After going to Banff and Portugal in the previous two years, the third edition of the Atoms trip returned this year with a trip to Puerto Rico.1 It was overall a good trip, featuring some new members and more shenanigans, though I missed the first few days because I had two weddings to attend during the first weekend (one on Saturday, in New York, and the other on Monday, in Boston). And of course, with another Atoms trip comes the obligatory post-trip blog post. I’m honestly not sure if I have the energy to write a really long one again, but we’ll see; maybe I’ll surprise myself. I do have a tendency to yap in these things.
While most of the group flew down to San Juan on Saturday, I stayed behind because I had a rather jam-packed schedule for the weekend already. I had Josh and April’s rehearsal dinner on Friday,2 their actual wedding on Saturday, church Sunday morning, and evening service on Sunday evening, before finally taking the Amtrak up to Boston on Sunday night. This is the only time I can recall ever having taken the Amtrak; I was honestly not that impressed. The credit card reader in the dining car was broken for a while, and I don’t carry cash, so I went hungry for a bit. I walked up and down the dining car offering to buy people’s cash, but no one took me up on it, despite my promising to pay a ten percent exchange fee.3 There was also a rather long delay, so I ended up arriving in Boston fairly tired at around 1am. I checked in to my hotel and promptly went to bed.
The next morning, I headed into town to kill the time before the wedding in the afternoon. I caught up with Adithya in a cafe in Cambridge, which made me feel very intellectual. I then walked around Cambridge for a bit, which was actually a really nice place; I toured the beautiful chapel of St. Paul’s parish, visited the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East, got lunch in Harvard Square, and generally just enjoyed the vibe of walking around. Of course, I could not resist visiting the Harvard bookstore, where I browsed through the used books and found one that stood out to me, titled Evolution, Games, and God. I really should stop buying more books (I have way too many things on my to-read stack), but this one—an interdisciplinary collection of essays broadly around the topic of cooperation, viewed through lenses of mathematical biology, economics, philosophy, and religion—felt like it was perfectly tailored to some things that I have recently been thinking about,4 so I just had to buy it. Upon reading the blurb on the back, the guy at the checkout counter told me that the book seemed pretty interesting, which at least made me feel vindicated in my selection.
And finally, there was Sam and Joie’s wedding itself. ACF weddings are always fun, and I got to catch up with a host of people and play some ZPY.5 I also got to feel youthful again, because Christina was the only one there from the years below me; it was kind of like being a freshman again and seeing all my upperclassmen. Afterward, we all hung out well into the night at Evan’s place, which meant that I yet again got very little sleep ahead of my flight to San Juan the next morning.
I arrived in San Juan around noon on Tuesday, taking an Uber into town. The driver was a friendly fellow, and recommended that I try out the local dishes of mofongo and stuffed avocado in particular. I was at this point totally ignorant of the disastrous mofongo experience that had befallen my compatriots at a previous restaurant.
It happened that the group had split up that day, with some people going jet skiing, others going on a hike, and some staying behind in San Juan. I joined up with the last group for lunch; for my part, I had a rather positive mofongo experience. We then went back to the rental house and regrouped, before setting off for some botanical gardens while another group went to a rum tasting. We had some difficulty actually finding the gardens, and once we got there, they honestly were not that interesting. The highlight was probably the “Chinese bridge,” which was just a random bridge painted red with a vaguely Asian-looking pavilion next to it. Well, that and the blue-crested tropical waterfowl sighting.
No matter where we go, we somehow always end up at a fancy Italian restaurant for dinner one night of the trip; this time, it was my first night there. I will not complain, though, because the food was quite good. One lesson that I learned from dinner that night: the game theory optimal strategy in rock-paper-scissors is clearly to throw rock every time.
We started the next day off with some culinary excursions: first, to la ruta del lechon (the “highway of pork”) to get some roast pig,6 and then to Kasalta, a local restaurant that had apparently been graced with the presence of Barack Obama back in 2011, at least according to a banner on the wall. It made us realize that we had never actually seen Daniel and Obama in the same room—perhaps he is “El Jefe” indeed…
We then stopped by a nearby beach, where we engaged in typical beach activities: impromptu photo shoots, wrestling, napping, swimming, etc. I mostly just stuck to the swimming, which I actually liked a lot more than I expected. Despite having grown up near-ish to the beach in New Jersey, I’ve never really considered myself much of a beach person, and I don’t think I’m a particularly strong swimmer. But being in the water under the sun is surprisingly quite nice; I should do it more often.
Dinner that day was stuffed avocado, which was memorable mostly for the impressive size of the avocado. Apparently, there’s a different species of avocado that grows in the tropics, and it’s much larger than the variety that we get on the mainland. Dinner was also notable for being the site of a glorious Jerry car victory, though to be fair, such glorious victories were quite commonplace for our car throughout the trip.
But the real highlight of the day was our nighttime activity: kayaking through the mangroves to see bioluminescent plankton at Laguna Grande! Though we initially had to wade through some smelly (because of seaweed), thigh-deep water to get to the kayaks, navigating through the mangrove tunnels in the dark was very fun.7 There were also a decent number of stars in the sky, and our knowledgeable tour guide pointed out the various constellations to us. Oh, and seeing the bioluminescence was really cool, of course. Unfortunately, the glow was so faint that I couldn’t get a picture for the blog, but that just made me appreciate how incredible the human eye is for being able to make out light that even a fairly new iPhone can’t detect.
The primary theme of the third day was caves. In the morning, we drove off to Arecibo, where we went to the Cueva del Indio, a beautiful sea cave with some rock art nearby. Our primary motivation for going here was that Justin wanted to climb one of the sea arches; he brought his chalk bag and everything, and sent it after watching some videos. Although he did fall, I will admit that he looked really cool doing it; I’ll let you judge for yourself based on the picture below.
There were also some other shenanigans going on: we found a coconut on the ground, so Nelson cracked it open by throwing it against a rock, and then I got peer pressured into trying some. The one thing we were missing: I really wish we could have visited the nearby Arecibo Observatory, perhaps the most famous radio telescope in the world, but alas I think the telescope itself is closed after having collapsed a few years ago. (You can still go to the visitor center, but that didn’t seem too worthwhile.)
Seeing some precipitation in the distance, we beat a hasty retreat from the exposed shoreline and drove away from Arecibo, stopping by a small acai bowl shop right before it started absolutely pouring. It turns out the shop was not equipped to handle a sudden influx of twelve Asian tourists, so it took the poor family at the counter a really long time to prepare our food, but we didn’t mind. We passed the time soaking in the air conditioning, playing Connect Four, and chatting with their adorable daughter, whom Karena taught machine learning.
The second cave of the day was Cueva Ventana, a cave notable for its portal viewpoint out into the valley below. The portal itself was of course stunning—it almost felt like a scene out of some dinosaur movie or something—but the rest of the cave complex was also neat. The caves are home to lots of bats, which were all over the roof of one chamber. Apparently, you’re supposed to keep your mouth closed when looking up, in case of, er, fresh guano.
The fourth day was my last full day on this abbreviated trip, and we spent it on the island of Culebra, mostly lounging around Flamenco Beach; I also bought a souvenir and a postcard to mail home (a bit of a tradition of mine). We had to head out early in order to secure ferry tickets, but I think it was well worth it: the island was very scenic, and a perfect way to end the trip. The beach was very stereotypically beautiful: clear blue waters, white sand, and gentle waves. I again greatly enjoyed getting to spend some time in the water.
Though perhaps the most scenic day, this was probably the least eventful day, as we mostly just spent it relaxing at the beach. I felt just a tiny bit bad for my colleagues who had to prepare for the SpaceX IPO that morning, but that wasn’t really my problem—my task was just to swim and enjoy the sunshine.
Though the last day was only a partial day, it turned out to be a very jam-packed one. I woke up to the sunrise in the living room, as most of us had done a giant sleepover there to celebrate the last night. (Thanks, Ivy, that was a great idea.)
We started off the day by cleaning up the rental house, and then with some subterfuge, we managed to clandestinely procure a cake for the “Atoms Trip 2027 [sic] Goats.” We then drove off to Old San Juan, which I had not yet seen, although the others had already toured it before I got there. As such, they mostly just meandered around, while I went by myself to go see El Morro, a nice castle located on the promontory overlooking the San Juan Bay. We also toured a couple of local art galleries.
For lunch, we went to a local restaurant that is apparently famous for being Bad Bunny’s favorite spot. The main course was just okay, but the standouts were (1) the cod cakes they served as complimentary appetizers and (2) their house hot sauce. I boxed up my leftovers and doused them in the hot sauce; the combination made for a great last meal in the San Juan airport right before we flew back to New York.
To put it mildly, our travel back to New York was a bit of a disaster. The flight itself was fine, but we landed back at JFK at 10pm on the night the Knicks won the finals, and I happen to live about a block away from Madison Square Garden. They blocked off Eighth Avenue from Penn Station all the way down to about Twenty-eighth Street, forcing us to take a very circuitous route to get back to my place; once we got to my block, I had to show my driver’s license to prove that I was a resident before they let me through. I was honestly a bit annoyed at having to fight my way through the crowd while carrying my luggage.
After we finally got back to my place, we quickly dropped off our bags and went out to the street again, to try to catch the last seconds of the game. We managed to just squeeze our way outside a sports bar as the game ended, and the entirety of New York erupted in cheers. I will admit that the raucous scenes of joy brought a little bit of warmth to even my curmudgeonly old heart. But just a little bit.
We had originally planned to go to Turkey, but after the Iran war broke out, we decided to stay domestic instead.↩︎
A fun story: I was tasked with bringing some apple cider for the wedding, so the night before, I went to Whole Foods and loaded up my sixty-liter backpacking pack with ten bottles of Martinelli’s sparkling cider. I must have looked somewhat ridiculous at the checkout line.↩︎
Hm, I have been fighting allegations of being a “finance bro,” which is a totally unfair characterization based on my employer. But I suppose this story isn’t helping my case…↩︎
In particular, I feel like I have recently been blogging about similar things.↩︎
Richard and I have been meeting at a series of weddings recently, and we always grief each other by forgetting to bring playing cards. This time, I did not forget.↩︎
Apparently, we did not learn from our suckling pig mishaps in Portugal…↩︎
Fortunately, I don’t think there were any alligators in the water, or at least I was not aware of any. My recent trip to the Everglades has taught me a healthy respect for what lurks beneath the mangrove forests…↩︎
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