Hola! Though Puerto Rico is technically a territory of the United States, it is, for all intents and purposes, a different country. Especially, considering the way it became a US territory. Therefore, it gets its own post! I have wanted to go to Puerto Rico for some time, and I almost went in 2020 for a music festival. However, we all know what happened in 2020. Three years later, I finally touched down for the July 4th vacation.

We flew into San Juan on a Saturday and stayed at a beach “resort”, Courtyard Isla Verde Beach Resort. Our room was not exactly as advertised. The photos looked much nicer and cleaner than the actual room, which had a filthy carpet and countless, questionable stains on the loveseat. We attempted to have that addressed, but they never followed through; would not recommend! As a result, we tried to stay out of the room as much as possible. We intended this vacation to be mostly relaxing, and we also had our infant with us, so we did not plan for too many activities. We reveled in witnessing the pure joy of our baby experiencing the beach for the first time! He absolutely loved it.

When we took a break from the beach, we rented a car to go to El Yunque National Forest, which still had some portions closed off due to hurricane destruction. We were able to do a small, self-guided tour and see waterfalls that were still accessible: La Coca Falls and Cascada La Mina. Along the way, we stopped at Yohakú Tower, which is an observation tower, where the views are unreal. Hiking the waterfall trails with the baby was not too difficult (says me, who did not carry him); we just needed to be careful on some portions where there were wet rocks. (This sounds like a bad idea in retrospect, but we were not the only family with an infant.) We stopped to get some fresh coconut and sugar cane on the way back to the hotel. The next day, we went into Old San Juan to see la Fortaleza (which provided some much needed shade from the intense heat – why do we do this to ourselves?), Paseo la Princesa fountain, and stopped for some delicious food and drinks from La Casita de Rones, which was also absolutely gorgeous.

In the future, I would like to visit more parts of the waterfalls, and hopefully go to the top of Cascada La Mina, which we could not do with the baby (that’s where we drew the line).

All photos taken with Nikon D5600.