The countdown to this trip began approximately three years ago. "Let's do something big for our senior Spring Break," my best friend said sophomore year. Oh, little did she know how "big" things would tend to be by this point in our lives.
Let me first start off by giving a rundown of previous spring break experiences in college. Contrary to the hype promoted by teen dramedies - both in the film and television drama - Spring Break in college is not all topless women on beaches. At least not as far as I'm concerned. I don't remember anything about my spring break my freshman year. This is a quality that I would hope would come from every spring break, but instead of a lack of memory due to cheap alcohol consumption, I simply don't remember it because absolutely nothing happened. If I had to guess, I'd assume that I spent the entire week on the couch in my parents' house watching ABC Family and left to entertain myself. Sophomore year I had a job waiting for me back in Alamance County over spring break but, being the slacker that I have always been, I chose to spend this one, again, on the couch at my parents' house. I went on to make up for my lame spring break a few weeks later by spending an entire extended weekend high off my ass at a friend's beach house, which led to some of the most memorable experiences and the worst farmer's tan of my life. This leads me into junior year...
The success of the previous year's post-spring break trip on my mind, I agreed to spend my next spring break at the same beach house, hopefully doing (and not remembering) all of the same things. I spent the entire week before spring break counting down the hours until I would step out of the car and into the salty NC-beach air. I had nothing but high hopes for the trip. That is, until about 30 minutes into the car ride. The clock struck 4:19pm and, without hesitating, the lighter came out. Spring Break, hell yeah! I thought. But after my second hit, I was considering jumping out the window of the car to avoid ending up at this beach house with 19 strangers. It's just the weed, I told myself. Well, that and the fact that I had replaced my anxiety medication with Adderall for the past week in order to cram for midterms. I'll just stop smoking now and take some medicine when we get there. This will be over soon. Turns out I was more wrong than words can describe. I spent the next few days in the bed in the frigid basement of this beach house (a private room with a private bathroom I was kindly assigned by my friend whose family owned the house) terrified to go up the 9 flights of stairs to face these people that were awaiting my appearance. I showed my face for about 30 minutes every day and spent the rest of my hours sleeping and watching SpongeBob until I couldn't take it anymore and, like the spoiled pussy I tend to be, had my dad drive all the way to the Outer Banks to pick me up. I confided in my friend that I wasn't comfortable being there, but asked him to tell his friends that I was feeling sick - something that, if they had known me, wouldn't be too hard to believe. But that's another story. So I left that spring break feeling embarrassed and delirious - things that college students probably look for in their spring breaks. But my feelings were for all the wrong reasons.
So, as you can tell, my senior year spring break had a lot to live up to. Even with spring break months away at the beginning of the year, I assumed I'd be spending my break either back at my parents' place or alternately working and sleeping. But promptly my best friend, adventure enthusiast and extensive planner reminded me that we had been planning our senior spring break for years.
We out-ruled Cancun a long time ago. Sure, it sounded like so much fun, but just flying there would have cost twice the amount of money that I had in my bank account. So we researched other destinations where we could balance fun and adventure. We ultimately decided on Jamaica - and by "we," I mean my friend. I'm always down for whatever shenanigan she can plan, as long as I don't have to think too much about it. After a lot of excitement, a little research and a lot of let-down, we decided Jamaica wouldn't be the safest place for a pretty girl and her blonde girlfriend to vacation. You see, we're against resorts. Not because we're all about seeing the "real" Jamaica or anything, but just because we cannot and will not ever be able to afford them. And if you've ever read a travel website, you'd know that any tourism outside of resorts in Jamaica is frowned upon and explored at your own risk. So it was then that we (again: my friend) looked into other options. We finally decided on Puerto Rico. It had a big city where we could party, but was also beachy and tropical and totally worth exploring. My only concern: we don't speak Spanish. I had taken five years of French. Shenzie has studied Spanish in the past, but came out of her five years with a knowledge of about three vocabulary words. But all the travel websites assured us that "everyone" would speak English in Puerto Rico - it is their national language, after all!
It didn't take much for me to talk myself into being excited for this trip. North Carolina was experiencing a ground- breaking "Polar Vortex" and I couldn't see the sun in the foreseeable future. The idea of Puerto Rico brought back memories of tropical bliss in Hawaii the past summer. As the Spring semester started, my longing became an obsession. All I could think about was Puerto Rico, the beach, the boys and the rum. Then, finally, after a few midterms and papers that I blew through, it was the weekend before we were to depart. I had been bundled up in pea-coats for so long that I was completely ecstatic to pull out my crop-tops and cutoff jean shorts and start packing. I packed early, as usual, and then found myself with nothing to do but wait the night before. So after a few hours of watching my current Netflix obsession and a huge fallout with my Black Panther roommate, I decided to take a "nap" at about midnight so that I'd have a few hours of sleep before boarding the taxi at 4am and eventually the plane that would take me away from this frozen hell of which I was convinced I could never become accustomed.
