we has quite the interesting trip this cruise, snuck into PR a few days after Irma grazed it and left a few days before Maria hammered it.
our cruise ( 7 day on RC Adventure Of The Seas) was planned to leave Puerto Rico on Sept 9th, (2017) we had to at least fly in the night before because of the late time fligts went in (on Southwest) so we decided to go in the day before that (7th) to see some of PR. we had a trip to the bioluminescent bay planned with kayakingpuertorico.com they had a good price of $48 per person and a good cancellation policy, they communicated very well when they had to cancel our trip due to Irma and promptly refunded us, we will book with them next time we go.
as it got closer and hurricane Irma was headed for PR our Thursday flight to PR got cancelled (i think Irma hit/brushed by PR wed.) so we rebooked for going Friday, then that flight got cancelled, so with Hurricane Jose following up behind Irma we weren’t real sure how this would all work out, so a couple days before we found a jet blue flight that would get us to PR Friday evening.
so we got up Friday morning not completely sure if we would end up on a ship the next day, drove to vegas to take our southwest flight to Tampa, we ended up sitting in the airport for an extra 2 1/2 hours (flight got delayed because of limited landing “slots” in Tampa because they had so many private planes trying to leave) fortunatly our Jet blue flight was not suppose to leave for 3 hours after we got to Tampa, we got there and found that our jet blue flight was also delayed a couple hours, but still a go. [👍] (we heard that the tampa airport closed the next day)
landed in PR about 1:30 in the morning , picked up our car rental and were in our hotel and sleeping by 3am [😀] .
the damage that we saw in PR was pretty minimal, there were alot of places without power still and some broken tree branches, i think as they were on the mid edge of the storm they had about 60-70 mph winds and rain.
so the next morning (or later that morning ) we drove around the old San Juan area and took a look at the forts and buildings, it is a really pretty area. (looking forward to going back some time and see a little more)
a couple tips
car rental– there were 4 of us, we rented a car with Avis ($40) so that we could see a little of the area and it worked out as well as paying for taxis to get around, we picked Avis because they have a drop off closer to the port, it is at the Sheraton Hotel in Old San Juan, (which is really close to the san juan cruise port but across the bay from the Pan American Port we were going to). so i dropped people and luggage at the port, returned the car and took a taxi to the port ($15)
so if you were stopping in San Juan as a stop and wanted to rent a car Avis could be a good option (only problem is they close that location at 4pm)
cruise ship port–there are 2 ports ships leave from one is in old San Juan “San Juan Cruise Port” (i think Carnival ships leave from here and Royal Caribbean ships will stop here when it is a itinerary stop) and one across the bay “Pan American Pier” that our Royal Caribbean ship left from