Comfy comfy life part II: Beach

Luquillo is known for its public beach, and this is a vacation spot for locals. Going to the beach here with kids is as comfortable as it gets. First you park you car in one of the 1400 parking spaces…

Then you walk down to the beach…

…and rent an umbrella and two chairs, that someone carries to your chosen spot.

And then you enjoy!

F extra happy after having munched on loads of sand

Taking a nap in fine surroundings

To sit on the beach and study the Puerto Ricans is a pleasure in itself. First of all, they have so much equipment! Always chairs, umbrellas, baby playpens, music, several coolers, BBQ, pots and pans with already cooked food and drinks. And they bring company. They are usually a big family or a large group of some constellation, and they simply ENJOY. First of all they eat. And I mean constantly and lots! Chips, burgers, the fried stuff, donuts, cookies, sodas, you name it. And, needless to say they are consequently the larger types. And they make sounds. They are loud, and they sing or dance or just laugh. And they are friendly! E almost always has some kids to play with. She almost adopted a new family the other day when they offered her cheese doodles as a snack. We couldn’t compete with our bananas, no wonder.

Typical "camp” of Puerto Ricans

And if you are too lazy to cook after a day at the beach you can always stop here

And get some desserts here:

It’s a hard life, in deed!

Comfy comfy life….part 1: Shopping

Wow. We move from our top modern air conditioned apartment to our air conditioned rental car to the ultra well sorted shopping malls or the life guarded beach with beach chairs and umbrellas.

Our home on the 17th floor.

The shopping piece is quite amazing. As you’ve seen on the pictures our first mission was to find a new camera. Of course we started here :

To keep E happy we told her she could choose a toy. In awe of the amount of toys, she spent at least half an hour choosing the perfect one – a doll in a purple rabbit dress.

Decisions, decisions…

We found a camera, and loads of other stuff too. It is so cheap! When we got to the baby section to find baby food we found car seats for 30 US$. Hmm… We bought it, trying not to think of the effect on our luggage.

New car seat and toy (this is what she looks like when we ask her to smile at the camera…)

Then we drove to the rental company and returned the rented car seat – and got 60 US$ refunded. The economist strikes again! Making money shopping!

Found other interesting things as well, so many things you never thought you needed, like

Oh, that’s what I’ve been missing…

Grocery shopping is also lots of fun. They have so many readymade and unhealthy stuff, like 200 different breakfast cereal (none without sugar), but trying to find things to make things yourself, like baking powder for pancakes, we had to look well and hard before we found it.

American ready-made adapted to Puerto Rican cuisine

And coffee! Best we’ve had so far, in tough competition with the French.

Happiest face in a few months…

But living the comfy life means of course eating out as well. Here, the theme is FRIED. Everything is fried.

We tried a few of the items here eating like true locals: Fried salt fish, fried plantains, fried banana filled with minced meat and fried mashed potatoes filled with chicken.

No – it wasn’t particularly nice.

A part from the McDonalds, Wendy’s, KFC, Pizza hut, Taco maker, (that we’ve managed to avoid a part from the airport), most restaurants serve steaks, seafood and salads (in addition to the fried things, of course). The nicest meal we’ve had so far was this:

Pineapple filled with coconut rice and shrimp…mmmmmm

Next update will be beach: It is so awesome I need to take pictures with the new camera to make it justice!

¡Hola Puerto Rico!

So – this was a huge change, arriving in Puerto Rico, a Spanish island but US territory. First of all, we had an interesting trip. The flight from Dominica took us to Antigua, where we had 30 minutes to change airplanes, but it became two hours because of a broken plane. Boarding in Antigua to San Juan, PR, required the normal security check again, as usual, but 50 meters after that check was another one, where women and men had to separate into two lines, remove all carry on luggage which was searched by the officers. Then the officers put on their rubber gloves and checked your body too (outside only…). In all the Caribbean countries we have visited so far all officers have been friendly and smiling, playing with the kids etc., here we met stone faces that didn’t seem to have smiled for ever, and strict messages to “hold the child further away from your body” and “remove your shoes”. The irony is that we discovered afterwards that E had been carrying a juice in her back pack all the way, so they went through all that trouble not even finding what they should have found. Sure, procedures, but it felt uncomfortable and unwelcoming.

