We had it all planned out. After disembarking from the Rhapsody of the Seas, we were supposed to stay Old San Juan, one of our favorite spots on the island. We’d even booked a fancy suite at El Colonial, our favorite hotel there, with a private rooftop terrace and an outdoor tub. We were counting down the days.

Then, about halfway through our cruise, we got a text: the entire city of San Juan had been in a water outage for almost two weeks. We had the option to cancel.

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Why We Changed Our Plans

Our first instinct was to shrug it off. Surely they’d find a way to keep water running for guests, and we could just make do, right? But the more we thought about it, the worse the idea felt. Not being able to reliably flush a toilet isn’t a hardship you politely push through on vacation — and more importantly, we didn’t love the idea of being tourists soaking up limited resources in a city where locals were dealing with rotating outages while hotels had tanker trucks refilling their cisterns.

We wouldn’t have been doing anyone any favors by showing up. We just would have been paying for the privilege of making a hard situation slightly harder. So we canceled the hotel and started over.

The takeaway: if you’re traveling somewhere mid-crisis, “we’ll just deal with it” isn’t always the generous option. Sometimes the best thing you can do for a place is not be there.

Plan B: A Last-Minute Rental Car and a Return to Luquillo

With Old San Juan off the table, we scrambled for a new plan. We found a last-minute rental car — a Hyundai Elantra that somehow cost more for a few days than our entire rental for the first week of the trip, and was a noticeably worse car to boot. If you’re tall, or just enjoy not folding yourself into a vehicle that sits two inches off the ground, brace yourself.

We pointed the Elantra toward Luquillo, one of our favorite spots on the island. Because we booked so last-minute, we couldn’t snag the place with the amazing ocean view we’d hoped for — but we still ended up with a nice balcony a short walk from the beach.

Luquillo Has Changed So Much

We first visited Luquillo back in 2022, and while we’ve been back to the beach and the food kiosks plenty of times since, we hadn’t really spent time in the actual town in years. It showed. Back in 2022, downtown had a run-down, half-abandoned feel — a lingering mark of Hurricane Maria in 2017 and then COVID just three years later. This time, we noticed a baseball stadium with a fresh coat of paint that looked genuinely in use again. Small signs, but real ones, of a place finding its footing.

The food scene has grown too. La Catrina, a Mexican spot right in the heart of town, is new since our last visit — tacos, a solid selection of local beers, and a lively setting just steps from the shops and the beach. And down at El Patio, the food stalls have picked up some new vendors with live music every weekend. It’s a nice complement to the kiosks strip we already loved — more reasons to linger in downtown Luquillo instead of just passing through on the way to the beach.

We Accidentally Took a Coffee Tour in Spanish

Before we even made it to the Airbnb, we finally checked off something that had been on our list for a while: a coffee plantation tour at Hacienda Muñoz on the east side of the island.

The day before, we’d looked up the schedule — English tour at 10:00, Spanish tours at noon, 2:00, and 4:00 — and somehow, by the next morning, “10:00” had turned into “11:00” in one of our brains. We stopped for coffee first at Barista Squared in Condado (a spot we discovered back in January and love), then rushed to the plantation to make our “11:00” tour.

We got there, saw the 10:00 sign crossed out, and a very confused moment later realized we’d just signed up for the noon tour — in Spanish.

So: we took a 90-minute coffee plantation tour entirely in Spanish. One of us understood most of it and did some real-time gist-translating; the other followed along more through gestures and context clues than actual vocabulary. Either way, we learned a lot — how the plantations are intentionally shaded, how irrigation is handled differently across different parts of the island, and a long, memorable tangent about why you genuinely cannot trust a “Puerto Rican coffee” label at the grocery store. If you want the real thing, you have to go to the source, or at least ask.

If you want actual Puerto Rican coffee, a few reliable options:

• Cafe Colao in Old San Juan — one of our favorites, though we missed it this trip
• Finca Sialitos, also in Old San Juan — pricier, but excellent
• Barista Squared in Condado
• When in doubt, just ask the barista directly. If they’re proud of the sourcing, they’ll tell you.

Lunch in Guavate, Then Finally Cooling Off

From the coffee plantation, we headed to Lechonero Los Pinos in Guavate for lunch, before finally making it to our Airbnb — which, since it was last-minute, hadn’t had the air conditioning running ahead of time. It took a while to cool down, and running the dryer for laundry while the AC fought to catch up was not exactly the most efficient setup we’ve ever had. But that’s the trade-off of booking a place the day before: you take what you can get, and you deal with it.

Thanks for stopping by! Check out our Go See Do Explore Podcast, available wherever you listen to podcasts. To read more about this trip, check out the Island Hopping from San Juan Trip Report. To read about some of our previous trips, visit my Trips Page. If you like my photos be sure to “like” my Facebook Page and follow me on Instagram! For my list of gadgets to make your travels easier, click here.