San Juan, Puerto Rico

Our stay in this city was short and mostly sweet. The client put us up in the Ritz-Carlton - rumor had it the rooms were costing them a cool $600/night. We arrived on the eve of Three Kings Day - the commonwealth's equivalent of Christmas Eve so the city was still dressed in Holiday finery and Christmas music was still being piped through the hotel (just when you thought you would not have to hear "jingle Bell Rock" again for at least 9 months...)

We had arrived a day early so that we could gather supplies - being totally ignorant of the fact that everything would be closed on Three Kings Day. We caught a taxi into Old San Juan to see what would could see, but pretty much everything was buttoned and zipped up pretty tight. We did get to stroll around Fort San Cristabel and that was cool... got to learn a bit more Puerto Rico history. The cab ride home was exciting as our driver had very little regard for traffic rules and etiquette.... playing chicken with a fully lit and wailing ambulance just before pulling into the hotel entrance.

We finished the sculpture as scheduled on Monday afternoon. We had planned to make our escape from the city on the 8 PM ferry from Fajardo but discovered fairly late in the day that the ferry schedule was in holiday mode as well and had to make a frantic dash to catch it at 6 PM instead -- which we did with minutes to spare.

We disembarked on Viequez in the middle of a flash rainstorm that lasted just long enough to thoroughly soak us and all of our belongings. A cheerful cabbie helped cram all eight members of our entourage plus more luggage and musical instruments then one might think possible in his van and we were on our way to the vacation part of this journey.