rest of the day to hit up a beach, Crashboat Beach in this case, and soak up some rays.

We were told by several locals that Crashboat was "The Beach" to go to in PR, and by that I mean the party beach to have a good time. So we went in with pretty high expectations looking to let loose a bit. The entire party scene of the beach came from one boat parked about 20 feet off shore with a guy bumping some Justin Beiber and the occasional song in spanish. There were a few tents selling food and fresh drinks and one concession stand but not much else.

But when in Rome...so we bought some Pina Coladas and camped out for a bit. The end result wasn't quite what we thought. Again, nothing wrong with the beach as a whole, I think we just expected more because of how much it was built up by everyone. We were also there in non peak season which could have factored in.

So we decided to head home and walk down to a little dive bar we noticed on the drive in to our place. Best decision ever. As we walked in to the little bar (which doesn't have a name) we noticed that pretty much everyone in the place had either an instrument or a mic in hand. A good ole fashioned Puerto Rican singalong had broken out and we were in the middle of it. Granted there were only about 10 people in the place, but those 10 people were having the time of their lives and couldn't be happier to share it with us. It was an absolute blast.

Day 4: With day 3 coming to an awesome end we woke up Monday morning ready to continue the fun. So we headed off to the Toro Verde Adventure Park for some rope bridges, rappelling, and a monster zip line that just so happens to be the worlds second longest at just under a mile long - for now (currently building one that will be around 2 miles long!).

The bridges were pretty sweet and gave way to some absolutely breathtaking views but the main fun was really in enjoying the rappel down about 140 feet from the middle of one of the bridges down to the floor of the forest below and the zip lines. The bad news is that my GoPro died on me while we were out there but I found a couple videos that shows what all we did.

The rope bridges and rappelling

The Beast - the mega crazy zipline that's just short of a mile long:

If you read Part 1 of our adventure than you saw that I made mention of the roads in PR. They are a ton of fun to drive on but scary as hell at the same time. The drive back from this adventure proved to be costly. Almost. Kind of.

As we came around a steep corner heading down hill around 35 mph with a car approaching us Ashley yells for me to look out, by that time it was too late. We hit a pothole that was probably a foot deep and around 3 feet in diameter. Out of the corner of my eye I see something flying. It's our hubcap. I pulled over as quickly as I could and got out to the sound of air gushing out of the tire. Uh oh. We are parked on an incline, there is no shoulder on the road to speak of, Ashley is 100 yards behind me retrieving our hubcap, and cars will be on top of us before we know it if we stay here. We've got to move.

So we jumped back in the car, limped along for another mile until we could find flat ground and pulled over to assess the damage. Something miraculous had happened. The tire wasn't flat, had no holes in it, and had stopped releasing air. The rim, however, was bent outwards about 2 inches. I made the executive decision that it would be okay to carry on so long as I paid very close attention to my speed and the feel of the tire. We somehow managed to make it back to town (about an hour away) with no issues.

Upon getting back I inspected the tire again. It had fixed itself almost completely, the rim was only sticking out about 3 centimeters now. $3 later at a tire shop and the entire rim had been put back in to place, the tire filled with air, and I was able to let out a ginormous sigh of relief, aka I didn't buy insurance.

One last stop off at a local Office Max to take care of some paperwork we'd need for the next days activities and it was off to bed to get ready for our biggest adventure yet.

That story comes tomorrow.