Puerto Rico.

As promised, here is the first installment of the picture calvalcade that is going to be beamed into your living room, detailing both the cruise and Dallas elements of the recent trip. I'm hoping that posting the pictures day by day will act as a soothing balm for the vacation withdrawal from which I am ailing and that the process will distract me for so long that by the time I've finished, the effects will have gone away. The fast flurry of Christmas planning that the Horns have just achieved has helped somewhat, but nothing beats going through photos for reliving the glory of a past holiday.

If you can't wait for the whole trip to play out over what may be weeks or even months of blogging (based on my past rate of posting), you can see a collection of photos from the trip at our Google album. I'm trying to use different photos for the blog than are posted on the album, since it's more interesting that way, and heaven knows we have enough to do it (a total of about 1550 photos were taken, across our four cameras, during the two weeks. I was the winner with the most photos taken - 646).

So here we go, I'm trying to stay light on the commentary, which means I won't make you sit through the harrowing account of our trip from JFK to San Juan, but pick up with our trusty travellers on the two glorious days in Puerto Rico prior to embarking the cruise.


This is one of the beaches of San Juan:




Our first main 'sight' that we visited was the Arecibo Observatory, the largest single dish radio telescope in the world. You might recognize it from the setting for the showdown in the movie Goldeneye:





Dad noticed that part of the telescope was wobbly:




So Mark had to hold it up for a bit, while they fixed it:





There was also an inside bit, with one neat exhibit (fog - below) and a video of a "Day in the Life" of the observatory, which was really sweet because it featured scientists Acting.




The next day we visited El Yunque, which is the only tropical forest in the National Park System (a fact of which they are very very proud). I just thought it was neat because I think it's the first rainforest I've seen. It's kind of a like any other forest, but with a few more dangly bits. And frogs that click.

Nothing says "tourist" like a fascinating array of sandals:



More from El Yunque:





(Notice how I cleverly framed this next photo so you can't see the kid who is climbing on the rock behind mom and dad. Yes, I'm proud of it:)





And then after the rainforest, we headed to the boat. Unfortunately, we took a wrong turn on our way to Old San Juan, and ended up in stand-still traffic resulting from some kind of religious rally that was taking place nearby. It took us the longest time to figure out what was going on; no one's Spanish was good enough to translate the signs we saw (no one in the car, I mean, the Puerto Ricans around us probably could have translated, but no one would stand still long enough for us to ask, and none of the cars around us had their windows rolled down - believe me, mom tried to find out). All we saw were lots of kids dressed up in leotards with flags like in a marching band and giant dump trucks and things all convoying somewhere not very quickly. There was a bit of a panic that we would never get out, but of course we did, after lots of sitting and inching forward and "what could this be?" and "are we going to make it?" and "do you think we'll get to turn left up there?" etc.




And then, after escaping and driving a bit more, we finally got our first view of the boat:



And then the real fun began...