Our hotel is in Isla Verde, just east of San Juan city. This is a most unusual place, since the (beautiful) beach is adjacent to what is basically a decaying tourist town (seriously, almost a slum) peppered with gigantic resort hotels, which are themselves protected by razor wire fences. To keep the locals out?
We’re here in off season, and my guess is most of the tourists here now (our hotel seems quite busy) are locals from elsewhere on the island enjoying their summer vacation. A big draw for this region – and likely our hotel – are the casinos. The casino downstairs has 129 machines (most of which are manufactured in Australia!) and is open until 4am. We spent an hour or so there earlier and lost only $2 playing $0.05 machines 🙂
Here’s a shot of the beach:
< Isla Verde beach
As you can see we got there just as the day was ending.
Tomorrow is an early start, with breakfast at 6:30 am. KLS will go to her seminar, and I’m off to Old San Juan. At the moment I’m not 100% sure how I’ll get there – for a tourist area there is a remarkable lack of trolleys or buses…looks like I’ll be forking over $20+ for a taxi perhaps…
The weather incidentally is warm and humid. Even now, at 10pm. I expect the midday sun to be punishing tomorrow.
As for my cellphone problem. Well I’m just going to assume texting doesn’t work at all (text or picture texts). I sent a text to many of you requesting a reply and never received one…so unortunately any sort of cell blogging (even without pictures) may not be happening this trip 🙁