Puerto Rico!

so I spent last week in Puerto Rico and it was totally wonderful. we had such a great time, we saw the most beautiful places and hung out with some cool people (and ate lots and lots of great food...mofongo!). I think I ate one form or another of plantains at almost every meal. they are so good. anyway, it was lots of fun. here is a smattering of pictures to give you an idea of some of the things we saw and did.


one of our first views of puerto rico as we drove around the town of naranjito, where angel grew up


after our trip to mayaguez, we went to this fabulous beach in cabo rojo


another view of the beach (that is the very southwestern tip of the island...and beyond that, the caribbean ocean!)


a view down the beach


adam, angel, katie and me


later that night, we went out to celebrate katie's friend's birthday. this was taken after we each had a couple rum and cokes.


the next day, we headed up the west coast and stopped in rincon where we saw some humpback whales that migrate here annually. it was really cool.


one of the beautiful cliffs in rincon


another beautiful shot of rincon


they also had a lighthouse and some really good pina coladas there


that night, we headed up to old san juan. this is an old fort called El Morro.


a shot from the fort towards the north coast of the island


angel and adam striking a pose


another beautiful sunset while we were walking around old san juan


the next day we headed over to arecibo to see the big radio telescope. here are the computers that are searching for "little green men". hehe. just kidding. on the left is the computer for the serendip project and on the right, you can see the feed for the seti at home project. (we also saw the computer that discovered the first pulsar)


we were very lucky because adam knew one of the researchers there, so we got a personal tour of the telescope. this picture is taken from the middle of the telescope.


some of you might recognize part of this from the movie goldeneye where james bond was fighting some bad guy. i don't remember. but the telescope is cool.


here is paolo (adam's advisor) showing us one of the new detectors. we are inside the gregorian dome at this point (if you know what i'm talking about - if you don't, don't worry about it, it's the big dome thing in one of the following pictures).


katie, angel, and me in the fun hard hats we had to wear while we were up on the telescope.


here is the cat walk that we had to climb up to get to the telescope. you can see the visitor's center for here where everyone else had to stay. haha! isn't it beautiful there?


here is a view of the dish from the cat walk with a shadow of the detectors and all that stuff (we were up pretty high).


back at the visitor's center, me and the telescope


another beautiful sunset at another beautiful beach


the next day, we travelled to the rainforest, el yunque. here is a view from an observation tower.


hiking through the rainforest


at one of the waterfalls


maybe angel really is a monkey?


at yet another beach, this time on the northeast corner of the island


katie and me


one more sunset


palm trees and the last sunset

midterms over, spring break here I come

okay, so I survived the week of midterm hell. what a ridiculous week! aaah! anyway, it's over now and I think I did alright. now I'm off to Puerto Rico for a fun spring break!