What do you do when you get to Puerto Rico, rent a car in San Juan, drive an hour to the coast to Fajardo and call your AirBnB, only discover said AirBnB is no longer an option?

You book a room at Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville hotel and pretend like you’re 65, baby!

After a calming walk on the beach and an even more calming shot of tequila, we settled into our new place and our new plan. I had imagined staying in an authentic Puerto Rican apartment, one where we could see the beach from our front porch and walk to the corner bodega and get local snacks and chat with people who lived nearby.

Margaritaville™ is kind of the opposite – 500 acres of immaculately maintained grounds in Rio Grande, where two shots and two drinks cost you $45 at the “It’s 5 o’clock Somewhere Bar” and if you forget to return your towel they charge you half a hundy. The splash park was covered in kids and the hotel was covered in conference rooms. It took 10 minutes just to find the dang parking garage. They play Jimmy Buffet every hour. It was everyone’s dad’s paradise.

But no matter! We still found a local corner store and packed our bags with bagged sangria, (“Sangriiia!”) and plantain chips. The bed was a mother effing dream. Our room faced towards the El Yunque rainforest, where the sun would slip behind the mountains  and trees each night, covering everything with a hazy pink glow. It was beautiful. Like our lord and savior Jimmy Buffet hath said: “when life gives you limes, make margaritas.”

We were a short ride from Luqillo, so we headed there for the night. I wanted to try the mofongo the internet kept raving about, so we went to La Parilla, the first restaurant on a strip of seafood places along the beach. If you like a warm, mashed plantain mound with a fried, crispy outer shell, covered in tangy chicken and vegetables then you’ll like mofongo. And I certainly did.

We spent the next day at the massive resort, drinking pool beers and getting second degree burns on shoulders that hadn’t seen the sun in six months. The beach outside the resort was nearly deserted, the island still not fully recovered from Hurricane Maria. The public beaches were more crowded and lively.

We went back to Luqillo for lunch, this time to Boardriders, a sleepy surf shack-style place that had chilled beers and warmed fish tacos.

That night we did what we came to the east side of the island to do – the bio-luminescent bay. I had heard that the best one was on the island of Vieques, which we couldn’t get to, and that the hurricane might have diminished the quality of the light-reflecting algae and that it was crowded with tour after tour of kayakers pouring into the bay and to keep my expectations low. Low expectations are the best, aren’t they?

I had nothing to compare our trip through the mangrove forest, our double kayak gliding through the pitch black night as the shadowy arms of the mangroves reached down over the shore, breaking up the overhead blanket of stars, thousands more than I could ever see in the city. I had nothing to compare the time our boats took to get down the channel, single file, the only guide the bobbing red light on the safety jacket of the kayaker in front of me, trying to keep track of which way they were turning and when to duck to avoid hitting the mangrove limbs. I had nothing to compare finally arriving in the bay, the huge expanse of water perfectly still on the nearly moonless night, reaching into the bay for a handful of water, the phosphorescent algae exploding in light three times their size to scare away intruders. I had nothing to compare our guides, funny and knowledgeable and patient, or that each tour group is given their own 20 minutes in the bay to experience the luminescence in peace and quiet.

It was beautiful. It was unexpected. It was the best part of the trip. I didn’t take any pictures during the trip, only before, of the empanadas we ate prior to boarding the kayaks.  Those were pretty good too.

The next day we packed up and headed to Old San Juan, but not before stopping in the El Yunque National Forest. I love a good rain forest and I was told this one was not to be missed.