Getting there went surprisingly smoothly. We jumped off the plane, got our checked bag immediately and then got in a taxi to pick up our rental car that we would eventually put 1000 miles on. After a few confusing missed turns and one fender-bender, we ended up at our first hostel. We couldn't check in immediately so, I donned the first crop-top and bathing suit I could find in my luggage and we headed to the beach, After a few hours of exploring and standing outside a government official's house and begin watched by his security (we thought it was Ricky Martin's house), we were able to check in to our room, which was private but barely larger than a single-sized bed.
The best news about the first leg of our trip was that we had a group of friends also vacationing in the area. Shenzie and I headed to Old San Juan for dinner and exploring and eventually met our friends at a popular spring-breaker spot: Senor Frog's. Our first night in Puerto Rico was relatively tame (from our side). I spent approximately $73 at the bar on three drinks and made out with a girl I had just met, but, hey, it was spring break.
The next day, Shenzie and I took our time waking up, then got ready and headed for the beach. After settling down on the beautiful white-capped beach and downing two Four Lokos and a few shots of vodka, we set out to meet our friends again. I bought a bottle of rum at the nearest Walgreens (because I'm obsessed with both alcohol and any casual drug store where you can buy it) and we headed for our friends' hotel, which was swankier than I could have ever imagined.
The last thing I legitimately remember about that night was pulling one of my friends out of her hotel bed and then drinking rum straight out of the bottle.
I woke up the next morning in the passenger seat of our rental car on the corner of a strange street with one shoe and no iPhone. I stumbled out of the car, attempted to say hello to the Puerto Rican woman selling hotdogs right beside our car and wandered the streets until I found something familiar. I lucked into the main door of our hostel being unlocked, then immediately got in the shower. I was hungover, greasy, sweaty and covered in regret for something I didn't even remember.
Let me break down for you the events of the night, as I have pieced together from halfway listening to stories that my friends told me.
We got to our friends' hotel, where I proceeded to drink half of a small bottle of rum. It was suggested several times that I stop or at least take a break, but, being the professional drinker that I think I am, I refused. We eventually left for bars, where I got in without an ID (I had misplaced it the night before when I wasn't even drunk... wtf?!), but then bragged to the entire bar about how I had sneaked in a bottle of rum in the waistband of my tiny shorts. Turns out holding a bottle of liquor above your head is grounds to be kicked out of a bar. For some reason my friends allowed me to continue bar hopping, only to have me kicked out of the next bar, where I ended up threatening the bouncers. I'm pretty damn lucky no one takes me seriously because we all know I couldn't even win in a fight with a 6-year-old. Then my friends stuffed me into our rental car, where I passed out, and woke up several times, jumped out, lost a shoe, and then fell asleep for good once we made it back to our hostel.
I'd say this is tied for the drunkest I've ever been, along with about 4 other nights.
Like I said, I woke was iPhoneless. I know that I'm pretty dependent on my iPhone, but I could have survived without it for a week until we got back to the States where my Applecare would've kicked in. But here was the problem: my phone was literally our only contact with the outside world, not to mention the source of the GPS that would take us on all the rest of our planned adventures. So I needed a replacement ASAP.
My sober friend was smart and kind enough to find a place where I could get a new phone. Little did we know there wasn't an Apple store in the whole country of Puerto Rico, just an imitation store that sold iPods and iPads. So after a lot of pondering, I bought a brand new, no contract iPhone from RadioShack. That's $700 that I hadn't planned on spending on this trip.
But afterwards, cute gold iPhone in hand, equipped with Google Maps and Grindr, we were able to set off for our next adventure destination.
After two hours of driving, yelling and singing (Puerto Rican drivers are INSANE. I won't get into that now because it deserves its own post), we arrived at our destination, a hostel in a small surf town on the west coast of Puerto Rico. The funny thing was, the GPS had taken us to a residential neighborhood where the windows were covered in wrought iron and urban youths were playing basketball outside a youth center. Seeing as there are apparently no street addressed in Puerto Rico, we were a little confused as to where we were - especially because there was no sign of a beach anywhere close. After about 17 minutes on the phone with our hostel, we discovered that our GPS had taken us to a completely random place in Central Puerto Rico... a fact that I attribute not to our error or our GPS, but to the fact that the Puerto Rican street address system is completely insane. So that led us to another two hours of driving. But finally we pulled into our hostel parking lot, which looked a lot like a bar... because it was behind a bar. Which is the last place you want to be when you're hungover and roadtrip-lagged and looking to fall asleep immediately. Upside? HUGE room with our own bathroom. So we settled in and went to sleep with our minds filled with dreams of adventures yet to come.
