Grand Turk

 Our last stop of the cruise was Grand Turk...which was not so grand in my opinion.

Sure, the view from the ship was spectacular! 

But up close it was pretty dirty and rundown...and the shopping was disappointing. 

 There also wasn't much to do there. We started out at the beach by the dock... 

...but soon decided to walk along the island to a beach where we were told the snorkeling was good. Once again the view was great, but the beach and the water were pretty dirty. The guys tried snorkeling, but it was so murky they couldn't see much of anything. The worst part was that you had to pay for a beach chair, so were laying in the dirty sand with all of the pricklys and ants. It wasn't my idea of paradise.

You could say we had gotten a little bored when this girly photo shoot began :)

Ben was pretty intrigued by this wall and all of the big waves crashing into it. It was pretty awesome.

I'm sure we would have enjoyed this island more if it had been before all of the other amazing ones, or on a day that wasn't so windy and murky. We did have a beautiful highlight at the end of the day as we left port (There is a rainbow if you can't tell)

Puerto Rico

Next stop was beautiful Puerto Rico.  

First of, we were able to go on an amazing rainforest tour. Everything was lush and vivid green. We found out first hand why it is called a "rain" forest :) It was pouring rain for the majority of our hike, which really added to the beauty. The waterfalls were huge and the river practically overflowing. Ben was brave enough to venture into the first waterfall we saw before the threat of being washed away in a flash flood was too great. It looks like I am stupidly posing with a huge leaf as a prop for all of the pictures, but I was really using it as my trusty umbrella (to prevent the ping of the rain on my sunburned shoulders more than to keep dry, which was impossible) so it made it's way into all of the pics.

We finished our amazing hike with a few hours to spare, so we decided to visit Fort San Felipe del Morro. It was huge and expansive with never ending stair cases and breathtaking views of the coastline! The stories were also very intriguing, especially for Ben the history buff.

We ended up practically running back to the ship in pouring rain, but it was totally worth it to see the classic beauty of old downtown San Juan.

And of course we came back to our own little towel crab :)

We had an amazing day on Puerto Rico! I only wish we could have stayed longer to see more. I guess we have another island on our list of future vacations! See you later Puerto Rico...