Amy and I began our day with a routine that had started to become our little tradition: a few sips of invigorating coffee followed by a dunk in our AirBnB’s little pool (la piscina pequeña de la casita blanca). As we were in the mountains, the pool’s water probably hovered somewhere in the 60s Fahrenheit, so the water definitely awakened all the senses; but once we got moving, the water started to feel warm, and it was so enjoyable getting the blood flowing in such a refreshing way.

Our fourth day in Puerto Rico, however, our first, real, hot day in the mountains. We generally had been somewhat surprised how cool it had been (to Minnesotans, of course, it felt positively, well, tropical), but this was the first time where the temperatures climbed into the 80s. This is something to be mindful of: if you travel to Puerto Rico during the winter months, you may want to bring along a fleece and some long pants in addition to lighter apparel, especially if your headquarters are in the mountains.

Following our morning routine, we began our excursion to Puerto Rico’s second biggest city, Ponce, named after Juan Ponce de León y Loayza, the great-grandson of Spanish conquistador Ponce de León. The city is located on the island’s southern coast, and while the city is only about 30 miles away from our AirBnB in Jayuya, the drive took about an hour and 15 minutes on account of the usual twisting, winding nature of the rural, mountainside roads.

As we neared Ponce, the roads gradually became wider and wider, the traffic faster and faster, and apart from the road signs written in Spanish, it felt like we were driving in any U.S. state (well, not any U.S. state on account of Puerto Rico’s gorgeous, gorgeous mountains). While the scenery continued to amaze us in its beauty, we did start to realize that we underestimated how much time we were going to spend driving on this trip. At the same time, we absolutely loved staying in Jayuya, tucked away in the mountains, away from all the other tourists. So, it’s something of a trade-off.

We initially arrived at the southeastern part of town, planning to enjoy lunch right away, and we decided to try a restaurant near a park right on the waterfront, Parque Pasivo Enrique González (possibly named after the Mexican poet, but I can’t find any confirmation of that). Viewing the map of the area led us to believe that the restaurant would have incredibly gorgeous views of the park and the sea, but when we arrived, we found the park a little unkempt and the restaurant set back from the oceanfront as to obscure any meaningful views.

We did, however, enjoy a walk around the neighborhood before we left for the more central part of town. But it was during this walk when I was reminded of a comment one of our fellow zipliners made the previous day, that government help following a major catastrophe (Hurricane Maria, for example), often goes towards the northern part of the island, especially San Juan, where all the tourists are (and even that aid was bungled by a moronic, idiotic, incompetent president who didn’t want to waste his time on “shitholes,” i.e. people who aren’t white). This southeastern part of town seemed to confirm this: abandoned buildings once maintained with colorful facades now fading, public art of colorful mosaics wearing away in a neglected park, padlocked doors to public restrooms.

So, we made our way towards Plaza de las Delicias (“Plaza of the Delights”), which is home to a number of landmarks, including Parque de Bomba (“Bomb Park,” Puerto Rico’s first ever firehouse but now a museum, apparently Ponce’s most photographed landmark, the structure instantly recognizable with thick, bold stripes of red and black running parallel to each other on the structure’s facade); Catedral Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe (a majesticly white neoclassical structure, its main entrance flanked by two square towers adorned with silver domes atop); and Plaza Muñoz Rivera and Plaza Degetau (two inviting squares adorned with grand fountains).

We soon turned our attention to lunch and discovered a little place called Chef’s Creations, and it was another good taste of authentic Puerto Rican food. We arrived right as they were closing (they finish the day after lunch), so we only had a handful of choices left. I opted for bistec encebollado (stewed steak and onions) and Amy and Aaron got something with grouper, but I’m forgetting the details. While the rustic patio that we dined in was somewhat memorable (there was a large baking tray fashioned into a chalkboard placed charmingly in a flowerbed that bid guests a farewell on their way out, “Gracias para venir nuestra casa,”) the rest wasn’t much to write home about. It wasn’t horrible, but it also wasn’t incredible.

Following lunch, we made our way to Castillo Serrallés (castillo means castle), a luxurious estate built in a Mediterranean hacienda style with a terra cotta roof and white stucco walls. It was built in the 1930s for Juan Eugenio Serrallés, son of Juan Serrallés who founded Destilería Serrallés which produces the Don Q rum (ron de Don Q). The business started in the 1830s refining sugar cane and then by the late 1800s began producing rum.

I just love visiting grand houses like Castillo Serrallés, and this house was no exception. Before the guided tour starts, on your own you can view the estate’s gardens, trimmed symmetrically with low hedges in simple arc-shaped designs complete with an opulent garden pool adorned with cherubs. The whole estate sits atop a large hill that overlooks all of Ponce, so even from the grounds of the garden you can appreciate views of not only the city but the ocean as well. That said, just right outside the grounds of the estate, small shanty towns struggle through their daily grind of inequity, and the contrast of rich and poor could not have been more starkly evident.

The guided tour of the inside of the house progresses much as these kinds of tours progress, complete with tidbit facts about the history of the house and its owners. After viewing a dated yet informative video of the history of la familia de Serrallés, a knowledgeable guide brings you room-to-room, viewing kitchens, bedrooms, dining rooms, grand hallways, all decorated gloriously and grandiosely with the original furnishings and photographs of the family. One of the highlights of the tour is stepping outside onto a large, upper terrace that provides even more incredible views of the surrounding gardens, the city of Ponce, and the ocean.

The inexpensive ticket to the house also allows you access to the nearby Jardín Japonés (an imitation Japanese garden that somehow seemed a little sad with its imitation zen gardens and imitation pagodas, yet it did have real koi and real bonsais, but otherwise if you don’t have time for this, you’re not missing much) and the the tall, concrete Cruz del Vigía (an ugly brutalist structure that wouldn’t be out of place in some U.S. college campuses, standing 110 feet tall, shaped exactly like a cross but somehow not a Christian structure at all, offering more stunning views of the city from the structure’s skywalk).

Beneath the cruz is a restaurant/bar with seating to continue to enjoy views of the city. We decided to treat ourselves to some mojitos, but the staff were either under-trained or spectacularly confused, as we were moved from one table to the next to the next, and then had to wait a half hour for our drinks to arrive. In the end, it was fine, as we weren’t pressed for time, but if you have a choice or are pressed for time, you can disregard the Jardín Japonés and Cruz del Vigía, and you won’t be missing much.

Following our excursions atop the hill, we made our way to Mesa Cocina y Vinatería, where we enjoyed our first, real, proper, ridiculously delectable and lustfully sinful meal during our adventures through Puerto Rico. When we arrived, I greeted the helpful staff with, “Buenas tardes! Una mesa para tres. No tengo una reserva,” to which I received a response, “Buenas noches! Is English easier?” Although, indeed, English was easier, it’s still really fun to try out as much Spanish as you can and see if it works (wrong time of day and all). Regardless, I really do think that you should learn as much Spanish as you can, as—while the locals in general are super friendly and switch to English as easily as night and day—I think you get extra bonus points if you can show you’re making a real effort with the language.

Meanwhile, nuestra ceda at Mesa was muy, muy deliciosa indeed! Naturally, we started with a bottle of rosé, then ordered aperitivos of tuna tartar, pork belly, and ceviche, then for our entradas enjoyed swordfish, tuna, and squid ink rice with a cornucopia of squid, mussels, and octopus. It was the best I had eaten in a long, long time, and I’d highly recommend a visit to Mesa to enjoy a really divine evening of comidas y bebidas.

As usual, we had over an hour drive back to Jayuya to nuestra casita en las montañas, feeling fully satiated and pleasantly satisfied, excited for the following day’s adventures in Puerto Rico’s largest city, San Juan…

Spanish lesson for the day:

1. When you try to speak Spanish, some of the locals are good at catching on that it’s not your first language, so they may respond to your broken Spanish with, “¿Inglés?” or, “¿Habla inglés?” which is just, “Do you speak English?” I always respond with, “Si, lo siento,” which is, “Yes, I’m sorry,” and they switch to English as if flicking a switch.
2. I wrote about how handy the verbs tener and queren are in my previous posts. Another good verb to know is pagar or to pay. “Quero pagar la cuenta,” is, “I want to pay the check.” “Pago la cuenta,” means, “I pay the check,” or, “I’m paying the check.” “Pagamos,” then is, “We pay.”
3. Business hours are generally posted in Spanish, so you may want to learn at the bare minimum that lunes is Monday so that you can figure out what hours belong to what day. If they post a range, they’ll use the multi-use preposition a which is to. So, lunes a sábado is Monday through Saturday. All seven days are: lunes, martes, miércoles, jueves, viernes, sábado, domingo.

Travel tips, day four:

1. If you plan to visit lots of different parts of the island but want to have a single place to stay, then plan to do lots of driving. While driving through Puerto Rico’s scenery has been so breathtaking, the amount of time it takes to get to our destinations was something we underestimated a bit. So take that into consideration when you choose where you want to stay. A 30 mile drive won’t necessarily be a 30 minute trip.
2. When you’re in larger cities like Ponce and San Juan, the locals generally tend to default to English, even when you try to speak in Spanish. I still encourage you to learn a little Spanish, even the very basics that I wrote about on my post for día uno. That said, while I learned more than those basics, I feel that the locals are even more friendly due to the fact that I can say more than, “Gracias,” and “Buenos días,” even when I incorrectly conjugate the wrong verb.
3. I strongly recommend a visit to Castillo Serrallés if you have time for nothing else in Ponce. You can buy tickets ahead of time using a third-party website.

