Two Pilots & an LSW: Puerto Rico Day III

Monday, February 17, 2025

Puerto Rico Day III

Today was our San Juan day. We took the car out, found a parking garage (the driving around here is aggressive and confusing), and walked 5 miles. We went to two different forts/castles. You pay $10 per person and get in both of them for 24 hours, which is pretty cool! Castillo San Felipe del Morro and Castillo San Cristobal. The part about the driving being confusing—we tried to get into the first fort, and the entrance was locked down, so I drove past it, and that started a serious cluster. lol Tiny cobblestone roads, narrow paths, a ton of traffic, road signs are all in Spanish, walking traffic too. I wandered around lost-ish for awhile checking out the area before heading back to the fort, drove past it again and saw that for sure there was no way to get in there (temporarily closed), so we wandered down by the water to find a parking garage. Even the parking garage was confusing. The signs were still in Spanish and I didn’t know the Spanish word for “Exit”. ;) Found a spot, it was tiny and crammed in between two other cars, and I was glad our car is so small. And then we walked. And walked. We walked to/through the first fort/castles. Then stopped at a tiny little drink place on the other side. Then we walked through all the downtown area. Beautiful area, so many little areas of trees, flowers, blue cobblestones, sculptures, it’s really cool down there. And some serious hills to climb. Narrow roads with high run-down buildings all around, but you look through the bars and see courtyards with trees and benches and all sorts of neat stuff hidden away. Restaurants, shops, a cigar shop that Steve picked up a couple local cigars at. He said they were pretty good—he was expecting them to be harsh, but they weren’t. We walked all the way to the 2nd castle, and that one was different. Huge green lawns, acres of it, with people all over it flying kites on this windy day off the grassy knolls, and a fort behind it. We walk all the way up there, and this second fort was newer looking, painted bright yellow instead of old unpainted stone.

Something that amused me was how un-safe these old forts were. You could climb up on the walls, on the stone, areas where you could fall a very long ways to your death on rocks below or cobblestone courtyards or whatever. No barriers, no signs, no people up there patrolling. You just FAFO. Um, that means Mess Around and Find Out, Mom. Small children all over, and San Juan is like…if you’re dumb enough to climb up there and fall off, then so be it, man. I wonder how many drunk or disorderly people or unruly children they’ve ever had fall or jump or whatever off of there. I really do wonder it. It amused me. I climbed up on a couple of them to look down because I like looking down, but I didn’t go right up to the edge. I’m not graceful enough for that.

By the time we hiked all the way back, we were both worn out from walking the 5 miles. Paid $3 for our parking, braved the traffic to drive home, rested up in the hotel room for about an hour, then walked down to eat. Good food, again. Back to the hotel room for Steve to smoke his cigars and me to work on the flight plan I’m going to file tomorrow morning for Wednesday, just in case of EDCTs getting back into and out of Florida.