March was one of the busiest, most activity-packed months I’ve had since moving down here, which meant I did a bunch of great things with great friends on little to no sleep.

Nicole and Meghan finally made their way down to me the second week into March and we started things off with a bang. They arrived on a Thursday, which by college standards is technically the weekend, so we took that to heart and made our rounds to some of my favorite spots in Old San Juan.

The original plan was to meet Cara and some of her friends from Richmond at the courtyard bar at Hotel El Convento. Charlie Sepulveda (a Grammy-award winning jazz musician !!) has a regular slot on Thursdays at the hotel so we decided to stop by for a drink and some music. Ours and Cara’s schedules got a little mixed up and when we arrived at the hotel they had already made their way to destination number two of the night, Birra & Empanada.

Since we were already there, Nicole, Meghan, and I decided to split a bottle of wine and listen to Charlie play all of our favorite Etta James and Louie Armstrong songs in the background.

After finishing up at Convento, our next stop was Birra & Empanada – a top contender for my favorite bar in all of San Juan. Cara and her group were kindly guarding an 8-top and protecting it from everyone else who was attempting to take up that valuable table space, so we sat down quickly and started eating.

Birra always has four types of baked empanadas for purchase: three meat-filled and one (sometimes two!) vegetarian. I’m biased, but I think the veggie empanada is the best. Not sure which vegetarian version was available that night (a combination of going there so many times and copious mojitos blurred that part of the night for me) but ugh, the spinach one is my absolute favorite. Lots of cheese. Lots of spinach. Lots of love. To really tie it all together, there are also roughly 15 different hot sauces made in house and they’re typically kept in reused, bear-shaped honey bottles. People are constantly shuffling the bottles around from table to table while simultaneously trying to hold on to their favorites before someone else swoops in for a taste. I’ve heard that a few regulars will bring in their own sauces to keep behind the bar, so if you’re lucky you might get to try an extra rare one.

We spent the rest of our time at Birra stuffing ourselves with empanadas, drinking too much rum, and laughing hysterically. Then, it was on to the next.

Factoria is a staple in OSJ that I couldn’t let anyone to miss, so we made our way up the hill and stopped in at my other favorite bar. Pretty much every cocktail on the menu is fantastic, but I’ve gotten stuck on the Lavender Mule. It’s a floral twist on a traditional Moscow Mule that’s much lighter, less sugary, and comes with a little sprig of lavender as garnish. What’s not to love?

It was around spring break time and the bar was packed with people from all over the place and that made for some good conversation. But we soon got tired of talking, so Nicole, Meg, and I spent the rest of the night bouncing between the two back bars. We switched between pretending to know how to salsa and wiggling around to whatever trance reggae (??) they were playing in the very back bar. It was a blast and my feet hurt at the end of the night.

The next day was a total wash. I had to work, so I spent most of the day chugging water and eating as much bread as I possibly could. The girls spent their day trying to re-hydrate and lounging by the pool (I’m still jealous!). By the time I got off work, we were all ready for some pizza and some sleep, so we checked both of those boxes and looked forward to a better Saturday.

On Saturday we drove up to El Yunque to test out a trail that my coworker had told me about. The Mount Britton Trail is up towards the top of the mountain and is currently the only access point to the El Yunque Peak Trail. The original trailhead for the Peak Trail is still under construction and hasn’t been reopened since Maria, so this is the best way to get to the top and not get in trouble.

The Mount Britton Trail starts out as a set of stone steps that weaves around a flowing stream and turns into a more natural path as you reach the official Peak Trail. It took us roughly 20 minutes to get from the trailhead up to the point where the Britton and Peak Trails diverge, then an additional 45 minutes to the top of the mountain. We didn’t make it to the Britton Trail since we were pressed for time, but I’ve heard from others that it’s a nice view and a decent hike.

Hiking the El Yunque Peak Trail was a challenge in some portions, but really only because of slope and the fact that it was pretty hot and humid. Most people that we saw along the way were wearing tennis shoes (some were even in flip flops), so the trail is manageable for all hiking skill levels. I myself was over prepared, decked out in my hiking boots and some hefty socks, and in the end just made myself sweatier.

On the way up to the top, our surroundings were fabulous. To our left was the mountain face, which was lush and green and completely covered in palms, cycads, and tropical flowering plants. Flowing around the lush greenery were a few spring-fed streams that cultivated cute, moss-coated inlets along the cliff face and made for some great snail and coqui habitat. To our right, there was a view straight down into the valleys of the lower rain forest. Beyond that, Fajardo’s coastline and the very blue ocean.

At the peak there’s an old lookout structure, marked with a USGS Benchmark that didn’t offer much more information other than the elevation and where we were. I still haven’t looked into what the story behind the structure is, but it’s sturdy and is great for a panoramic view of the entire rainforest. We had a few Medalla’s up on top and then turned back for a double-time trek back down the mountain. We were kind of racing against time seeing as the park closes at 6 pm and we needed about 30 minutes to make it back to the gate. It was 4:35 pm. That being said, there was no need to worry – Nicole (a profesh trail runner) lead us back to the trailhead, hopping from rock to rock and making sure our path was safe as we wound our way down the mountain.

