And second, here is Leah on her make-shift playmat. We put one of the extra comforters on the ground so that she could lay on it and look around. She really liked it, especially when we put it right below the ceiling fan.
One of the main reasons we chose to stay in our condo is because it is located in the town of Luquillo, which has one of the best beaches in Puerto Rico. There is a beach right outside our condo, but it is pretty rough with big waves and riptides, so we can't go in too deep. On Saturday, we decided to go to Luquillo Beach. It was a really nice public beach with great sand, and shallow and warm water. We had a wonderful time there, digging in the sand and swimming in the water.
Cam and Daddy in the ocean. The beach is in a bay, so the water is very calm and the waves are gentle.
Leah got a chance to hang out on the beach. She couldn't really play in the sand but we had to take some pictures anyway!
Leah's first dip in ocean water. In fact, it was Leah's first dip in any water other than a bathtub!
Not bad, for her first swimming experience to be in the Atlantic Ocean off of Puerto Rico. That's my little world traveler! :)
Cam joined Mama and Leah in the water.
Mama and Leah head into the water for a bit more swimming. The water was so warm, it was easy for her to stay in for quite a while. She really liked it, kicking her feet and "splashing" a little bit.
After swimming for a while, we all got out of the water. Daddy and Cam made sand castles.
Then Cam smushed the sand castle!
Daddy had to repeat this process quite a few times - building up a castle so that Cam could step on it.
After stepping on a bunch of castles, Cam and Daddy got more creative and started using Cam's tummy to get the castles.
Happy boy in mid-destruction!
Daddy got tired of castles and got creative, making this sand turtle! Cam was very impressed.
But not so impressed that he saved it from destruction. The turtle got a belly flop smush!
The belly flop was not very successful and Cam ended up with a face-full of sand. This is one of his favorite parts of vacation to tell about, when he ate the sand.
We borrowed a beach tent from the Santaguidas and it worked out great. It gave us shade and was perfect to sit under for the couple of little rain spells that happened during the day.
After swimming, Leah hung out in the little tent in the shade.
There were lots of vendors with little push carts walking up and down the beach. They all had three big tub coolers on their carts, with each cooler filled with a different type of "ice cream". It wasn't exactly ice cream though, it was more like gelato in consistency. It was very good. We got passion fruit flavor and it was delicious.
"Please may I have a bite, Daddy?"
"Thank you!!"
Daddy and Mama also enjoyed it, it was a great treat for a warm day.
Sandy face boy. He was having so much fun playing in the sand, he didn't care that it was all over his face, hands and body.
Leah liked being in the little tent - she was all smiles!
What a cute girl!
View of the beach from our tent.
Daddy made a big pile of sand and made a hole in it for Cam to climb in. Then we put Cam's shoes on the pile like his feet were sticking out. Cam did not like that, nor did he like being in the hole. :-P
He climbed out pretty quickly.
There are less than ten bio-luminescent bays in the world, and Puerto Rico has three of them. Most visitors to PR go to the bio-bays in a kayak, but that wouldn't work for us because of the kids. We really wanted to go see the bio-bay, so I found a tour through Las Cabezas Nature Reserve that ended in the Fajardo Bio-Bay.
We waited for the tour near the Bahia Las Cabezas bay. It was just getting dark and the light was just beautiful.
There were tons of rocking chairs on the deck overlooking the bay. It was a nice place to wait for the tour to start.
We rode a little train throughout the nature center, making several stops. The first was at a beach, where we saw some of the animals in the reserve (crabs, frogs, lizards) and talked about light pollution and its effect on sea turtles. The second stop was at reserve's lighthouse. It was a beautiful old building.
A view from the lighthouse steps, overlooking the bay.
The last stop was the actual bio-luminescent bay. We walked on boardwalks through a mangrove forest, ending at Laguna Grande - the Fajardo bio-bay. It had been raining a ton the days before our tour, which dilutes the effects of the dinoflagellates, making the sparkling of the bio-bay a lot less exciting. We didn't take any pictures in the bio-bay because Cameron and Leah were both falling asleep at that point, so there were no arms left to take pictures! But Cam did like it, seeing the sparkling water when a stick was dragged through it.
It was another great day in Puerto Rico!
3 comments:
So glad the tent worked out for you. :-)
Love your reports - thank you!
Wonderful - Cam is such a beach boy!
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