Day 4:
Rain rain go away, come back another day. We were picking up Jonathan’s Dad from the airport today and we had some time to kill so of course we went to the mall. The mall in San Juan is called Plaza Las Americas. It’s a huge mall – think there were 3 different levels. After the mall, we spent the rest of the day with family.
Travel Quick Tip: Firehouse Subs at the mall is VERY SLOW. They give out beepers for each order – this makes it look like there is no line but in reality there are tons of orders ahead of you.
After spending most of the day with family, we are off to the St. Regis. It’s located in Rio Grande on Bahia Beach and is very secluded. It was difficult for us to see the property on the drive in because we were checking in around 11pm.
The entrance to the plantation house is impressive with fire pits lining the walkway up to the oversized front door. The check-in process was quite personable. We are seated down at a desk in what looks like a cozy den. We are given a map of the property and our keys and the bell man proceeds to take us and our baggage to our room via golf cart.
We stayed in a standard room and it far exceeded our expectations (check out this video tour of our room at the St Regis, Bahia Beach). Decor is plantation style – dark cherry wood furniture, recessed beamed ceiling and rattan ceiling fans. Neutral tones used throughout the bathroom. Bathroom has a rain shower that is almost as big as the rest of the room. The mirror in bathroom even has a TV! Not sure I will actually use it but it was pretty cool.
Double vanities in there too. As I have mentioned before, I’m really picky and there was a musty smell in the room but I don’t think the room had been used in a while. I can’t imagine that they are ever 100% booked with the prices they charge here.
Entrance to Plantation House:
Day 5:
Our mini boat snorkeling tour is scheduled for today 🙂 We had to be in Fajardo at 8:30am. According to Google Maps, it’s about a 25 minutes away. We left about an hour early so we had time to stop for breakfast. There is always traffic around here so be sure to give yourself extra time to make it anywhere. It ended up taking us an hour because there was a bad accident on the way.
After check-in, we get loaded onto our mini-boats.
Travel Quick Tip: There is not much room in the dry storage area so I would suggest bringing as little as possible – towels, sunglasses, sunblock.
As soon as we start our engines to head out of the marina, our boat stops working. They try to fix it but are unable to and we have to ride with the tour guides. Kind of a bummer since so the cool thing about the tour was getting to drive/ride in your own mini boat. They apologized and we were refunded the whole amount back. The tour guides were great – Efrain & Gilbert.
Water was a little rough so we it took us longer to get to Palomino island and we only ended up stopping at one snorkeling spot. The snorkeling was pretty average but the boat ride out to the island was fun. We hung out on Palomito Island for about an hour. This is the island where the filmed Pirates of the Carribean 4.
Even though we slathered on the sunblock, we got plenty of sun today. The entire trip was about 3.5 hours. We ended up having lunch at the restaurant there at the marina (Marina Puerto Chico). We had carne frita and rice and beans. It was very good and I don’t think we spent more than $20. We were pooped by the time we made it back to the resort and ended up taking a nap after showering and getting cleaned up.