The next morning, we met a shirtless, tan, shoulder-length-blond-hair boy with three surfboards on his head on the beach, where he proceeded to teach us to surf. And by "teach," I mean "remind us of our past lives as surfer-extraordinaires," because we were fucking awesome. I know that I was born with some inherent talent to surf, both because I captured the skill so fast and also because I didn't pay a second of attention to what the instructor was saying on the beach before we got in the water because I was too busy looking at his abs and the area where his swim trunks stuck out a little bit from his torso so I could see a little glimpse of his pubes. After our successful lesson, our dreamy guide recommended we try fresh watermelon margaritas from a beach-side shack a few miles away. As if this boy couldn't get any more perfect, he knew EXACTLY what I needed. These margaritas were refreshing heaven in a plastic cup. After two at the bar, we got another to-go and found a little spot on the beach where I caught up on some reading, took a nap, met some friends and bought some weed. It was during this last part of the adventure that my life changed for the best: "I think I just saw a spout," this random drug dealer said. Then I looked out into the ocean where the sun was beginning to set and saw a humpback whale leap out of the water. Three times. I'm not Hilary Duff, but that was what dreams are made of.
Later that night, I rolled a joint on the David Sedaris book that I had checked out from our university library and we passed out, full of bliss from a perfect day.
The next day, we headed to another part of the island where we were set to snorkel some beautiful Puerto Rican reef. On our way, we stopped at a little place called Cabo Rojo, aka heaven. It was a beautiful white-sand-beached bay surrounded by cliffs. After hiking, sunbathing and swimming, we set out to our snorkeling destination. After spending the past two days in paradise, we were destined for a let-down, which came with the snorkeling company. They had a half-assed version of our reservation and offered us a "sunset dive" which would require us to wait around for hours, eat shitty food that they provided us and then go on a short, shallow dive at 6:30pm. Nope.
So we ended up at a disgusting public beach riddled with locals, trash, dogs and, most importantly, Pina Coladas. After accidentally and befriending a feral dog, we left and went back to our hotel (upgraded free of charge from the hostel) and took a break.
The next morning, we departed at 6:30am (FYI, that exists! Who knew?) on our way to the northern part of the island to go caving. We met with a group of people with some serious attitude problems, then followed them up a mountain to a farm that eerily resembled Alamance County, NC, complete with cows and barbed wire. After a safety briefing, we set off down the mountain and into a river and eventually pitch-black and dead-silent caves, where I may have been expected to get in touch with my inner thoughts or some sort of spiritual world. Instead, I hit myself in the face trying to see if I could see my hand in "complete" darkness. I came out of that trip wet, cold, muddy and happier than I've ever been in my entire life. We met a wonderful couple on the journey that consisted of a beautiful woman and and even more beautiful man who was either her son or her boyfriend. I was hoping he was her son because that would increase the chance that he was single and that I could make a move on his shivering sculpted body.
Later that day, we drove to our next hostel, which we had picked because of its vicinity to the rain forest and to the exotic island where we would end our trip. When we got there we realized we had almost an entire eighth of weed left, so I rolled a joint and we ventured up onto the roof. It was there that we were approached by a large group of seemingly college-aged people who wanted to be our friends. It didn't take long before I started accidentally insulting them and therefore pushing them away. First, I doubted the legitimacy of their beloved hometown, then, when I found out they were 26+, called them old.
"When I was 24 I didn't think I was old. But then 25 was a big deal," one of these bitches said.
"Yeah 25 sounds REALLY old. Like, WAY older than 24," I agreed.
"I'm 27..."
And I wonder why I don't have any friends.
Perhaps the best part about our stay on this part of the island was when we were completely lost. I had looked on Trip Adviser for good restaurants in the area and found one that looked appealing. But, again, our GPS led us to a random urban residential area. We asked a man if he could point us in the right direction and he not only knew the place we were talking about, but got in his car and told us to follow him. The name of the restaurant was "Blue Iguana" and, seeing that he spoke little to no English, I was assuming that he was either leading us to our imminent death or to see some real iguanas - neither of which I could get excited about. He pointed us toward a large resort and pulled away, leaving me relieved that I was getting away from him without a large hunting knife in my chest. We thought he was surely mad and was just trying to send us toward other Americans. "That crazy man he just sent us to some random hotel." Then after asking a few residents of the hotel, we found that the restaurant that we were looking for, that we had asked this non-English-speaking man about, was actually located in the hotel, exactly like our local friend had implied.
This was the first act of kindness we experienced for a Puerto Rican local.
The next few days passed by relatively the same. We met another local who we thought misunderstood our combination of English and broken Spanish, but then led us to a private beach where wild horses tended to graze. We spent that day on the beach, rolled a joint and left the evidence on this sweet man's farm property, then got drunk at the bar that accompanied our hostel.
The next morning, we caught the 6:30am ferry that took us back to where we needed to be. On this ferry were complaining families, loud snorers, a frigid air conditioner and a psychopath playing loud rap music the entire 1.5 hour ride. We got off the ferry, drove back to San Juan and spent the little bit of extra time we had relishing the view of the Caribbean beach and sea. A short 6 hours later, I was sitting in the DC airport looking out the window where snow lined the runway. And so quickly ended paradise.
All I can do now is relish my positive memories and my tan skin and hope that they both last until the summer.