Waking up on the morning of our third day, we enjoyed some of the best coffee at nuestra casita en las montañas bonitas. While I do miss having my morning tea (I have mine shipped in from England), the coffee here—even the coffee available in las panerías pequeñas—is so, so good. We bought a brand called Café Oro de Puerto Rico (oro means gold), and it is just so aromatically satisfying and so delectably tasteful, the complex and layered flavors soar through the sensations in a deeply profound and delightfully awakening celebration of the affections. Maybe I’ll start drinking coffee again.

Following our morning coffee (and a little toast), we had to make our way to a town to the east of us called Orocovis which is where Toroverde Adventure Park is located, the site of my first ziplining adventure! Aaron was also joining me on the excursion, and while Amy was also coming along, she was sensible enough to leave her two feet firmly on the ground when we got to the adventure park.

Before the ziplining adventure could begin, however, we had to first venture through the rural, windy roads of the Puerto Rican mountainsides. It was on this day that we encountered some of the most challenging roads to navigate. Google indicated that it would take at least an hour and ten minutes to travel 24 miles; since we had to arrive at Toroverde by 12:15 for our 1:00 ziplining madness, so we left with plenty of time to spare at shortly after 10:30 in the morning.

While we were quite used to the twisty-turny nature of these rural roads by this point, nothing prepared us for a section of road that was under construction. The pavement had been totally removed and only gravel and sand was in its place. But since rain comes and goes so frequently here, the road was more washed out than entirely stable. Add this to the thick, jungle-like brush of dense foliage that enshrouds roads that constantly bend and curve along sidewinding shelves carved precariously into the mountainsides, and it feels like you’re driving through some kind of park of the Mesozoic, as it were. It was on this day where we keenly felt the need for a Jeep or SUV, and I continue to highly recommend something along those lines if you decide to venture out into the more mountainous and rural regions of Puerto Rico.

At long last, however, after a bracing and exciting car ride through roads of the likes I’ve never seen, we arrived at Toroverde Adventure Park 45 minutes ahead of scheduled ziplining appointment. Toroverde is home to el monstruo (“The Monster”), and depending on what website you read, it’s the third longest zipline in the world (their website says it’s the biggest in the Americas), and Jimmy Fallon famously enjoyed it himself (if enjoy is the right word).

What makes this zipline particularly thrilling is that you travel on the zipline horizontally, your body prone and parallel to the earth, across 1.5 miles of cable, sometimes 1200 feet in the air, reaching speeds of up to 95 miles per hour, soaring through the air above rocky streams and those lusciously dense forests of the Puerto Rican mountainsides that I can’t stop bloviating about.

I’ve written at length here, here, here, and here, about how terribly afraid of heights I am. But I seem to suffer from a particularly bizarre form of the phobia. For example, I have a hard time walking on transparent floors open to a dizzying drop (like at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis); but also the Empire State in all its unending stability continues to frighten me to this day (“Someone might lose all control of their sanity and toss their phone over the edge!”); and even the relatively modest heights of old castles like Linlithgow in Scotland cause my knees to wobble.

And yet, without much fuss, I’m able to ride the Roosevelt Island Tramway in NYC (“It’s a big, heavy car suspended by flimsy wires that could malfunction and we’d plummet into the East River!” you would think I would exclaim), drive through the sidewinding roads of the Puerto Rican mountainside (“Those guardrails are doing nothing to protect us from plunging to our deaths!” you would imagine I would surmise), or even enjoy the views from the London Eye (“This ridiculous glass bubble suspended 135 meters in the air—the floors opaque, mind—could detach at any moment, shatter into the pavement below, and we’d all die!” you would presume I would conclude).

Through all this nonsense and for some reason, however, being suspended by wires face down all by myself encased in a kind of hospital stretcher 1200 feet above the stunning Puerto Rican landscape traveling 95 miles per hour on 1.5 miles of cable did not cause my debilitating fear of heights to rear its head to interfere with my enjoyment of something so ludicrously absurd. While I did feel some semblance of anxiety in my stomach as we waited to launch, it was more because of the feelings of exhilarating excitement due to the irrational activity I was about to partake in.

And, indeed, it was all those things: enjoyable, ludicrous, absurd, exhilarating, and exciting all wrapped in a hospital stretcher traveling 95 miles per hour via wires 1200 feet in the air for 1.5 miles.

The scariest part, actually, is when you’re preparing to depart as a Toroverde employee buckles you in (before giving you a 2 minute crash course in ziplining), suspends you using cables and carabiners, and then makes you wait a minute or two for the route to clear, your pathway stretching endless ahead of you, the ground several feet below you.

And then, you’re off! And what an experience it was, flying through the air, the wind bracingly whipping about you, the world ahead of you, zooming by from an incredible vista the likes of which I’ve never experienced. If you are at all afraid of heights (but perhaps you suffer from the very same comical rendition of the phobia I have that allows you to enjoy this preposterous activity), then you simply must go ziplining. Absolutely. Hands down. Just do it.

When you get to the end of the second of two ziplines for el monstruo, you have to wait a bit as a truck comes to pick you and others up. As we waited, Aaron and I had a lovely conversation with a group of women who were ahead of us. They asked me what I thought about it (earlier I had remarked to them as we were waiting to fly off, “Haco miedo,”) but at the end of the two trips I exclaimed, “Muy divertido!” They then taught me some more colorful ways to describe how fun it was using the exclamation, “¡Cabrón!” which—as far as I can tell—translates literally as, “Dumbass!” but seems to be a multi-use word in the same way we use f*ck: “Dumb as f*ck,” “Cool as f*ck,” etc.

And so, as you can imagine, Aaron and I worked up an appetite, so we discovered a nearby restaurant called Roka Dura, where we got our first real taste of the local cuisine, la comida criolla. While the direct translation is Creole food, it’s not exactly the same kind of Creole cuisine you might find in, say, New Orleans. The Puerto Rican variety is a mixture of African, Spanish/European, and Taíno, the original inhabitants of the Caribbean.

We decided to enjoy mofongos rellenos (stuffed mofongos). The word itself stems from the Kikongo word mfwenge-mfwenge which means “a great amount of anything at all,” and it’s prepared by lightly frying plantains until they’re soft, mashing them with garlic, salt, and oil, and then shaping them into a bowl. You can then fill the bowl with whatever you like with chicken, steak, seafood, vegetables, etc. We opted for mofongos with red snapper (and another fish that’s escaping me right now), and it was all really quite delicious, especially as we were sitting outside on a raised deck that overlooked the gorgeous Puerto Rican landscape.

We next stopped off at a liquor store nearby called Bajuras, where we accidentally discovered that the locals seem to use ron (i.e. rum) to mean any style of spirit in the same way the U.S. South use Coke to refer to all pops. There also was a kind, young gentleman who asked if we had come from Toroverde, and we both talked a bit about how much we enjoyed ziplining. I also apologized for not knowing nearly enough Spanish to carry on a conversation (his English was excellent), but he told me not to worry about it. I continue to be so astonished (in a good way) about how friendly Puerto Ricans are, from the women who ziplined with us at Toroverde, everyone in Bajuras, and everyone else we’ve interacted with. That said, knowing even a little Spanish will help you along a good way, so I can’t stress enough how important it is to try even just a little bit.

Before making our way home, we stopped at a supermercado to buy food to make dinner: chicken, peppers, onions, carrots, and this delightful sauce called sofrito, a puree of onions, garlic, an assortment of peppers, tomatoes, cilantro, and vinegar. The cuisine here uses it in many dishes (kind of like curry powder or paste in other countries), including their beans (where I consistently tended to detect a hint of vinegar whenever I had them due to the sofrito). At the time, we didn’t really know what we were doing with the sofrito, so we used it to marinade the chicken and then grilled it in tin foil, but it turned out so, so good! Of course, no meal is complete without bebidas de ron, which we enjoyed immensely as well!

The night was waning fast, so we retired for the evening, our next day awaiting us, an adventure to Puerto Rico’s second biggest city, Ponce…

Spanish lesson for the day:

1. I’ve previously written about how helpful the verb queren (to want) is. Another one is tener (to have). Tengo means “I have,” and tenemos means, “We have.” For example, “Tengo una reserva para tres,” is, “I have a reservation for three [people].”
2. Another word the ladies at Teroverde taught me was puñeta, which seems to translate directly as, “Damn!” Like cabrón, it can also be used in many colorful ways.
3. Lastly, locals might ask you, “¿Como estas?” which means, “How are you?” You can simply respond, “Bueno” (masculine), or “Buena” (feminine) to say you’re doing well, but don’t forget to be polite and ask them as well with, “¿Y tu?”

Travel tips, day three:

1. If you want to go ziplining at Toroverdo, make sure to get your tickets ahead of time. They have other ziplines routes in addition to el monstruo, so go check them out!
2. Rice and beans always seem to be served together here, and servers might give you a confused look if you ask for one and not the other. So remember: “Quiero arroz y frijoles, por favor.”
3. Lastly, while we tend to have pretty good cell phone service in towns and cities, sometimes service cuts out. Your GPS should still keep working, but just keep this in mind.

