Kim and I had wanted to take the boys some­where else pretty cool, much like we did last sum­mer when we vaca­tioned in Italy for a month, and that was an amaz­ing vaca­tion, but this year we were a lit­tle more strapped for cash than last year, and trans-Atlantic tick­ets don’t come cheap. Brain­storm­ing ensued, and we even­tu­ally set­tled on Puerto Rico, and specif­i­cally the Puerto Rican islands of Vieques and Cule­bra. Puerto Rico has a very rich and in some cases, very sad, his­tory, but Christo­pher Colum­bus “dis­cov­ered” it in 1493 and its had its ups and downs ever since. The peo­ple are friendly and they use the dol­lar, which was also a plus.

Vieques and Cule­bra are both known for their beaches, and since Kim has been pin­ing for a beach-centric vaca­tion for years these places were per­fect. Plus the kids could play in the sand and swim in the rel­a­tively shal­low bays that made up many of the beaches of both islands.

After plan­ning, the vaca­tion broke down, time-wise, like this -

Week 1 – rent house in Vieques
Week 2 – condo on the main island of Puerto Rico, specif­i­cally the Loiza area
Week 3 – rent house in Culebra

Upon being told about this trip our par­ents, remem­ber­ing how much fun they had with us on our first Ital­ian trip, imme­di­ately vol­un­teered to go with us, for the first week of our trip.

I’ll get into that more later on.

We got our air­line tick­ets and started look­ing for lodg­ing while we were going to stay there. Hotels were pretty much out of the ques­tion, mainly because of the price point, but rent­ing a house/condominium was much more attrac­tive, and there were many to choose from. We set­tled on a nice house that would be able to sleep every­one the first week, a condo our sec­ond week and then a house for the four of us our last week. There are a cou­ple of options for trav­el­ling to Vieques and Cule­bra from the main island, but we set­tled on the cheap­est mode of trans­port – the ferry. $2 per adult and $1 per child for a 1½ hour trip one way. How couldn’t that be great, right?

We got every­thing packed into 2 duf­fel bags. All four of us had 5 changes of clothes, except Pey­ton, who’s been hav­ing a lot of pee­ing acci­dents lately. Every­thing else (scuba gear, books, Legos, etc.) plus the cloth­ing stuffed the bags full, but we were under the 50 lb. limit for each.

Fly­ing out was a breeze. Arriv­ing on Vieques was the hard part. More on that next time.