Vaction Day #3 (Sun; Feb 23)

After some searching on lds.org we found an English speaking ward in Puerto Rico. Sacrament started at 9:30am, so we had to wake up early to check out of the hotel, go eat breakfast and find the church in time. For the most part our phones were really good about giving us directions. But we struggled a bit to get there. Thankfully we gave ourselves enough time that we walked into the chapel just as they were singing the opening hymn.

 

It was very interesting pulling up to the building. Seeing a  gated fence around the entire property and bars on the windows gave it an different feel. But once we were inside the Spirit felt the same. The Lord's Spirit is the same all over the world.

After sacrament meeting was over we drove about an hour and a half to Rio Camuy Cave Park. Since our cruise wasn't leaving port until 10pm we tried to find something to do that could fill our day.

 

When we arrived we had to wait a little bit to watch a cheesy orientation video that was in Spanish. Haha. Don't worry it had subtitles. No really it was so cheesy I couldn't handle it.

 

To continue the cheesiness we lined up and our group had to board a little train. The train drove us down to the mouth of the cave. 

 

 Hard to tell from the picture, but here we are about to enter into the cave.

 Kept going down into the cave.

Once we got it we got to see this huge cavern. It is about 700 feet in length and 215 feet in height. That's 2 football fields in length. Crazy. Wikapedia says... "Over 10 miles of caverns, 220 caves and 17 entrances to the Camuy cave system have been mapped so far. This, however, is only a fraction of the entire system which many experts believe still holds another 800 caves. Only a small part of the complex is open to the public."

The caverns are part of a large network of natural limestone caves and underground waterways carved out by the third-largest underground river in the world, the Río Camuy (Camuy River). This picture is showing everyone looking over into the river. It was so far down. Crazy that a river could be underground.

 As we were leaving I found this spot fascinating. It was just so pretty. The picture from Jesse's phone doesn't quite give it justice.

...so I found one online. Even still, you can't get the same feel unless you are really there.

 

Remember me telling you about our visit to that junky beach? Well on this day we were dying with how bad they were itching. If we weren't moving it was all we could do NOT to itch them. Jesse was a lot better at not itching than I was. I had never had something itch like this. It was more of a burning itch. If I did itch it made it worse, but when I didn't itch I felt like I was going to go crazy. Ugh. And they were ugly to boot.  

 

 

 Next stop... Cruise Ship! On the way though we got some lunch, filled up the rental car with gas and returned the car. We then waited for a taxi to drive us to the peir. We were so excited! The 2 1/2 days in Puerto Rico felt like it's own little vacation, but then we still had a week long cruise ahead of us.

After we got our bearings around the ship (which didn't take long because it was set up the exact same as our last cruise) we went to dinner. This night wasn't assigned where we sat. So they sat us on a two person table, but it was so close to the other two person tables that we felt like we should talk to the couple next to us. Which we did for over an hour. They were a really nice older couple who have been on so many cruises. I kinda think it would be fun to travel all over the world with Jesse once we are retired and kids are out of the house.

I can't remember too much what we did after dinner, I do remember having a break down of itching. I couldn't handle it anymore and just went crazy. I itched so hard (with a towel) I scrubbed a few layers of skin off my left shin.

Once the ship finally left the port Jesse was able to go to the little convenience shop to buy some Benadryl and hydrocortisone cream to help us.

Thankfully the Benadryl helped us sleep well so we wouldn't wake up with the sheets making our legs itch some more.