Our second day (well, first full day in Puerto Rico), involved a well-deserved slow morning after the long travel day yesterday. We were also finally able to fully enjoy the magnificently gorgeous views from our AirBnB in the daytime: lush, green foliage; brightly colored flowers of purples, oranges, and reds; heavily forested mountains dotted with casas pequeñas; misty skies shrouding rounded peaks. Indeed, the name of our casa de AirBnB is Monte Niebla or Foggy Mountain. (I’m no expert, but it might just be possible to translate more poetically to Misty Mountain, but I’m not the editor over at Collins.)

The air also felt heavy with dew, perfumed by the aromas of dense greenery and flamboyant flowers, but the temperature was manageably cool (warm?) in the mid-60s, while roosters across the land sang their boisterously energetic songs, and I immediately fell in love with everything around me.

During the morning, I was also able to have a lovely Facetime chat with my parents as my dad regaled me with stories of his travels to Puerto Rico during his Navy days in the 1960s while I showed my mom some of the flowers and trees that surrounded us. (She just loves flowers!)

It was soon time to get our day started, and the top order was to stock our pantry, as we only had some

substandard Lipton’s green tea at our disposal. So we made our way down to a panadería down the street. Panadería translates directly as bakery, but the locals seem to use the word to refer to bakeries that are also mini food stores (tiendas de la comida?) that are slightly smaller than supermercados. But they will have your basic food supplies (but not in great variety) in addition to some delectably tasteful baked goods, so we stocked up on coffee (café), bread (pan), juices (jugos), and we found this lovely little tin of sardines in salsa and a bag of Doritos flavored with sour cream and onion, apparently.

Following shopping, we decided to make our way into Jayuya itself to have lunch. As we navigated our way there, we came across a sign—entirely in English—warning us that if we’re using GPS to not use the road that Google was directing us to take, since it was narrow and steep. We at first heeded the advice only to discover that that really was the only road to take to get into town. So, we braved it anyway, only to realize it was the exact same road we took (in pitch darkness) to get up the mountain to our casa yesterday night! Suddenly, the warning sign didn’t seem too imposing, and while there were sections of the road where the guard rails didn’t exactly seem very sturdy, it was all actually fine. (But, as I said yesterday, the less bravehearted might not necessarily be so keen.) Sometimes we were worried by the rain that seems to come and go in frantic bursts that last minutes, so we occasionally found ourselves pulling over for a bit just to be a little extra safe.

In town, we found un restaurante called La Casona, which translates roughly to large house or mansion. While we got to practice some more Spanish (“Una mesa para tres, por favor,”) there was nothing very glamorous about the place as its name suggested, as the food left much to be desired—the entire menu was just standard, fried bar food (las comidas fritas). Hilariously, however, when we got our check (nuestra cuenta), we saw on the receipt that our table was labeled gringos. A quick Google search seemed to suggest that the word isn’t exactly meant offensively in Puerto Rico as it might be in the states, but we all really didn’t care regardless and had a lovely little laugh about it. (Plus, I do think we need to lighten up about a few things in regards to language, and this is coming from a dyed-in-the-wool, bleeding heart progressive.)

Something else we discovered about using Google to find whatever we needed is that the search results didn’t necessarily seem to be entirely accurate. La Casona with its lackluster food might’ve had nearly 500 Google reviews averaging at 4.5 stars (maybe the drinks are better?), but the posted hours of operation might not exactly be correct. As we tried to search for any little coffee shop following lunch (Aaron and I had tolerated the Lipton’s green tea earlier, but poor Amy hadn’t had any caffeine), coffee shops that were supposed to be open either weren’t (maybe it was during siesta?) or no longer existed. However, it was quite enjoyable trying to find anything as we admired the town’s murals—colorful paintings of cats and roosters brightening buildings all across town.

Our next stop was La Destilería Craft Spirits, una destilería de ron (a rum distillery) located on the northern side of Jayuya. When we entered, the employee—who was terribly friendly—seemed surprised that we found the place at all, asking somewhat confused, “Did you find us on Google?” We were delighted, however, when we were treated to a tour of their operations, learning about how their aging barrels are purchased from Jack Daniels (apparently Jack Daniels only uses the barrels for a year and then gets rid of them), finding out how rum and moonshine is made, and lastly treating ourselves to a tasting of various varieties of their distilled spirits. (Obviously, we ended up purchasing two bottles to take home.)

Our last stop before returning home was to an Econo, a supermercado chain, where we picked up some steak and potatoes to grill back at Monte Niebla. You can also buy booze in supermercados, but they also have proper liquor stores as well.

And so, after enjoying some fine grilled foods, bubbly wine, and bebidas de ron con jugo y lima, our first full day was under our cinturones. Looking onwards, our next day would prove to be filled with thrills of the likes I’ve never experienced…

Spanish lesson for the day:

1. If you’re driving in Puerto Rico, you’ll want to learn these basics: póxima salida (next exit); izquierda (left); derecha (right); pare (stop); ceda (yield); solo (only); carril (lane); cerrado (closed); abierto (open); este, oeste, norte, sur (east, west, north, south); calle (street); carretera (highway); and trabajar (means to work, but if you see it conjugated in a sign, there’s probably some kind of road work ahead).
2. I wrote about the verb queren (to want) in my last post. But if you’re at a restaurant, you may want to use the slightly more friendly version of queren, the conditional conjugation: quisiera which translates to, “I would like,” or querríamos which translates to, “We would like.” 
3. Finally, many locals will greet you with, “Buenos dias,” “Buenas tardes,” “Beunas noches,” and so on, but you may also simply respond or greet someone with just, “Buenas,” and that’s sufficient enough to be friendly to say hello. And, in general, be friendly and say hello.

Travel tips, day two:

1. While we seem to be generally okay in our compact car, some of the roads within the center of the island are so steep and windy (or under construction and exist as washed out gravel), that a Jeep would’ve been useful. However, if you’re staying to the northern, more populated area of the island, any style car will probably do.
2. While you’re driving, be on the constant lookout for dogs, cats, roosters, chickens, cows, and horses. The domesticated animals here seem to be very used to cars slowing down for them and—in some cases—driving around them entirely as they lounge in the middle of the road.
3. Lastly, intersections aren’t necessarily commonly controlled by stop signs or traffic lights, and the process to navigate through them is a shared responsibility of being kind to one another. How novel.

For years and years and years, the only island I ever really knew or cared to visit was a damp, dark, wet, and (mostly) cold one north of France. And thus far, my four trips to the UK have been some of the most memorable and rewarding excursions I’ve ever enjoyed, and I don’t ever foresee a time I won’t return any time soon.

Until recently, visiting islands south of, say, 51 degrees north just didn’t interest me. However, when I would listen to my best friend Amy speak of how much she enjoyed places like Hawaii and Utilla, I started to become more keenly interested.

That said, I generally dislike hot and humid weather (which is why I’m so drawn to northern climates), and my memories of visiting Florida in July have consistently served as an unpleasant reminder of my inability to understand any rationale for living there. On the other hand, when Amy and I visited New Orleans in January some years back, the difference in the climate due to the time of year allowed me to reassess my opinions of visiting more tropical places.

Gradually—or perhaps practically suddenly overnight—it was my turn, at last, to venture farther south than I had ever gone before. And after much debate and research over which island to visit, we landed on Puerto Rico.

While many islands we considered had their own unique allures, Puerto Rico made a lot of sense because it’s easy for U.S. citizens to visit, there’s no currency exchange, we found a direct and inexpensive flight, and there are lots of cool things to see and do on a relatively small island. And so, at long last, here I am with my trusty traveling companions, Amy and Aaron, ready to continue our adventures!

Our first day here wasn’t really a day at all (but, as usual, we still managed to make the most of our time when we got here), as our 8am flight left behind the cold, icy, snowy tundra of Minneapolis (our flight delayed 15 minutes due to de-icing the plane) and some five hours later welcomed the modestly warm, hilariously humid (but a cool humid) greenhouse of San Juan, landing at 3:30pm local time.

After an ordeal to pick up our rental car that took way too long, by 6:30pm we finally were on the road to our charming AirBnB outside of Jayuya, a small town nestled in the mountainous central region of the island.

As the sun was setting fast, we needed to make our way to Jayuya pretty quickly, as our AirBnB host advised us not to drive on the mountain roads at night. The roads near and outside San Juan are generally very similar to any road you might find in any US state, except that the road signs are in Spanish and distance markers are in kilometers (but posted speed limits are in miles). That said, drivers drive with somewhat more of a reckless abandon, sometimes not using signals to indicate lane changes. And I still don’t really know if they follow rules for which lane is the passing lane (it’s the left one, apparently).

By the time we got into the mountains, it was quite dark, so we had to use our imagination for the views we’d get to enjoy the next day. The roads themselves are oftentimes fantastically narrow with barely enough room for two lanes of traffic and comically steep as they wind through hairpin turns. It sometimes reminded me of driving in Cornwall, England—roads snaking through corridors of trees and old stone walls, except with the added challenge of the mountainous terrain. We all were enjoying ourselves immensely, however, but I can sympathize with others who might not be as adventurous.

