Awesome Weekend-Getaway in Caribbean!

"Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer". That's my inspiration now that I'm broke from all the traveling this year :)
Home, Myanmar in January
Grand Canyon, LA, Vegas in April
Costa Rica, August
Puerto Rico, end of Aug
( I decided to cancel the trip to CO in Oct :(....due to financial constraint)

Some of my friends are telling me that I'm living a dream life. Some think I must have a lot of money but not true at all. If you can dream about it, you can make it happen right? Well I'm not the person who cares about big fat bank account or mortgage loan. I'm one who cares about living life to the fullest in the moment :) And luckily, I have no debt, tuition loans and educational debt. I was pretty lucky to get full financial aid from the college I went. One day, when I'm rich, I'll be donating lots to Colorado College :)

A group of my girl friends had been talking about girls weekend getaway in Caribbean. So we finally made it happen and went to San Juan, Puerto Rico for the labor day weekend!

The house we rented was right off the beach. It was the beach that I have been dreaming/longing for a long time. A perfect Caribbean white-sand beach with amazing clear beautiful blue/green ocean, nicely shaded by palm trees!! Just exactly the way I wanted it :) The water was perfectly nice and warm!

First day, we just chilled on the beach and swam in the water. We then went for a delish Mexican lunch and cocktails nearby. Then a nice stroll along the beach and a siesta on the beach :)

It was supposed to be not too touristy season because of the weather. But, we were so lucky that it was all nice and sunny all three days we were there.

In the evening, we went out and did bar hopping in old San Juan. Old San Juan is a nice clean little town. There are some bars, restaurants, shops, hotels, hostels there. I heard that there was a hollywood film crew with Ben Afleck, Justin Timberlake and co were there then. A couple of my friends who arrived a day earlier saw them shooting :)

As usual, we made some new friends at bars :) I ended up talking to this tall French dude from southern France. He was super friendly and very gentleman, and really engaged in conversing with me. Oh by the way, I have been wanting to see a FULL MOON on the beach. Yes, everytime I went to a beach, the moon wasn't there. Luckily, the full moon was there that time!! I got super excited about it! So after bar hopping, I really really wanted to go to the beach under the moonlight. So all our new friends tagged along with us to our beach. We all hanged out on the beach. Then someone started jumping into the water :) Then another girl friend of mine, the French dude and I also jumped into the ocean. It was AMAZING!! We only came back when the security came and warned us about the current and sharks (I didn't believe it) to get out of water. But I got what I wanted! swimming in the ocean under the moonlight and starlight, and bonus, an interesting conversation with a great company! :)

Next day, I couldn't get up early of course. My other friends were SO SWEET to not wake us up. I felt quite guilty because I planned to make breakfast omelette for all of them before going to a picnic in the rain forest. I couldn't even help with preparing for the picnic :(

Picnic by the waterfall in the rain forest was such an awesome idea! Three of my favorite things in life- food, friends and nature :) all in one! The view during the drive to the rain forest was amazing too. I really enjoyed driving in the jungle of rain forest once more after Costa Rica.

Our beautiful picnic food thanks to those lovely ladies :)

I can never get enough of waterfalls!

We then went to a beach resort for more chilling, Jacuzzis and cocktails :)  Then we had some adventurous driving to see the bio bay! We thought we could just drive there and see the bio bay. We didn't know that we had to be in their guided tour to do that. So that was one glitch there. But probably it was for all good because it was around full moon so even if we went on guided tour, we wouldn't probably be able to see the bio bay. You can't have it ALL, can you?

The last day was tricky because we had to leave for the airport before 7p. I still wanted to go to another beach called Culebra but it was pretty far to get there. Plus, I unfortunately had to work remotely. So we just pretty much relaxed on the beach and went to old San Juan for lunch. The traffic in that little town during the day was really bad. It took us more than an hour to park. However, we had an amazing Puerto Rican meal :)

Yummy Pork Monfongo!

Shrimp dish, Fish tacos and pork monfongo

I had to come back to the house to work for a few hours. My friends hanged around old San Juan until before we took off for the airport.

It was a short but lovely weekend getaway :)