For the 4th of July holiday, we booked a somewhat last-minute getaway to the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico. Because of the late timing, most of the excursions we might have done (such as a bioluminescent bay and/or El Yunque rainforest tour) had no more places available, so we spent most of the days in Old San Juan.

The steep, narrow brick roads and colorful Spanish colonial houses captivated me right away. The doors and windows, too. Each house had a different design of iron bars, and many kept their doors and/or windows open throughout the day to allow air to flow.

Temperatures were between 80 and 90 °F (~27–32 °C), but the humidity was so high that it felt far hotter, and it made me far more uncomfortable than I expected to feel. For this reason (as far as I’m aware), I wasn’t able to relax into vacation mode and enjoy the present moments most of the time. However, I have learned from past experiences that no matter how intense a physical discomfort might be at the time, such as hunger, pain, itch (from mosquito bites), need for a bathroom, you name it—the sensation doesn’t usually make its way into the lasting memory of the experience. I am actually enjoying the time I spent in Puerto Rico much more in retrospect, by revisiting photos and remembering activities, than I did while I was there, and accepting this phenomenon as not a bad thing.

Everywhere we turned, there were many other North American tourists, and most businesses were friendly and welcoming. This sentiment wasn’t universal, though—on several trash containers in busy areas and other surfaces, we saw “GO HOME” handwritten in large, capital letters. On some, this phrase was preceded by the word “gringo.”

The tropical flora were quite beautiful and I stopped to examine and sniff a lot of plants; many of the flowers were gently fragrant.

I went looking for sea grape jam in a couple of shops that sell local hot sauces and jellies, but no luck. In one of these stores, I encountered the St Johns brand of fragrances, based in the U. S. Virgin Islands. Bay Rum was the first one I tried. The clove note hit me so hard just from the nozzle that I put it right back. Vetiver and West Indian Lime colognes were pretty true to their names and refreshing, suited to the island’s climate.

On the streets, the scent that breezed by me most frequently was an ambery, astringent woody note usually accompanied by a man. Women had a chance of sporting something sweeter vanilla and coconut.

I’ll never know what the iguanas smelled like, as they run away from distantly approaching humans. Their bodies are built more for climbing trees, so watching them speed off on the grass in a front crawl motion was entertaining in a pathos-tinged sort of way.

On our first day, we came across a bar and restaurant called Ostra Cosa that offered whole coconuts to which booze could be added. I thought this might be a typical tourist offering, but over the next few days, I never saw another place that had it. So it became a sort of goal for me to go and experience it before we left. The day before our flight back, I finally got my “Coco Loco.” Being in the land of a Bacardi distillery, of course I chose the rum. The bartender pried one open with a pickaxe, poured the juice into a shaker, added rum, mixed them with ice, and poured the drink back into the coconut!

Would I recommend Puerto Rico as a vacation destination? Absolutely—and I would advise to plan ahead for activities and make reservations for tours in advance. We managed to take a mini boat tour on one day and visit the Ocean Lab brewery at Isla Verde on another, but we would have done more if we’d planned better.