Back and Forth Across the Pond

I didn't explain it in the first Puerto Rico post, but Steve is working near Aguadilla, PR, for a few months before our move to Scotland. My last day at work was 29 April and that night I flew down to Aguadilla with my friend, Christa, for a vacation. Christa returned to her real life yesterday and I'm here through Sunday afternoon. We spent our first three days here playing tourist. We went to the bio bay (see previous post), toured some caverns, visited Old San Juan, and took a short hike in the El Yunque Rain Forest. I used my DSLR for the latter three excursions, so I won't be posting those until I'm back home. On Tuesday, with Steve back at work, Christa and I decided to spend a few hours at the local beach. We walked a kilometer to the site we wanted (the sand at the beach near us is painfully soft and deep), and erected a little shelter to protect us from the intense sun.  Unfortunately, the shelter and it's ridiculously inadequate tie-down stakes were no mat...

I spent a lot of time looking for things to do during my visit to Puerto Rico. One thing that quickly caught my eye was Puerto Rico's bioluminescence bays. Of course I knew what bioluminescence was - it's light created by living things, either plants or animals. Deep-sea fish are often bioluminescent. But I had no idea what these bays were. So I did some research. PR's bays are "powered" by single-cell plankton-esque critters called dinoflagellates (which I will call dinos). When the dinos are touched, they emit light. The dinos can't move on their own, at least not to any real degree, so they are at the mercy of the current. A handful of places around the world have just the right physical attributes to collect huge populations of the dinos. Puerto Rico is blessed with three. From what I read, the best bio bays were the ones nearer San Juan: One on the mainland and a second one on an island just off the coast. But there was a smaller one in the southwest, abo...