We arrived at our AirBnB and our host’s friend, Jose, was so friendly and helpful. He only spoke Spanish, and you’ll find that no matter how much you study up ahead of time, the real test is when you have to speak Spanish in a real situation. I fumbled to say, “un poco español.” He understood what I meant, but in that moment I couldn’t find the words to say the full sentence, “Hablamos un poco español. Lo siento,” even though I had practiced it hundreds of times at home. But, I do get a kick out of moments like these, and I wouldn’t miss exchanges like that for the world!

Our AirBnB is so gorgeous, though. It’s a somewhat substantial house for two bedrooms: tall ceilings, large sandy orange tiles adorning the floors throughout, quaint split-pane windows opening outwards onto a landscape we have yet to fully see. But the palm trees that enshroud the house no doubt give us some inkling as to what lies beyond.

We had such a long travel day that was interrupted with fussing with the car rental for far too long, that we were quite hungry, our hearty airport breakfast a distant memory. Much of the countryside closes pretty early, so it was challenging to find anything open at 9am, even grocery stores. So, after much searching (it was quite a joy to drive around regardless as we explored), we had to eat at, er, Burger King. (I’m so sorry.)

We somewhat enjoyed the adventure of this, however, as we got to practice some more Spanish as we ordered, “Quiero un Whopper con un Pepsi.” We ran out of napkins, however, and they were all stored on the other side of the counter. I was able to remember how to formulate the sentence, “Puedo tener un…” but had to look up the word for napkin. (It’s servilleta.) Aaron went to the counter (“Good luck,” I sarcastically encouraged), and it worked! It’s always fun when languages work.

We made our way back up the mountain to our AirBnB, had a quick swim in our pool, and admired the curious sounds of the wilderness around us. There was one particular sound we had never heard before. It was a kind of a sing-songy, high pitched “bo-WEE” sound, the two syllables separated by an major sixth, joined together by an elegant portamento, and then a response separated by a minor sixth in the same fashion.

A quick google search (“nighttime sounds of Puerto Rico”), quickly yielded that these cute little tunes are sung by equally cute little frogs called coquís (the name itself an onomatopoeia of their song, “ko-KWEE).

And so, we retired to our casa enveloped by luscious trees and serenaded by the graceful ariettas of the coquis, ready to begin the next day anew.

Travel tips, day one:

1. Learn some Spanish, even if you’re staying near bigger cities. I highly recommend Duolingo, a downloadable app on your phone. I worked my way pretty thoroughly through the first two units so that I know how to ask for something without having to think too hard (it’s one thing in practice, though). Reading will come faster, on the other hand, and you’ll be able to figure out road signs, menus, and other signage with much more ease.
2. Don’t ever use Avis car rental. We had reserved our car weeks ago, but by the time we arrived to pick it up, we first had to stand in line for an hour (not joking) to finalize our reservation, and then we had to wait in a waiting area for an additional 40 minutes to wait for them to bring our car (it was still being cleaned). I could tell the Avis employees were also frustrated, as clearly their leadership needs to do a hefty re-assessment of the monumental failures in whatever non-process the company currently uses to get people on the road. And to top it all off, they have this policy where if your license is void because you recently renewed it (as was my case, even though I had the renewal papers to show for it), they don’t let you drive. I was terribly sad as I always get a kick out of driving in parts of the world I’ve never been to.
3. Get vaccinated and wear your mask. It’ll just make things a lot easier for you and it’s also just plain considerate in all the names of decency, respect, and care for not only yourself but everyone else around you. Puerto Rico takes COVID far more seriously than even liberal bastians like Minneapolis and Saint Paul. But there should be nothing political about this. It’s safe, easy, fast, free, and you’ll save us all lots of grief. So I don’t want to hear any more excuses. Get the damn shots. All three of them. End of story. Goodbye.

Spanish lesson for the day:

1. At the very least, you gotta learn the basics for sure: Hola. Adios. Muchas gracias. Buenos días. Buenas tardes. Buenas noches. Lo siento. Disculpe.
2. The verb queren (to want) will get you pretty far. To say, “I want,” all you have to say is, “Quiero,” and for, “We want,” say, “Queremos.”
3. The phrase, “No hablo español muy bien,” will also be helpful. It’s better than asking, “¿Habla inglés?” because assuming they do is so presumptuous.

On our last full day in Boulder, we made good on our word and got an earlier start than usual. We quickly stopped at a coffee shop called Amante (it was fine; nothing spectacular) and then made our way to the Mount Sanitas Trailhead off of Sunshine Canyon Drive on Boulder’s west side. This hike came highly recommended from our friends, Bob and Stacy, who described the hike in an email as a “fairly steep climb.” It’s also another hike that I’d recommend you save for later in your visit to Boulder, as–like the hike through the Flatirons–it’s a quite strenuous yet rewarding hike that allows for more spectacular views of Boulder and its surrounding environs, and experiencing this hike early might cause all other hikes to pale in comparison (like the Viewpoint Trail, as lovely as that hike is).

In my previous post, I gushed and gushed and gushed about how much I adored the hike through the Flatirons. Indeed, that hike ended up being my favorite of the bunch we experienced this week. The Mount Sanitas hike, on the other hand, is also quite lovely, and I also highly recommend it, but where the Flatirons hike would get a solid 5 stars, Sanitas I’d rate a 4.5. So, still very enjoyable, and you must experience it, but it’s not a hike I could do over and over and over again and not tire of it. (I can’t say the same of the Flatirons hike where I would never ever tire of it no matter how many times I’ve hiked it.)

Whereas the Flatirons hike generally takes visitors through densely wooded areas that on occasion open up to treeless, rocky mountainsides and spectacular vistas, the Mount Sanitas hike is more frequently in the open air with even more vistas that provide equally spectacular views. There are also more opportunities to climb atop rock formations to enjoy views of Colorado from ever higher heights. But, I suppose what made the Flatirons hike just that little bit more special was the fact that the vistas were fewer; I rather preferred hiking through wooded areas that would only on occasion open up to surprisingly incredible views. Mount Sanitas, conversely, provided nearly constant, remarkable views of the Colorado landscape no matter where we were on the trail, so the views become a little bit like wallpaper or eating a fifth Snickers bar: wallpaper and a fifth Snickers bar are both quite lovely all the same, but you get desensitized to the beauty of it all if your views aren’t obscured from time to time by majestically tall trees that spice the air with that fresh piney aroma.

After reaching the summit of Mount Sanitas (which doesn’t seem nearly as spectacular as the summit on the Third Flatiron but it’s still lovely all the same), we got to continue onwards (rather than up and down again, retracing our steps back over previously travelled trail) in a giant loop. I do prefer a giant loop, but this particular loop brought us back to the beginning of the trail via the Sanitas Valley Trail. The valley itself is quite lovely, providing more lovely views of the Front Range and the Flatirons and Mount Sanitas, but it’s just all so wide open and in the open air over an unimaginative, dry, gravel road that just made me feel so bored. I guess I just prefer my hikes to be through densely wooded areas, and so maybe if you prefer hikes through wide open spaces, you’ll enjoy the Mount Sanitas hike more than I did.

But, let me conclude on a positive note, as I feel that I’ve been particularly negative about the Mount Sanitas hike. It’s a really very, very gorgeous hike, and you really should check it out. Just know that I preferred the hike up the Third Flatiron to Mount Sanitas, but also know that I’ll probably hike Mount Sanitas again some day.

Following our hike, we made our way back to town to enjoy one last adventure through Pearl Street. We put in our names on a list for a table at West Flanders Brewing Company, and to pass the time as we waited for a table, Amy and I went into one of those shops that sells that stuff derived from that plant. (Honestly, it’s all so ridiculous. Just legalize the damn stuff already. I hope Minnesota isn’t far behind. Governor Walz supports legalization, so all it will take is to flip the state senate to the DFL and we can carry on.)

The sun was setting fast as we enjoyed our final meal in Boulder at West Flanders Brewing Company. The brewhouse had a robust selection of beers (they had a peach sour that was quite mouth-puckeringly good and also a lovely claret barrel aged sour that had lovely overtones of red wine tannins), and their predictable pub fare continued to inform our impressions of whether Boulder is a town for foodies. (It’s not.) It was over dinner, however, where we were reminded of the dangerously destructive forest fires that were raging on nearby. We could smell the smoke and see it in the air, we saw the sun dyed a curiously unnatural dark orange, and sad, grey, wispy flakes of ash slowly and delicately landed into our glasses of beer. Yet Boulder carried on, and so did we, almost as if nothing untoward was happening at all.

The destruction of these fires is on such a scale that it’s difficult to comprehend. Whole forests of old growth just wiped out essentially overnight, gone for generations. Entire towns and cities evacuated. So many homes lost. Thousands of people affected. Whole ecosystems destroyed. It’s all so, so sad. I don’t really know what else to say except that thoughts and prayers are (frankly) bullshit. We have long moved beyond platitudes, and it is time for governments to get their act together and make swift and decisive and binding action on climate change before it’s too late (if it’s not too late already). The Paris Climate Accords are a noble start and the U.S. must rejoin the agreement right away. That said, the accords aren’t nearly good enough, and we all must work tirelessly to strengthen and broaden the agreement. And anyone who still thinks that none of this a problem is a moron and is morally bankrupt and has forfeited all privileges to represent any semblance of ethical behavior or call themselves Christian. The actions we take now (actions that should’ve been implemented in the 1970s) will determine the world our children and grandchildren will live in, whereas inaction or insufficient action will doom so much life on this planet, and I will lose all hope (what little is left) that humans will survive the 21st century at all. Prove me wrong, but right now I don’t think our chances are very high. No matter what happens, Planet Earth will be just fine. Just give her a million years or two by herself without humans mucking about (a blink of an eye on the cosmic calendar), and she will have regenerated herself back to the beautifully green and blue orb suspended in space, untouched by the horrible nightmare of humanity. Earth is going nowhere, but if we don’t get serious now, humans might find themselves violently shaken off, becoming a sentence-long footnote in the galactic history book, a species that barely managed to survive a few tens of thousands of years.

