Vegan Bed and Breakfast- MoFo Post Six

Post #6 for Vegan MoFo 2013.
 

Happy Day 6 of Vegan MoFo. My MoFo plan is to post during the weekdays and to take a break on the weekends from posting blogs. I still plan on coming around and reading all of your posts though! Today will be my last post for this week and I will pick up again on Monday. On this Friday, I would like to focus more on my Puerto Rico vacation as we had so many relaxing and rich experiences. 

Coconut Breakfast Muffin and Puerto Rican coffee

For half of our stay, we were at a beach house maintained by Maravilla Caribbean Veg Bed and Breakfast. We stayed at the house from Sunday to Wednesday, which is located near the town of Rincon on the northwestern part of the island. The owners told us that the bed and breakfast is by default vegan and guests can request eggs and dairy. Lucky for us, we fit the default. The owner was happy to comply with gluten free meals and charged us a fee per day for the extra ingredients. While it might have seemed excessive, I understand as she had extra preparation to do. 

Almond coconut rice and almond tarlets

After our first night in San Juan, we headed out to Rincon in our rental car. It was a nice drive and we spent the car ride laughing, singing, and interpreting signs in Spanish on the road. When we finally arrived, we were greeted by one of the owners who showed us around and explained our meals. She had made us breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks for our entire stay. They were all housed in our refrigerator with a listing of suggested meals. In hindsight, I wish I would have taken the list to recount all of our meals.
 

View onto our balcony and out into the ocean

While I can't remember the exact meals, I remember the highlights. All of our meals were vegan and gluten free (there were a couple of questionable items in the fridge that we were concerned contained dairy- even though the default is vegan. So we just skipped those items). We had sweet potato and black bean chili with rice, empandillas, lentil soup, coconut muffins, cookies, brownies, blondies, black bean and walnut burgers, plantains, boiled green bananas, tempeh and sweet potatoes, mango tofu, papaya, star fruit, almond and coconut rice, almond tartlets, among others. Each meal was exciting to us as the host provided such thoughtful meals. It would have been nice to have our food fresh made each day, but that would have only been possible if we stayed directly at the house. And it was nice for us to eat when we were hungry, not when it was a meal time.
 

An approaching storm

The house was not anything luxurious, spacious, or private. We had booked a stay at a hotel for the last three days of the trip, so we felt fine with lodging that was not fancy. We had our own private balcony and a room that included a table, a kitchenette, and a futon. It was a beach house with a wonderful ocean view. I couldn't ask for much more being right on the ocean. My only real complaint with the place was that the stairs separating us and the apartment below was a glass door. The stairs were open which allowed noise and light in. Luckily, we only had one evening with guests in the downstairs apartment.
 

One of the best parts of the stay for me was the late afternoon storms. I enjoyed standing on the balcony watching the rain on the ocean. We had several evenings with lightening over the ocean. It was nice to be able to enjoy a storm and watch it pass. On one particular evening, we watched storm clouds for at least an hour. The peace that I felt by that was something that I had not felt in a long time. The peace was continued as we did not have a TV or a radio. There was a bar nearby that played salsa music and we were often serenaded by the music during the evening as we enjoyed dinner or watched the night sky. 

During the daytime, we had access to snorkel equipment and kayaks. We spent one afternoon kayaking in front of the beach house. In addition, we spent two mornings snorkeling at a nearby place called "Steps Beach" that was known to have beautiful reefs and fish. There had been quite a few storms, so the water was not as clear as normal. I was still happy to swim with the colorful fish and experience some of their world. One of the stands where we parked had snacks and food and we enjoyed a cocoa frio (coconut water). Which literally is water from a coconut. After the water is gone, the shell is cut in half with a machete and you are free to enjoy the rich coconut meat. Nothing compares to that fresh rich flavor. 

 
Thank you for sharing a special part of our vacation with me. I plan to give you more snippets as we go through MoFo. At some point, I plan to share some underwater snorkeling shots as well. How many of you have been to Puerto Rico? If so, did you stay at Maravilla?