Perfectomundo*



Our last night. Prickly Pear Island, North Sound

I have a few quiet hours today to gather my thoughts and memories of a truly wonderful holiday. We had the usual dramas and some maybe not so usual - like transferring all the Puerto Rican holiday money into someone else's bank account and our boat drifting it's anchor during the night on an isolated tropical island, which would have left us as real castaways had Tyler not paddled across the bay to rescue the boat from the rocks! We also had all the requisite holiday injuries including twisted backs, bruised legs, stubbed toes, bee stings, jellyfish stings and countless scrapes and bruises, but we will not dwell on any of this. It was, in short, a perfect holiday.
Just a very brief summary then: We spent 5 days in San Juan, Puerto Rico - which has shot into my Top 5 Best Cities list, up there with Paris & Rome. Old San Juan is an almost unaltered 16th Century Spanish Colonial fortress town - like a very posh Maputo (Portugal in Africa) which has just gone through a recent $800m facelift. Most of Old San Juan is a World Heritage Site.



Old San Juan

Not too many palm trees, no ersatz 'Caribbean' food, it is crammed full of little 17th and 19th century plaza's, bars, tapas restaurants, boulevards, elegant buildings, statues and is amazingly urbane in a Caribbean European way, but also part of the US. Extraordinary and highly recommended. We are just thrilled that it is right on our doorstep and will happily return again & again.

We shopped till we dropped, ate till we burst and enjoyed being pampered in our uber cool hotel La Concha which is situated on the Condado, San Juans equivalent of Miami's South Beach. Whilst very trendy the hotel still managed to be family-friendly and the kids were very happy to be there.  We eat some magnificent food; the best dim sum/tapas ever at Budathai, a truly memorable evening at Marmalade and fabulous tapas at El Convento. Tyler was one happy chappy.





Looking cool at La Concha


On Sunday the boys flew kites at the old fortifications El Morro (see photos on this flickr link) along with many other San Juan families which was a very special afternoon. 


Epic kite flying session, El Morro

We also spent an obscene amount of time at Plaza Las Americas working our way through a 2 page shopping list, buying 3 of everything per child (3 pairs of shoes, 3 shorts, 3 shirts, 3 backpacks...) which went on and on. We went to hairdressers, opticians, Toys R Us, Apple stores, book stores, Macy's, Sears, Walmart, Zara's, Mango, Old Navy, Sephora and got to sample the dubious delights of Dunkin' Donuts and Taco Bell (urgh and urgh) whilst the boys got to play lots of island yokels, gawking at things which they hadn't seen for over a year!


'Down Islanders'

We then whipped back to the Virgin Islands, missing Tropical Storm Emily luckily and jumped onto our little boat for the island-hopping part of our holiday. We had a rather relaxed travel itinerary (start in the south, sail north) and we'd left the camping/hotel question open, to see how it went. This is a flickr link for the photos of the island-hopping part.

Money Bay, Norman Island

Our first night was spent on the windward side (ie big seas) of Norman Island, which was lovely but had a few exciting moments (particularly off Brown Pants Point, which is fairly self-explanatory) and which tested our rusty sailing skills considerably and left us strongly concluding that we should putter and zoom on the leeward (Channel side), as opposed to rocking & rolling on the south seas.



Fascinating Salt Island

On Day 2 we stopped off at Salt Island to meet friends for lunch and ended up staying the night. Tyler went diving with the big boys and we ate delicious paella for dinner, made on the braai.

Day 3 saw us meeting up with more friends at The Baths on Virgin Gorda, which we nearly had to ourselves. We then went up to the North Sound of Virgin Gorda, which has to be my favourite part of the Virgin Islands and the perfect family holiday spot.


The Baths

Saba Rock

We stayed in a hotel on the Sunday night (bed, shower bliss) had dinner at Saba Rock and then on Day 4, after puttering around the North Sound a bit,  we found the perfect little spot on the back of Prickly Pear Island, overlooking Necker Island and hung out there for three days - snorkeling, fishing, paddle boarding, snoozing and generally doing very little.

*A very happy family Summer holiday in the islands. What little William in his Spanglish calls "perfectomundo". 

It was.



Prickly Pear Island



Eustacio Island in the background

About 9pm, ready for the tent