I’m not sure how to pivot away from all that gloom, so I apologize for the whip-lash inducing transition that exists between the previous paragraph and this one. That said, if Boulder has showed me at least one important glimmer of hope amongst a pandemic and unprecedented forest fires, it’s that humans are capable of existing harmoniously to make decisions that increase our chances of surviving the future, whether it’s: everyone wearing face masks during a pandemic; public refuse bins separated out by recyclables, compostables, and landfillables; a strong bicycle infrastructure; everyone just being, well, terribly nice to each other; and any other innumerable things Boulder and communities like her are doing now to save ourselves from ourselves, then I think we might be okay.

So, go visit Boulder if you can. It’s lovely and fantastic and beautiful and welcoming, and it’s all those things that make traveling enriching and stunning, eye opening and mind broadening, and just plain fun and entertaining.

Until we meet again…

Our fifth full day in Colorado began very lazily. So lazy, in fact, that I was able to catch up on my blogging in the morning and post my update for day 3. While our morning might’ve started slowly, our fifth full day here did not disappoint in the least. In fact, it was on this day that we got to experience what ended up being my favorite hike of all the ones we did: the Flatirons.

Before we got to the Flatirons, however, we began the day by meeting up together at Amy and Aaron’s Air BnB over hot apple cider mixed with bourbon. We then made our way to pick up our brunch orders from Alpine Modern at the cafe’s University Hill location (there’s another location on Pearl Street that seems to temporarily be closed) to be enjoyed back at the Air BnB. I’ve mentioned this before, but there are certain things that COVID has created that I do hope stick around: one of them is the use of paperless menus that guests can download via QR code on their phone, and the other is the increasing abundance of online ordering that has cropped up all over the place. I elected to order the prosciutto tartine, and it was a pleasingly light fare that very nearly gave me something to write home about. Of all the places we have dined at so far (and recall that so far our dining experiences have been middlingly average), Alpine Modern is one of the restaurants I’d actually probably seek out gain. The cafe offers a diverse selection of tartines, burritos, sandwiches, baked goods, and hot and cold drinks, all lovingly prepared and quite tasty. That said, I wouldn’t say I’m totally blown away by Alpine Modern (as I only just very nearly wrote home about it, even though I’m writing about it now), so don’t raise your expectations too high, but I do think it’s worth going out of the way for at least once while you visit Boulder.

Following brunch, we made our way to Chautauqua Park to hike the Flatirons. We chose the best possible day to hike the Flatirons, as the weather was clearly on our side and we also felt increasingly climatized to the higher elevation. I’d highly recommend you save this hike for later in your visit to Boulder as we did, as not only is it one of the more strenuous hikes we accomplished on our adventures, but it also is just so exhilaratingly bracing–taking visitors over steep grades, past rocky mountainsides, and through picturesque forests to the most stunning vistas–that any other hike in or near Boulder might pale in comparison.

The first section of the hike takes visitors through a grassy, prairie-like landscape (I always found prairies boring) that from a distance would look to be a pleasant, effortless jaunt towards the majestic Flatirons but in fact offers a strenuous workout up a deceptively steep incline. We found ourselves pausing perhaps two or three times during this section to hydrate and allow our heart rates to drop a bit before we carried on. Eventually we reached the Flatirons Loop trail that would connect us to the Third Flatirons Descent trail, and it was this section of the trail that I found most engaging, as it’s more heavily forested and great sections of the trail were chiseled out of sharp, steep inclines up sheer, rocky ridges.

What I also loved about this hike was how the whole trek wasn’t a matter of going there and back again, retracing steps after reaching a summit. Instead, the Flatirons Loop trail, er, loops (obviously) in a circle so that we didn’t have to look at the same thing twice. (I do have a notoriously short attention span when it comes to hiking, so whenever I can avoid a trek there and back again, the better.) That said, the Third Flatirons Descent trail is a spur where we had no choice to go there and back again, up and and then back down. However, the whole hike up and down this section was so stirringly breathtaking that it was difficult not to become intoxicated by the crisp, fresh air that was spiced with a delicate aroma of fir, spruce, and pine, nor was it easy to resist becoming astonished by ever increasing heights that provided impressive vistas of the gorgeous, mountainous landscape that epitomizes everyone’s stereotypical recollection of what all of Colorado looks like.

And the summit itself provides views of Colorado that are so grippingly and arousingly magnificent and just so mesmerizingly and enthrallingly gorgeous that I don’t think I’ll be able to find the words to describe how lovely it was to see Colorado from such heights. And if I do happen to find the words for just how indescribably beautiful and impressive the view atop the Third Flatiron was, I’d worry that I’d unnecessarily raise your expectations so high that I’d ruin the whole experience for you when you make the trek yourself as you’d discover that in actuality I’d succumbed to overt hyperbole due to being drunk off of crisp, mountainous aromas of fir, spruce, and pine and hypnotized by wide, horizonless views of the red-brown hues of Colorado’s landscape liberally populated with dense, lusciously green forests. So, instead of continuing to fail in finding the right superlatives to describe the hike through the Flatirons, all I really can find myself saying is simply that you must fit this hike into your visit to Boulder. For if you don’t, I shall be very angry with you. And so, when words fail, a picture might be worth a thousand (apparently), so here’s a video I made when we reached the summit of the Third Flatiron:

Following our exhilarating hike, we made our way back through the rest of the Flatirons Loop (where at one point we found ourselves standing about 25 feet from mule deer that were so tame they weren’t bothered in the least to prance off into the distance away from us), and concluded our hike back at Chautauqua Park. We had worked up quite an appetite and were in the mood for Italian, so we discovered a restaurant called Pasta Jay’s. There are two kinds of Italian restaurants in this country. One is the fancy kind where diners are served dishes where the surface area of the plate is larger than the area taken up by food: bits of some red-purple sauce dribbled artistically around geometrically arranged cubes of food that aren’t naturally shaped like cubes. And then there is the “working class” kind (I don’t mean that pejoratively), where diners are served heaping portions of pasta drowned in red or white sauces at tables with red-checkered tablecloths. Pasta Jay’s was definitely the later kind, and it was exactly what we needed after a long, bracing hike through the Flatirons. I suppose I’d recommend you check out Pasta Jay’s. It’s certainly way better than, say, Olive Garden, but it’s no where near the deliciousness of a place like Trattoria Pesce Pasta in New York, for example.

As we were sitting outside on account of COVID, the weather turned especially cold pretty quickly. It was a curious sensation as we grabbed ice cold knives and forks and stabbed our hot, hot pasta dishes that steamed in the cold, cold air. The bottle of red wine we got likewise also found itself quickly chilled, and we joked that we wanted the staff to microwave the wine to bring it back to room temperature.

We concluded the night with some sips of bourbon at Amy and Aaron’s Air BnB where we also decided that for our last day in Boulder we wanted to get going a little more quickly than we did today and really pack some stuff in. So check back soon and I’ll tell you about our hike through Mount Salinas, a visit to one of those shops, dinner at a place called West Flanders, truffles at a shop called Piece, Love & Chocolate, and a view that provided one last ominous reminder that Colorado was on fire.

If you take a look at all my blog posts about traveling, you’ll see that (with two exceptions out of the nine total destinations I’ve blogged about) I prefer to travel during the off season, especially in October and November. This has so many advantages: fewer lines into places; fewer crowds; fewer children about; cooler weather (depending on the hemisphere). It’s just–on the whole–so much better compared to traveling during the summer months. And so it was at Rocky Mountain National Park. It was still a little on the busy side, despite the fact it was a Wednesday afternoon right in the middle of October, but Amy, Aaron, and I all dreaded to think what the park would’ve been like, for example, on a Saturday immediately following Memorial Day.

To get to Rocky Mountain National Park from Boulder, we elected to take Highway 36 all the way there. It was really a very lovely drive. As I’ve mentioned before, Boulder is situated just east of the Front Range, the first range of mountains that travelers approach when navigating east to west along the 40th parallel. While this particular range is majestic in its own right, the majesty of these mountains only grows the deeper travelers head into the Rockies. The stretch of Highway 36 between Lyons and Estes Park is especially striking as the mountains continue to reach higher and higher. There are also some lovely homes to look at along this stretch, houses precariously (but probably sturdily) perched on stilts or carved right out of the steep grade of the arid and jagged terrain. The highway also takes you right past Estes Park Gateway (really just a glorified parking lot that has a giant, flat, erect stone with ESTES PARK carved into its surface using a serious font), which allows for stunning views of Mount Olympus, a wide mountain difficult to miss that reaches an elevation of 8,800 feet.