The now very experienced (and cute) traveller

Arriving in San Juan at 14.30 not having had lunch, food was on top of the list. We got the luggage and loaded it onto a baggage trolley and hurried to the exit, only to be stopped by a woman saying we could not bring the trolley further than a specific line, which she escorted us to. That line was not close to any food, I’ll tell you. So, loaded like poor camels we carried everything for what seemed kilometers, and luckily, there was food just outside the airport, of course hamburgers. We sat down and moods rose with every French fry swallowed. Then we went to pick up a rental car. Called the company since we couldn’t find the shuttle, shuttle came, loaded all the luggage and finally arrived at the rental company. I had ordered a car for two weeks online for 350 US $. B stood in line for about an hour to reach the rental desk, me trying to entertain the kids the best I could. Then he stood at the desk for 45 minutes before getting the car. Now I was running out of fun-games-in-waiting-area. Finally the price ended up being 700 US $, having added insurance and a child seat…At that point we didn’t care – and set off on the high way (yey!) to our destination Luquillo. Our home for the next two weeks is this:

 

On the 17th floor with AMAZING views, just look at this:

Straight ahead

To the right

To the left

..and down, if you dare

And there is a pool down stairs

We’re still in chock from being thrown from a village lodge in the rain forest to top modern apartment in ultra civilization – and we are sooo excited. To be honest, we have had our fair share of jungle and look forward to some easy-living.

Enjoying Dominica

The last few days of Dominica we tried to occupy ourselves as much as possible since we did not have air condition in our house (it will not happen again…) we simply could not stay there at all during daytime.

In Calibishie we’ve “done it all” since it is a very small town. Here is an example of Dominica joining the club of “chicken or fish”-question, the standard Caribbean lunch plate.

Rice with beans, mahi-mahi fish and provisions (i.e. sweet potatoes, cassava, dasheen)

Calibishie is surrounded by a rain forest “wall”,  quite stunning. What struck us about Dominica is how very poor the island is, and this shows.

Did I marry a surfer?

Fashion boutique on Calibishie high street

The usual “super market”

Your new holiday home?

The beaches here are not cleaned as in most other places, hence they are not very picture perfect. But that didn’t stop us! And they are fun to explore for small crawlers.

We also did some more sightseeing, this time back to Portsmouth and Fort Shirley, an old English fort that protected Dominica from the French. It was really great, fantastic views and very windy!

We kind of managed to take a self portrait

Then we went to visit the famous Cold sulphur springs. It was supposed to be a 45 minute trek through the rain forest so we prepared with lots of food and water and set off, quite excited. Luckily we got there in just 20 minutes, just to be hugely disappointed:

These springs do not impress an Icelandic girl, no

We had more fun afterwards trying to get the girls to pose.

.

Mom trying to cut F in half?

In the evenings and mornings we enjoyed being pampered by our private chef. We were the only guests at the hotel!

Dominica is the last outpost out of civilization, by next blog we’ll be in Puerto Rico!

Baby food hunting

Moving from place to place we have a habit of bringing enough supplies for the kids the first few days, to avoid having to run out of diapers etc. Now it was time to find baby food. No problem, said our hotel hosts, they have a huge well sorted supermarket in Portsmouth, which is half an hour away.

Colorful houses outside Portsmouth on the west coast

Well. it was in deed a well stocked supermarket (who buys frozen ready-to-eat plates of pancakes and sausage?). But no baby foods. So, we asked around in all the local super market and pharmacy without luck. A little in despair, we discussed what to do. So far we have made baby foods ourselves, because we have had kitchens – and used ready made foods for days on the run. But now, without a kitchen…hm… We asked a local how far it was to the capital Roseau, 45 minutes he said, so we decided to go for it.

Typical Caribbean bus

Sign in Portsmouth

So we set off to Roseau. It is a drive along the coast, so very different from the mountain tracks.

Town with the flattering name Massacre

Let’s cut through a mountain and make a road

Nature island

They do like their colors!

In Roseau, first thing we see is this:

Swedish embassy

Typical Caribbean bar

We decided to get the business done before sightseeing, so we started at the biggest supermarket. No baby foods. Next one, none. Pharmacy, none, but they directed us to another super market next to KFC. Found KFC but no super market. It was hidden behind it – and voila! Baby foods! By then it felt like we had covered every street of Roseau, there was no time left for sightseeing. And I will tell you, that Roseau is the first Caribbean place where there is NO breeze. I mean none. As baked as fresh cinnamon rolls we got back into the air conditioned car, exhausted, and drove home with the catch of the day.

And she will not starve