Memorial Day

I had a pretty good little Memorial Day today. I had to work, but that was my fault for scheduling a business trip without consulting The Queen.

I called my sales agency this morning and found out that Memorial Day is also a holiday in Puerto Rico. We still worked what we had planned for today, but it is funny that all three of us failed to realize it was a holiday when we planned this trip. When we got done with what we had scheduled, they took me out for some authentic Puerto Rican food. We ended up having a plantain soup for the first course, several types of fritters and plantains for an appetizer, mofongos for the meal and sangria during the entire meal.

Restaurante Raices in Caguas, PR makes authentic food that my friends said was what the mountain people ate long ago. I have to admit that there was not a lot of flavor in the food. The sangria was brought to the table in a beat up old aluminum pitcher and we were given little aluminum cups to drink from, kind of like what you think of the California miners using during the gold rush. They were primitive, but they kept the sangria cold.

I ate mofongos from my hotel restaurant when I was here last and they were just ok. The mofongos I had today were much better. They were served in a large wooden cup. The mashed plantains were coating the inside of the cup and the beef was inside with a dried plantain for garnish. The beef just melted in my mouth and the plantains tasted just right.

After eating I headed out on an adventure to find El Yunque, a rain forest in a national park. My rental GPS unit made me do circles for a while before getting me there two hours later. I had time to hike very fast up to a waterfall and back. I hope I got some great photos to show everyone a legitimate rain forest. It was pretty amazing. There was some bamboo, a lot of ferns and a lot of palms mixed in with some other trees and vines. At times i felt like Indiana Jones on a treasure hunt. The waterfall did not compare to those in Yosemite, but not many do.

I drove back to the hotel and took some photos of the view from my balcony, then ended the day with a run on a treadmill and a walk along the rocky coast outside my hotel. Like I said before, it was a nice little Memorial Day.

- Posted from my iPhone