While in Estes Park, we stopped for lunch. On account of the heavy wind, we couldn’t dine outside (and we refused to dine inside), so we found a place called Ed’s Cantina and Grill that offered curb-side ordering from their menu of mainly pub style fare. We enjoyed our lunch in our van (windows cracked), and while I say enjoyed our lunch, it was more that we resigned ourselves to more mediocrity. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, our dining experiences in Colorado have yet to completely blow us out of the water (or blow us out of the mountains, as it were). There was nothing offensively bad about my bison burger and fried green beans at Ed’s, it was just middlingly and slightly frustratingly average. The food got the job done with minimal flare, zest, or imagination.

It was also in Estes Park where we saw worrying views of the Cameron Peak fire, huge plumes of smoke billowing in the nearby distance. It’s the largest of the four fires currently devastating northern Colorado (the fire just surpassed 200,000 acres at the time of my writing this), and it’s such a terrifying sight. So, please be safe, Coloradans. I do hope that these fires will be contained soon, and I hope that your lives will be disrupted as little as possible.

We eventually made our way to Rocky Mountain National Park, entering at the northeast entrance by the Beaver Meadows Visitor Center. As I mentioned earlier, we dreaded the thought of what the park would be like at its height during the summer months, as even on a Wednesday afternoon in the middle of October, we still had about a 10-15 minute wait behind 20 or so cars before it was our turn to buy a pass and head in. The park, of course, is huge and sprawling, and it’s impossible to see everything in one day let alone an entire week. We were keen on hiking to a waterfall, so after some research, we discovered Alberta Falls, which is accessible via a short 1.6 mile hike (round trip). The hike to the falls is actually quite easy, as it’s mostly downhill. The hike back up, however, was actually a little challenging, as we still found ourselves out of breath on account of still not being fully climatized to the higher elevation. Despite the (really very minor) challenges of enduring the hike (and despite the fact that there were still a few too many other people on the trail and by the falls even though it was a Wednesday afternoon in the middle of October), I’d still highly recommend this hike, especially if you’re looking for an essentially easy hike to a modest waterfall. The falls itself aren’t nearly the widest, nor the tallest, nor the most interesting, but it will satisfy your waterfall fix easily and with minimal fuss. Here’s a video from my phone that I made of the falls; I’m filming from the very top of the falls, sitting on a ledge of rock that provided a satisfyingly close view of the flowing water.

Following our mini hike, we drove back towards the Beaver Meadows Visitor Center via the road we came in on to hike the falls, Bear Lake Road. Instead of heading out of the park right away, we drove northwest on Highway 36 towards Dear Mountain Trailhead and then looped back around to the southeast on Highway 34 past Sheep Lakes (tiny ponds that would easily go unnoticed) and Fall River Visitor Center. It was on this drive where we got to see a stately, lone elk on a hillside, and later on we saw a whole herd of elk grazing. Moments like these–seeing wildlife carrying on with their lives in such a picturesque region of the world–become really quite memorable. Obviously, I wouldn’t trade living in the city for the world, but there are times where the option of living in a state like Colorado near such gorgeous landscapes has quite an irresistible allure.

Following our time in the Rockies, we made our way back to Boulder and concluded our evening with a dinner at the Post Brewing Company. And, as you’ll expect me to remark after so many mediocre meals, it was fine. We enjoyed our cocktails with our whole fried chicken with sides of mashed potatoes and mac and cheese, but–again–it all was just discouragingly average. Not terrible, of course; just plain and meeting expectations.

We have two full days left in Boulder, so check back soon, as I’ll next be writing about our adventures hiking the Flatirons.

Quick editorial note: So, I’m so sorry. I made a mistake. On my posts for days 2 and 3, I had referred to the Flatirons as if they were this sprawling range of foothills. After more research, I discovered that the name only refers to the five large sandstone formations that dominate the foothills on the west side of Boulder. (I’m so sorry.) So, when we ventured into the foothills on days 2 and 3, driving on Left Hand Canyon Drive, James Canyon Drive, Peak to Peak Highway, and Magnolia Road, we were actually in what’s called the Front Range, the range of mountains in the Rockies that runs from Casper, Wyoming to Pueblo, Colorado. I’ve since gone back and made those corrections in my posts for days 2 and 3, striking through the error and adding the correct geographical name.

Okay, now that that’s over, let’s carry on…

On our third morning in Boulder, we decided that we wanted to have a super hearty breakfast. Our research online led us first to a place on Pearl Street called Snooze, self-proclaimed as “An AM Eatery.” However, the wait for a table was 30 minutes, and we didn’t want to bother with that, so we went next door to Foolish Craig’s Cafe, which had no wait and was apparently famous for its crepes. If you recall from my previous post, I was worried that when we ate at Bar Taco that we were in store for a week of generally okay/fine food albeit it with great service. Foolish Craig’s, sadly, continued this trend. Mark my words, though: it’s not that the food is bad or the staff is horrible and dining out in Boulder is a waste of time, it’s just that the food and dining experience is just, well, fine. It’s not offensive but it’s also not ravingly good. It’s just nothing to write home about (even though I’m writing about it now). I could go into the details of our time at Foolish Craig’s if I wanted to, but before I could finish saying, “At Foolish Craig’s Aaron and I got the southern breakfast combo and a bloody Mary and it was all fine, and Amy got a breakfast burrito that was mediocre,” you’d be long asleep, so I’ll just carry on writing about what we did after breakfast and stop wasting your time.

Following breakfast, we visited one restaurant that I do recommend you check out (and one that the clerk at Alpaca Store and More in Nederland had recommended we check out), a certain tea shop located in a building strikingly adorned with colorful mosaics called the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse located downtown right on Boulder Creek, a stony waterway that babbles its way west to east through Boulder’s midsection just north of Arapahoe Avenue. I unfortunately can’t speak to the food at the teahouse, as we had just loaded ourselves up on a bunch of mediocre standard American breakfast fare, but their tea selection is absolutely enchanting. I opted for a pot of Himalayan Golden, a lighter black tea that really does shimmer golden in the sunlight and which the menu described correctly as “mellow, smooth, and buttery.” I also elected to have a mixed berry cobbler (which was maybe actually just a tad bit too sweet, and this remark coming from someone who adores sugar) and also took home some loose leaf tea: a Boulder breakfast blend and an herbal tea called Tranquility. So, again, I would definitely go out of your way to enjoy some tea at Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse.

Following our pleasantly lovely tea, we wanted to visit Chautauqua Park over a bottle of rosé. We decided to take a walk there from the teahouse via a route along the Boulder Creek Path which traces Boulder Creek, where we got to see such sites as the Boulder Bandshell and Boulder Public Library. We then walked south on 6th Street, cut over to Columbia Cemetery on Pleasant Street (I do love a good walk through a cemetery), and then finished the trek to Chautauqua by walking south on 8th Street. This walk actually ended up being a little bit strenuous on account of a long hill on 8th street with a somewhat steep grade. Even on our third full day in Boulder in these higher elevations, we still found ourselves out of breath over walks that normally wouldn’t be so strenuous. We kept hoping, however, that our bodies would soon adapt. (And, indeed, they will!)

Chautauqua Park is a modest, small, square-shaped park with trees and shrubs on its perimeter with few options for shade anywhere else. The park does, however, provide some lovely views of the Flatirons (those five, large sandstone formations that dominate the foothills on Boulder’s west side), and if you can manage to catch some shade, the park makes for a lovely, lovely picnic. The word chautauqua comes from the Iroquois language, and it translates to a bag tied in the middle, and this word accurately describes the shape of Chautauqua Lake in New York, where the Chautauqua Institution was created in 1874. This institution started as an organization to promote the “professionalization of teaching,” but rapidly broadened its mission to include “earnest, but high-minded, activities that aimed at intellectual and moral self-improvement and civic involvement.” This movement rapidly spread across the United States with chautauquas forming across the country, including Boulder, where today it exists as the Colorado Chautauqua Association, a non profit organization that leases and preserves 26 acres of grounds and various other facilities on and near Chautauqua Park.

It was here at this park over our bottle of rosé, however, where we all felt we were suddenly witnessing an episode of Portlandia. Nearby was a young man, shirtless, wearing ill-fitted pants that were awkwardly cinched at the waist and overly baggy everywhere else, and he was doing yoga while his friend was “entranced” in a meditation using a pose that Buddha knows well. A little while later, two other people came up to the pair, and they all talked about all sorts of New Age nonsense that would make Marianne Williamson feel right at home, and all spoken in that accent that’s a mixture of west coast surfer dude, stoned pot head, and Bill and Ted: “Ooooh, yeaaah, wooow… that’s tooootally aaaawesome. I went vegan about 10 years ago, and it cured my cancer, maaan; it was aaaawesome. And, yeeaaaah, I live in this house with six other guys. Yeaaaah, it’s so aaaawesome. Two are yoga instructors, one’s a massage therapist, two are healers, and one’s an astrologer. Woooooah, are you a Libra? That’s soooo Libra what you did just then. And, duuuuude… you should totally try reiki. I mean, like, mind blooooown. It totally aligned all my chakras. So aaaawesome.”

All right, I might be exaggerating a tad, but seriously: the whole conversation we overheard could have been transcribed word for word and used in a Portandia episode. It made us chuckle a bit, and at that moment we knew that Boulder’s reputation as a communal, hippy, artist town was now validated with a little grain of truth. And I mean that as a sincerely warmhearted endorsement of Boulder’s unique and vibrant culture with no malice nor hostility intended.

