Like any good New Englander, I really like visiting the Caribbean when I can. Unfortunately, “when I can” has become less frequent as I’ve started having major responsibilities like kids and a corpo job. This winter was looking especially tough with the pending arrival of Daughter #2, so we decided to take a family baby-moon before we got tied down to Boston for the next 4 cold months. So, like any good family of New Englanders, we decided to go to Puerto Rico.

I had never been to the island, but I was very excited, especially given what we were greeted with:

I was looking forward to many days of exploring the island, enjoying the weather, and drinking lots of good local rums. But the first night we were there, I was so achy I couldn’t sleep. The following day wasn’t much better. After about 4 hours of watching me being miserable, my wife suggested I take one of the COVID/Flu/RSV tests she brought with us. The sample strip didn’t even get fully saturated before I could tell I had a major case of the flu. Lovely.

The flu is actually really quite bad for pregnant women, so my #1 priority was to isolate from the rest of my family. Fortunately my AirBnB had a private porch and a pull-out sofa mattress that I could sleep on. So after getting my Tamiflu prescription and a bunch of bottled water and snacks, I set up camp outside. This is basically where I spent my week of vacation in Puerto Rico:

I was lucky to catch the infection before it got too bad (and I had gotten my annual flu shot), so I was really only super laid-up for two days. And I got very lucky with the location of our rental: a nice on-shore breeze kept the place a moderate temperature the whole time, and blew all the bugs away! But still, this was not the vacation I expected.

I was feeling good enough by the end to go visit Old San Juan, and I gotta say that’s an awfully pretty neighborhood.

P.S. Vaccines work. RFK Jr’s brain doesn’t. Get your fucking shots.