We made it to the trailhead with time to spare and made it through the entrance gate at 5:45.

After such an intense workout, we needed to treat ourselves. So after taking some much-needed showers and sprucing up we headed out to dinner at Verde Mesa in Old San Juan. As always, everything was impeccable. The food, the drinks, the atmosphere – it’s all so elegant and cute that’s hard not to feel happy while you’re there. I’m very fortunate that they don’t mind me coming in every week.

Keeping the night moving, we headed over to Calle Loiza to visit Gustavo at Azucena.

Azucena is this sweet little converted house in the heart of Loiza that does great work turning locally-sourced ingredients and botanics into tasty plates and cocktails. It’s one of my favorite restaurants on Loiza. Plus, my favorite bartender works there.

The girls and I sat out on the patio with some of Gustavo’s friends and family that had also stopped that night, enjoying some wine and new company. We were having a great time, but our exhaustion after that hike crept up on us quickly. We called it a night and went back to the hotel to rest up for the next day.

And what a next day we had in store.

We booked an all-day snorkeling and beach excursion to Culebra, which is a smaller island off the east coast of the main island of Puerto Rico. I’ve heard from every single person that I’ve met in Puerto Rico that I absolutely had to go to Culebra and today I was finally going to make that happen!

We decided to go with a private tour company rather than taking the public ferry over based on all the horror stories I’ve heard about trying to get ferry tickets. Stories like people arriving at the dock at 3:30 am to TRY to get tickets to one of the earlier boats. Even at that time getting a ticket is not guaranteed. This company that we went with provided transportation to the island on a 30-passenger power boat, access to the Culebra marine preserve for snorkeling, all of the necessary snorkeling equipment, lunch, and then an afternoon on Flamenco Beach. It was a pretty good deal and covered all our trip requirements.

Now, I’ve grown up on boats my entire life. I really pride myself on my sea legs and my iron stomach when it comes to sea sickness. But this trip seriously put that pride to the test. I’d heard about the rough waves and the strong currents between the main island and Culebra and expected some necessary roughness – but these waves were INTENSE. For an hour and a half we were knocked around from one side of the boat to the other, sprayed by the waves coming over the bow of the boat, and rearranged every time the boat slammed down from a wave crest. Rough was an understatement.

Once we made it into calmer waters, we moved toward the marine nature reserve for some much anticipated snorkeling. We had watched some weather in the distance for most of the morning and hoped that it wouldn’t make its way over to us, but we weren’t so lucky. It started raining while we were in the water and continued to rain when we crawled back onto the boat and it kept raining and raining and raining.

While we waited and hoped for the clouds to break, the crew prepped lunch for us and gave us more than enough rum punch to keep us satisfied. And although we were satisfied, we started to feel our last remnants of hope fading away as we made it into hour two of waiting for the rain to stop.

So, there we were, shivering cold, tipsy off sugary rum drinks, and laughing hysterically at our terrible luck, when all the sudden the clouds broke. Immediately it was like we were on a completely different trip and we were desperate to get some sunlight on our weirdly cold bodies. Nicole, Meg, Gustavo, and I all jumped into the water and made our way up to the shore as quickly as we could, beaching ourselves in the driest stretch of sand we could find. We laid there, letting the sun warm our clammy skin and the completely still ground settle our sea sick stomachs.

Everything about Flamenco Beach is beautiful. The sand itself is remarkable - completely white and the texture of angel food cake - and the water is warm and crystal clear. We spent the rest of our afternoon literally frolicking up and down the beach (which unfortunately caused a toe injury when Meg kicked the only rock on the beach :( ), soaking up all of the sun that we had missed so bad, and taking in as much of the scenery as we could before we headed back to the big island.

When it was time to leave Flamenco we reluctantly climbed back onto the boat, only wishing that we had more time to spend on the beach. Oh, and we wished that we had our cell phones with us on the beach to document just how beautiful everything was.

Unfortunately, not all our troubles had melted away and as we were riding back one of our boat’s rudders blew out. Our captain seemed ready for anything though, and we were only stranded for about 15 minutes before he fixed the problem. Our luck had changed again, thank god.

On the way back home, exhausted from a day of ups and downs, we stopped at the Luquillo kiosks for some very necessary mofongo and giant mojitos. Great for a recharge after a day of minor chaos.

The girls only had one more day in town, so we ended the trip the way we had started it – at Birra & Empanada. This time, we sat outside in the tiny courtyard in the back of the restaurant. Our waiter lent us a portable speaker half way through our evening and we all played DJ while talking with some bartenders visiting from Canada.

That same weekend an event called Tales of the Cocktail was taking over San Juan, so people from all over The States, Canada, Latin America and more were visiting the city to support a great cause, network, and drink some good drinks. This meant that a lot of interesting cocktails were available to try all over town and we absolutely took advantage of that. Factoria had opened up their entire building for the event, so we walked from floor to floor and room to room doing a taste test of everything they had to offer. It was a lot of fun pretending like we were meant to be there.

All in all, I was beat by the end of the trip but for very good reason. Hopefully I’ll see Meg and Nicole down here one more time before I head back to Cleveland ;).