Following our bottle of rosé in the park, we concluded our evening with a bowl of ramen at Chimera Ramen, and it was so disappointing I’m not even going to bother writing anything else about it.

At this point our adventures were already quickly approaching halfway over, but we still had so much to do and to see. My next post will summarize our visit to Rocky Mountain National Park.

Quick editorial note: So, I’m so sorry. I made a mistake. On my posts for days 2 and 3, I had referred to the Flatirons as if they were this sprawling range of foothills. After more research, I discovered that the name only refers to the five large sandstone formations that dominate the foothills on the west side of Boulder. So when we thought we were exploring the Flatirons, we actually were exploring the Front Range, the range of mountains in the Rockies that runs from Casper, Wyoming to Pueblo, Colorado. You’ll notice those corrections as you read on.

After we discovered that we had barely actually driven on Left Hand Canyon Drive during our excursions from the previous day (the James Canyon Drive that we did find ourselves on was still well worth it), and on account of the sudden snowfall that obscured our views of the Flatirons Front Range that day, we wanted to spend part of today re-exploring the Flatirons. But before we got to any of that, Kevan (Amy and Aaron’s Air BnB host in the Lower Arapahoe neighborhood of Boulder) recommended a hike on the Viewpoint Trail.

If you’re like me and you generally dislike most people, you will love a hike on the Viewpoint Trail, especially on a weekday, because since the trailhead doesn’t have a parking lot for cars making it obvious that there is a trailhead (or anything, for that matter) nearby, I get the impression that most people would rather enjoy a hike that is clearly marked with a parking lot rather than one is not, therefore attracting hoards of people. As such, I counted probably four other people on the entire hike, so not only did the hike provide gorgeous, gorgeous views of Boulder, but we were also able to enjoy the hike with minimal interactions with other people.

The trail itself starts in the Lower Arapahoe neighborhood near Eben G. Fine Park (there’s another entrance right off of University Avenue as well), and while its location isn’t marked clearly with a parking lot, you can still find small diamond-shaped signs attached to telephone poles pointing the way. The trail is also a nice “warm up” trail, I suppose–one that I recommend you compete early on during your visit to Boulder: it’s short and generally unchallenging and doesn’t have great sections where you have to navigate a trail marked only by stones and boulders and no path. That said, we did find ourselves needing to stop and rest occasionally, but that was more on account of how we’re not fully adjusted to the high elevation. (Apparently, it can take up a to a week for the body to catch up and make enough red blood cells to carry enough oxygen should you find yourself in an elevation higher than you’re used to.)

As we made our way from the base of the trail to the summit, not only were we treated to some of the best views of Boulder, we also got to admire some of the local flora. I was particularly fascinated with these hearty succulents with stiff, spiky leaves that radiated outward to a spiky point. Later I looked them up, and I believe they are called plains yucca or yucca glauca. It was too late in the season to see these particular yucca with their tall, blossoming stalks, but these plants growing enthusiastically in dry desert-like soil did serve as a reminder that, according to the Köppen climate classification system, Boulder is situated in a climate that is technically semi-arid and sometimes humid subtropical.

Once we reached the summit of the Viewpoint Trail, we were treated to a unassuming lookout point that not only provided us with more stunning views of Boulder and its surrounding environs, but also provided us with some placards that informed us of the prehistoric history of the landscape, how Boulder came to be settled by European invaders, and how much of the surrounding landscape around the city is protected and won’t be developed. So, all in all, the Viewpoint Trail has been a real highlight of our trip so far, and I highly recommend a visit.

Following the trek back down the trail, we found ourselves a tad bit peckish, so we decided to walk into town to check out one of the many restaurants Pearl Street has to offer. It had been quite windy on the hike, but by the time we got farther into town, the wind had died down. (In fact, we were a little worried about finding a restaurant where we could eat outside, on account of COVID.) We were very excited to try out a Himalayan restaurant called Sherpa’s, but they bizarrely told us they were only seating inside due to the wind. When we told them the wind had died down, they still wouldn’t seat us. So we tried elsewhere, remarking under our breath, “I’m sorry. Isn’t the service industry suffering right now? Did they really turn us away because it was windy outside but is no longer?”

Fortunately, there were countless other restaurants downtown that were seating outside, so we decided to check out a restaurant called Bar Taco. I was disappointed to discover that they were a chain, having established locations in 12 different states across the country, but everything was still fine just the same. They’ve joined an ever growing number of businesses where visitors can download the menu from their phone using a QR code affixed to the table (remember when we used to make fun of QR codes?) in order to minimize needlessly touching things like pieces of paper with menus typed on them. It also helps minimize talking to other people to continue mitigating the spread of COVID: we were able to order on our phones and also pay on our phones, and should we have needed anything, we could have either just placed a laminated card in a tall stand on the table or just ordered more food and drink through the online menu. I got to enjoy a roasted duck rice bowl and a bourbon drink called an old thymer (basically a manhattan except with thyme, lemon, and orange added). As I said, everything was fine. The service was great, of course, but the food basically only met my expectations for what food should be. It was actually at this point in our journeys that I was worried that average food with great service was a portent of things to come for the rest of our stay here.

Following lunch, we hopped in Amy and Aaron’s rental van (windows down; masks on) to drive the full length of Left Hand Canyon Drive. To do that, I’d recommend you do what we did: we drove north on Highway 7 and then north on Highway 35 all the way to a small town called Altona. Left Hand Canyon Drive begins in this town and winds ever so slowly through the Flatirons Front Range, tracing Left Hand Creek as you go, and terminating in another small town called Ward where the drive meets up with Peak to Peak Highway.

Something we’ve been told by not only Kevan but also my own Air BnB host was that we arrived in Colorado in time for peak autumn colors. However, we’ve consistently been disappointed by what colors actually are on display. Perhaps we actually just missed peak color season altogether, as all we’ve seen so far are mildly lackluster colors of sleepy sunshine yellows. On the other hand, a couple weeks ago on the North Shore in Minnesota, for example, we had just been treated to blazing oranges, crimson reds, and brilliant golds that all majestically painted the landscape in an eclectic celebration of maximally saturated color. I’m not sure if the Flatirons Front Range just don’t didn’t have any variety of trees beyond ones that yield a listless selection of unimaginative yellow hues, but–all thing’s considered–the autumn colors have been ever so slightly disappointing. That said, a drive through Left Hand Canyon Drive is still well worth it, as the road winds and twists and turns through the rocky foothills of the Flatirons Front Range, providing views of incredible summits, sheer rocky drops, crisp refreshing creeks, and dense forests of tall, stately evergreens.

Once we arrived at the western terminus of Left Hand Canyon Drive in the (frankly) dumpy town called Ward, we decided to head south on Peak to Peak Highway, which took us to a lovely town (that wasn’t dumpy) called Nederland. If you want to experience a cute, small, mountain town at its best, I’d recommend an excursion to Nederland. We initially stopped to energize ourselves on tea and coffee, but the shop that interested us, Blue Owl Books, was closed for the day; a real shame since the shop exuded a mountainy charm with its whimsical name, walls of books, and enticing menu of baked and caffeinated goods. Around the corner, however, we discovered an alpaca shop that exuded even more mountainy charm called Alpaca Store and More. We got to meet Roy Burkett, the owner, who purchased the shop some years ago, he himself a folk musician from Alabama. We also met the shop’s counterpart who works there only on Mondays (and I’m so sorry, I’m forgetting her name, but please don’t infer from my lapse that she was in any way unmemorable), who had a knack for guessing shoe sizes and sweater sizes. After enjoying a thorough perusal of socks, sweaters, blankets, and small stuffed toy alpacas, I myself found myself walking out of the store with a cozy, cozy alpaca zip-up sweater and a pair of alpaca socks. Amy and Aaron likewise purchased a diverse selection of socks that surely will keep us all warm on cold Minnesota winter nights. And while the wares are on the expensive side, please remember that the goods all come handmade from Peru and will last a lifetime. So, basically, do go to Alpaca Store and More, as it’s absolutely lovely!

Following our visit to Nederland and on account of construction on the main road, Highway 119, that connects Nederland to Boulder, we decided to head back on Magnolia Road instead. Much of this road is gravel, and so it allows for a serene and tranquil drive through the foothills where we got to see more incredible vistas as well as expansive ranches that usually had bison roaming the fields. At one point, we stopped so I might try to pet a bison, but they are not exactly warm to human guests and I’d recommend you just stay in your car. I tried to slowly approach towards a bison (who was behind a fence that probably wouldn’t hold them anyway), eyes averted away, hand outstretched, palm up, as a gesture of good faith (all I needed was a literal olive branch to be even more welcoming), but the bison only gave two, fierce, upward thrusts of its head and neck to tell me that they weren’t amused. So, I stayed in the car for the remainder of the drive.

Shortly after the encounter with the bison, however, we were treated to a glimpse of some elk that were nearby. We even got to listen to their calls: a kind of high pitched whistle accompanied by a low grumble, two sounds happening at once. However, just as the one bison wasn’t a fan of my approach earlier, they also weren’t a fan of the elks’ presence nor their somewhat eerie yet musical vocalizations, as the bison chased the elk away from their turf. Here’s a video I made on my phone that captured the calls of the elk:

Our day concluded with some chat and beers at Amy and Aaron’s Air BnB. We frequently found ourselves quite tired by the end of the day, often retiring for the evening by 9:30pm or so, even though it felt like we didn’t do all that much. We chalked up our energy levels to the higher elevation, however, as a few thousand feet really does make a difference.

