I woke up stupid early this morning… Ugh. I guess I got a sunrise time lapse, so there was that…. 

Matt got up at a reasonable hour, and we made some breakfast – the last of the loaf of bread and mango. That mango was ah-‘mazing. SO good! Damn, I love fruit in tropical countries…

Anyway. We made sure we had all our stuff and checked out of the AirBnB…. And off we went. 

We had reservations at the Parque Nacional de las Cavernas del Rio Camuy (oy, that’s a mouthful) for a tour of the caves at 10:00 am. We arrived about 9:30 as requested, and settled in to wait, amused by the antics of all the cats hanging around. 

The caves were AWESOME. Cueva Clara, named because you can almost see from end to end, was incredible. The far end was at the bottom of a huge sinkhole, and you could see clear blue skies above – SO pretty! And there were bats! Apparently, one of the chambers of the cave is where they recorded the audio for one of the Batman movies. Sadly, about 90% of Puerto Rico’s bats were lost during Hurricane Maria. The Camuy River flooded and rose 300 feet, flooding that entire cave, at least. Most of the bats drowned. 

What a cool tour! Our guide was a bit annoying, but whatever. The cave was awesome! SO glad I found this to do on our way to San Juan. 

When the tour was over, we got back in the cave and continued on our way. We couldn’t check in to our AirBnB until 3:00, so we had a little time. 

By the time we got near San Juan, we were starving. We drove by the building where we were staying and realized we didn’t know anything about this part of town… so we defaulted to Condado and drove over to find some food. 

Parking was a nightmare. After quite a while of driving around, we finally found a spot and headed down the road to find food. We ended up at The Place, a bar we’d been to before, but the food was good. 

After lunch, we went back to our building and went inside. 

What a great space! Probably the coolest AirBnB we’ve stayed, at least in the San Juan area. Big enough, comfortable, with everything we need for the next few days. And water. Hot water, at that. 

We showered and chilled out for a bit. We’d decided tonight was the night to go out in Old San Juan – get it done while we still had a chance – so we called an Uber and away we went. 

I LOVE Old San Juan. Absolutely LOVE it. It’s old Europe, skinny cobbles streets, music spilling out of some places… Lovely. 

We went to El Batey first. It’s the oldest bar in the city. So cool. A shit-on-the-walls kind of place, dollar bills everywhere… I had a rum old fashioned, Matt had the equivalent of a rum margarita, and damn, they were good!

We decided to go over to El Morro and check it out again. We’d been there before, but never at night… Holy SHIT, was that cool!

Then we went to The Mezzanine, where the drinks and the tapas were awesome – especially the shrimp and pineapple skewers! We were going to hit another bar, but found the gelato place instead, so we just had that and called it a night. 

A little more wantdering around, an Uber ride back, and to bed!

Here’s the whole video: