Caribbean January 2010 -Puerto Rico, Gran Melia Resort

Can I begin by saying a huge THANK YOU to my lovely Carol for all the work she put into organising this wonderful surprise holiday. Words would fail to describe how fantastic these last two weeks have been. I’m sure that the photographs will speak for themselves.

I was unable to process on a day to day basis the images – so this post, and others to follow will have a surfeit of them. I’m not quite sure just how I’m going to tackle editing and choosing from thousands of images. Maybe they need to be done on an island to island basis. Here goes anyway.

Firstly, a small correction on the previous post. We actually were travelling for 56 hours due to delays, engine problems with US Airways, and lost a day in Puerto Rico Gran Melia Resort. Some say that getting to your destination is part of the holiday. It began to feel as if it was the whole of the holiday. However, once we got there it exceeded our wildest expectations. I suppose with the involvement of Donald Trump we should have guessed that it would have been pretty exceptional. It was. Even Mugabe would have been at home here.

The photographs speak for themselves.

The first shot is of Carol scrambling around the internet at Heathrow signing up for the new American ESTA number, which cost us £60, ans wasn’t asked for eventually. Argh!

From this point onward, with the exception of a cold Philadelphia, such layers of clothes were banished. We didn’t quite know what to expect, but the weather and the colours were way beyond anything we could have imagined (it was their Winter!). The sales pitch we had committed to was not high pressure, even though Juan, our salesman, was distinctly disappointed that we did not want to buy into his smooth sales pitch. If we win the lottery we might consider it.

http://www.gran-melia-puerto-rico.com/en/
OK some shots of the resort – a selection from many that I took. It was truly mind-blowing! Click on the photographs to enlarge them.

The main arrival area

Part of the reception

Our room

The jacuzzi on the balcony

Notice on the door leading to the veranda

One of the many pools

A portion of the complex

A cool corridor

Entrance to a restaurant

Part of the exterior decor

One of the many pools

This was our favourite “adult only” pool

A local inhabitant. This was a small iguana - they were pretty big at times, but harmless.

One of the nice things about being in this area is the wildlife. The iguanas were all around the resort, much to the annoyance of the golfers on the two eighteen hole courses I imagine. (We were told that they taste like chicken. We didn’t particularly want to find out) Tropical birds, quite unafraid of humans, wandered into our room regularly. In particular, their blackbirds, smaller than ours, with piercing white ringed eyes, had the most beautiful range of calls.

...and strange pool-side beds. Great for totally chilling.

Evening view from the veranda

Pre-dinner drinks area

The bar, one of many. Note the strange beds with curtains around them. Get pissed in style eh?

Just another area to lounge around

One of the few shots of Carol & I (I cannot stand being photographed). There is a bit of a story behind this one. We were walking some distance from the main resort when we were approached by a beautiful young Polish woman called Evalinda. She wanted me to take her photograph at the waters edge. We got talking, and it transpired that she was at the resort with her father. Her husband, an American, had been run over and killed on December 27th by a motor cyclist, and her Dad had brought her to Gran Melia for some time away. We later met up with her and her father for a drink. Both lovely people. It rather put this ‘paradise’ into context.

Carol had upgraded our room, and this also entailed access to the ‘Royal Suite’, a lounge serving free drinks and internet access. I think that we had more than our fair share of champagne! I will admit to regular ‘slow’ mornings due to a dull head.

We ventured out of the resort on only two occasions, once to a restaurant, which turned out to be a disappointment as they were unhelpful when it came to accommodating Carol’s garlic allergy, and then into the rain forest, known as Yunque National Forest. What can I say about the rainforest? It was very green! I expected to see something Amazonian perhaps – lots of tropical flowers, monkeys, wet and misty, mosquitoes… It was having an off day. Few flowers evident, though we were assured that later in the year it was blooming; it was hot and sunny, no rain, and surprisingly quiet. The green monkeys were sleeping, even most of the mosquitoes had taken the day off. A few hardy little bastards left us with some nasty nibbles – to be expected. As I said, it was very green. The trees and the bamboos were impressive though. Leaves over six foot across, bamboos growing to over 70 feet. On the plus side, this is used by the United States as a research area for rain forest maintenance, and a great deal of important work goes on here. Tourism is carefully managed, with a very limited number of well defined routes through the forest, running of the road that crosses through it.

Anyway, a couple of shots of greenery.

Part of the research centre, which, among other things, is used for weddings!

I must add this one. Our bus driver must have had an arrangement with a local roadside bar – which I will admit sold excellent local food, cheaply (50% seems to be cooked which bananas in one way or another! Very tasty though). Needless to say, local drinks are quite inexpensive too. This is Carol sampling a Pina Colada – one of many. The Rum Punches very lethal also.