{"id":1912,"date":"2022-01-17T19:05:29","date_gmt":"2022-01-17T19:05:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/?p=1912"},"modified":"2022-01-20T14:45:01","modified_gmt":"2022-01-20T14:45:01","slug":"puerto-rico-january-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/index.php\/2022\/01\/17\/puerto-rico-january-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"Puerto Rico, January 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The COVID Omicron wave peaked just as we arrived, so our 3 week trip to Puerto Rico ended up being very different than we had hoped. Everything had to close by midnight, restaurants and bars were at 50%, and no gatherings of more than 250 people. So needless to say the big San Sebastian Festival that we came for was cancelled, as well has New Year&#8217;s Eve festivities.  So we ended up reading, watching Netflix and HBO, and sleeping a lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here are a few random things about Puerto Rico that surprised me, probably just due to my ignorance:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>More cats, and fewer chickens than the other Caribbean places I&#8217;ve visited (Jamaica, Granda, Belize, Cuba, coastal Columbia, etc.)<\/li><li>Most prices are about the same as the stateside, but Ubers were much cheaper. Usually around $7 to get across town. Rental cars were insanely cheap too at around $15\/day.<\/li><li>PR has very strict COVID protocols everywhere! Most everyone wore masks, even outside, on hiking trails, riding bikes, etc., even tho the mask mandate was just indoors. And 100% if the restaurants we went to made you show a vaccine card to get in, even in the countryside. <\/li><li>PR has <a href=\"https:\/\/theculturetrip.com\/caribbean\/puerto-rico\/articles\/heres-why-the-coqui-frog-is-the-symbol-of-puerto-rico\/\">very loud frogs all night long<\/a>!<\/li><li>Puerto Ricans love fried food!<\/li><li>The island has a lot more flat areas than I expected. San Juan is quite flat overall, which makes it a great city to get around by electric scooter. Bring a helmet. <\/li><li>PR cant seem to decide if they are metric or not. Gasoline is sold by the liter, speed limit signs are in MPH, and temperature is in Fahrenheit. Go figure.<\/li><li>Everywhere felt very safe, and we saw very very few homeless or beggars.<\/li><li>Watch out for Iguana roadkill everywhere.<\/li><li>PR is more Americanized than I expected, and seems to have every big US chain store. I&#8217;m told that only 15% of the population is truly bi-lingual, but it seems like everyone we encountered spoke English well. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>We heard many horror stories about Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico 2.5 years ago. Sounds like most everyone had no cell phone or internet for a month, and no water or power for 3 (and in some cases up to 15) months.  It&#8217;s hard to imagine going that long without power. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One thing that we did that we don&#8217;t really recommend was the <a href=\"https:\/\/rondelbarrilito.com\/\">Ron del Barrilito<\/a> Tasting Tour, which lets you taste an <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/rondelbarrilito.passionspirits.com\/ron-del-barrilito\/5-estrellas-750ml.html\" target=\"_blank\">$800 bottle<\/a> of rum. We found the tour good, but the rum very unexceptional. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Full set of photos are <a href=\"https:\/\/photos.app.goo.gl\/CBmcXuJhXKfhW5SW8\">here<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" src=\"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/20220117_115412-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1916\" srcset=\"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/20220117_115412-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/20220117_115412-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/20220117_115412-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/20220117_115412-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/20220117_115412-2048x1536.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption>View of Old San Juan. Our apartment is just hidden on the left.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"873\" src=\"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/20220109_135706-1024x873.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1917\" srcset=\"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/20220109_135706-1024x873.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/20220109_135706-300x256.jpg 300w, https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/20220109_135706-768x655.jpg 768w, https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/20220109_135706-1536x1310.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/20220109_135706-2048x1746.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption>On the &#8216;pork highway&#8217;.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"845\" src=\"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/20220105_110459-1024x845.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1918\" srcset=\"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/20220105_110459-1024x845.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/20220105_110459-300x248.jpg 300w, https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/20220105_110459-768x634.jpg 768w, https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/20220105_110459-1536x1268.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/20220105_110459-2048x1690.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption>its a match!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The COVID Omicron wave peaked just as we arrived, so our 3 week trip to Puerto Rico ended up being very different than we had hoped. Everything had to close by midnight, restaurants and bars were at 50%, and no gatherings of more than 250 people. So needless to say the big San Sebastian FestivalContinue reading &rarr;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","no-thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1912"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1912\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1928,"href":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1912\/revisions\/1928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}