How soon folks back home forget about you. A couple of months ago if we hadn't updated this journal for a week we'd have heard from at least 3 or 4 of you wondering what had happened to us. So soon so forgotten...

We've been in Salinas on the south coast of Puerto Rico for the past week. We arrived last Monday morning after an early-morning departure from Caya de Muerto. Wednesday we rented a car and drove along the south and east coasts toward San Juan. The scenary was pretty spectacular, particularly on the east coast, with the islands of Vieques and Culebra visible in the hazy distance. We stopped at the Caribbean National Forest, also known as El Yunque, a tropical rain forest. Very, very humid. We did a quick hike alongside a river, but it was so hot and humid that we turned around in just a short distance.

On the way into San Juan we called and made hotel reservations at the "editor's choice" hotel in old San Juan, the hotel El Convento. It was a bit steeper than we'd normally like to pay, but it was truly a memorable night. The building was originally a convent built in 1646 to house a convent for women widowed in the new world. It's seem several reincarnations as a hotel over the the years, but the latest is quite elegant and very charming. Nice to actually feel we got good value for our hotel dollar. If you're ever in San Juan, check it out.

Thursday we toured old San Juan and in the afternoon we did the Baccardi factory tour. San Juan was very nice and very historic. Recall that Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic had the first European buildings in the new world, well old San Juan has the second oldest buildings in the new world, but the difference is hardly noticeable after all these years. San Juan has the much more extensive defensive fortifications, the sea-front fort El Morro was spectacular, perched on the end of the island defending the north Atlantic approach and the huge San Juan bay. The Baccardi factory tour was all marketing glitz with a couple of small free rum drinks included for free.

On Friday we drove across the Cordillera Central, the mountain chain that runs the length of the center of the island, to the radio telescope at Arrecibo. This is probably familiar to most of you from one of the many movies in which it's appeared, notably the movie Contact and the Bond movie Goldeneye. It's the largest radio telescope in the world, built into a natural sinkhole in the hills. Well worth a visit and we got to travel through some very rural parts of Puerto Rico.

Yesterday was mail day as we received all our accumulated mail and packages. We're waiting on one more delivery and then we'll be out of here, on our way to the Spanish Virgin Islands, Vieques and Culebra, which are about 20 miles off the east coast of Puerto Rico, and 20 miles west of the U.S. Virgin Islands. Looks like we'll have company in early April as well. Julia and Theresa, Maryann's daughters will be visiting for a week or so, our first real visitors.