Check back soon where I shall write about what we did on our third full day here: more food on Pearl Street and a stroll through town by Columbia Cemetery and Chautauqua Park, where we found out that Boulder really does have hippies and communists in addition to artists.

Stray observations:

1. While in Nederland, I saw a bus stop, which I thought was out of place in a small, small mountain town. However, I was pleased to see that there actually is a bus line that runs east/west from Boulder all the way to Eldora. Sadly, it appears the bus only comes once an hour.
2. Even out in the mountains away from liberal Boulder, Biden/Harris signs were aplenty, which was reassuring.

Quick editorial note: So, I’m so sorry. I made a mistake. On my posts for days 2 and 3, I had referred to the Flatirons as if they were this sprawling range of foothills. After more research, I discovered that the name only refers to the five large sandstone formations that dominate the foothills on the west side of Boulder. So when we thought we were exploring the Flatirons, we actually were exploring the Front Range, the range of mountains in the Rockies that runs from Casper, Wyoming to Pueblo, Colorado. You’ll notice those corrections as you read on.

Waking up on my first morning in Boulder, I discovered that I clearly had a sleep deficit of about 10 hours. So, accounting for that and for the time I needed for my mandatory three morning teas and for my usual checkin with my favorite political blog (don’t vote for Trump, whatever you do, or I shall be very angry and shall never forgive you), I don’t think I actually was out the door until 11:00. But slow, slow mornings are (sometimes) just the right thing when on holiday.

It was on this first morning in Boulder that I finally got to meet up with my friends Amy and Aaron who also traveled here by car (but not before experiencing a life-or-death moment with a blown out tire on their rental car in the middle of Nebraska which delayed them two hours). Meeting up with friends was the other restriction beyond no flying and no high densities of people that we carefully followed while traveling: that is, keep separate households separate (so, don’t drive in the same car and don’t stay in the same Air BnB). I do hope you follow these suggestions as well, or I shall be very angry with you and shall never forgive you.

My Air BnB was on the south side of Boulder in the very residential and somewhat characterless Martin Acres neighborhood (apparently named after the Martin Farm, an apple farm that used to be on the land, but which started to get replaced in the 1950s by a housing development for World War II vets), and Amy and Aaron’s Air BnB was to the northwest of me in a neighborhood that Google maps seems to label Lower Arapahoe (as far as I can tell, so named due to its placement mostly south of Arapahoe Avenue, an avenue that takes traffic west and east across Boulder’s belt line, an avenue which itself is named after the Native American people who used to live in the area), but this neighborhood didn’t seem to have much of a web presence, so my guess on the reason for its name is just that.

Regardless, while the Lower Arapahoe neighborhood lacks a web presence, it makes up for itself in character. Indeed, in some ways, a lack of web presence suits this neighborhood quite well, and I wouldn’t be surprised if its residents also think the same, as it’s a very Boulder, Colorado neighborhood: a hippy artist commune, if you will. But before you chastise my choice of words, I can’t speak for the residents to confirm that there actually are any hippies or artists or communists living in this neighborhood, nor do I mean to suggest that all inhabitants in Boulder are hippies or artists or communists, but I do mean to use those three words as an endearingly lovely and desirable description of a charmingly delightful and welcoming people.

As I walked up to Amy and Aaron’s Air BnB, I was pleasantly surprised to see that they were staying in a small two story house situated right next to the enchanting Marine Street Sculpture Gardens by artist Kevan Krasnoff, who immediately confirmed that at least one artist lives in a neighborhood that I thought might’ve housed hippies, artists, and communists, and who also was Amy and Aaron’s gracious host who gave us many lovely tips regarding where to drive to scope out the mountain landscape and autumn colors. But, before we took heed his suggestions and headed out by car, we wanted to check out on foot one of Boulder’s more famous streets, Pearl Street (but not before briefly admiring the Hannah Barker House, which we happened upon by accident, which is a house that in the late 1800s belonged to a woman of the same name who the History Colorado Center describes as a businesswoman, teacher, civic leader, and philanthropist).

Arriving on Pearl Street (partly a pedestrian mall, partly open to traffic, but mostly an eclectic street populated with restaurants, coffee and tea houses, and various other shops), we made our way east, passing through intersections where pedestrian crosswalks were painted in the pride rainbow colors. The street was bustling with pedestrians and bikers, and everyone (as far as I could tell) was wearing a mask. There also was an anti-male circumcision demonstration happening right outside the Boulder County Commissioners building, men and women holding signs proclaiming, “STOP THE CRUELTY!” and “STOP CUTTING BABY PENIS!” (I did find myself remarking sarcastically, “Does anyone in Boulder actually disagree with these demonstrators? Certainly I don’t.”) After acknowledging the demonstrations, we continued carrying on to our final destination on Pearl Street…

…but before I write any further, I do find myself now in a curious position, as Colorado (along with 10 other states) rather exists in a weird legal grey area regarding a specific, ahem, plant where the state government says one thing but the federal government says another. I will tread carefully and simply say that I went into one of those shops, and I’ll leave you to your imagination what I did inside. I will reveal, however, that the staff I spoke to inside were so, so friendly and knowledgeable, answering all our questions so informatively, even a question I asked that cracked me up, which was, “Which one is good for laughing?”

Following our excursion on Pearl Street, we headed back to Amy and Aaron’s Air BnB, hopped in their rental van (we felt that if I sat in the way, way back and they in the way, way front and we had our windows open, masks on, and kept the drive to under a few hours, that our risk of exposure would be quite low), and made our way north to Left Hand Canyon Drive, a scenic drive that takes visitors through the Flatirons Front Range, the rocky formations that make up the foothills on Boulder’s west side of town. We actually didn’t really know what we were doing on this drive, as we joined Left Hand Canyon Drive partway in via Lee Hill Drive. We would later learn a better route that I will tell you more about for my next post.

The drive we did end up enjoying, however, was still quite lovely all the same. As I had mentioned in my previous post, it had been a long, long time since I had been in the mountains. And while the Flatirons Front Range are technically foothills and not mountains, they are still alluringly majestic and breathtakingly gorgeous. We had planned this drive to hopefully view the blazing autumn colors that Kevan had promised us, but instead found ourselves navigating the Left Hand Canyon Drive on a blusteringly cold day with sharp, ice-like rain that slowly gave way to a sudden snowfall that just managed the slightest coating of light, fluffy powder over every tree branch and every roof.

As I indicated earlier, we didn’t know it at the time, but we actually got slightly mixed up on the map (the mistake was basically my fault), and later on we would discover that we actually mostly drove on James Canyon Drive through a quirky town called Jamestown. It was still a lovely drive despite the error, even if we couldn’t see the Flatirons Front Range very well on account of the snowfall, but if you have time, I’d still recommend a drive on James Canyon Drive in addition to the full length of Left Hand Canyon Drive. Regardless of whether you’re heading west on either of those drives, however, you will still eventually find yourself on Peak to Peak Highway. We elected to take Peak to Peak north all the way to South Saint Vrain Drive, which took us east all the way to a small town called Lyons. By this point, we were very much out of the foothills and were navigating instead the flatter and slightly more arid ranch lands that didn’t have a single sign of any snowfall, a totally different climate compared what we had just experienced in the foothills.

From Lyons, we went slightly out of they way on our way back to town to visit Avery Brewing Company, a brewhouse on the way north end of Boulder: one of those brewhouses that makes good beer (its apricot sour provides a mouth puckering exclamation of zesty citruses), but one of those brewhouses where the building itself provides little atmosphere due to its unimaginative cement floors and predictable long wooden tables with high top seats. Since outdoor seating was out of the question due to a heavy wind, we opted to buy a healthy selection of sour ales and other beers. I can’t say I’d recommend a trip out of the way to visit Avery, but I certainly would recommend a trip out of the way to a liquor store to buy their beer.

Since the weather had turned quite windy, we knew that dining outdoors for dinner wouldn’t be possible. So, we decided to make a dinner at Amy and Aaron’s Air BnB. Indeed, it was a birthday dinner for Amy! We enjoyed steaks broiled in the oven, cheesy scalloped potatoes (we jokingly called the potatoes Irish lasagna on account of the layers of potatoes, cheese, sauce, and chives), and grilled asparagus. It was–very much so–a happy, happy birthday to a very best friend!

Stray Observations:

1. Left Hand Canyon is named after Chief Left Hand of the Arapahoe tribe. The canyon itself also traces the ice cold and quite lively Left Hand Creek.
2. James Canyon (along with Jamestown, James Creek, and Little James Creek), was named after James Smith the gold discoverer.
3. South Saint Vrain Drive (like Left Hand Canyon Drive and James Canyon Drive) also has a creek with the same namesake: South Saint Vrain Creek. We stopped for a moment on our drive to Lyons to admire its rushing rapids and clear water.
4. It was lovely to see a ballot box outside Avery Brewing Company. If you haven’t already, make sure you get out and vote. Either vote now or vote on election day. And whatever you do and in the name of peace and sanity, do not vote for Trump.

For my next post, I’ll catch you up on our hike up Viewpoint Trail, another visit to Pearl Street, and a more thorough drive through Left Hand Canyon.