Antidote rooftop tent7/30/2023 Our best meal was at the ultramodern restaurant Ladi’s in Old San Juan, famous for its seafood and pasta (yet priced under $20 an entree) and tucked into the cliffside overlooking the Atlantic. Tostones, or fried plantains, come on the side like French fries, with tantalizing dipping sauces. Its base is cornmeal-like mashed green plantain, flavored with garlic and crowned with your choice of meats or seafood and a range of spicy sauces. First up: mofongo, an heirloom dish with African roots that the Puerto Ricans have adapted to be their own. Tasting the tropical food was high on our list. Along the walk, the history of the fort and its rising walls is palpable. These “gatos del Morro” nap under the shrubs and warm themselves in the sun, blending into the shoreline rocks in their coats of many colors. You’re greeted along the sea promenade by cats - hundreds of cats, feral but healthy, tended to by a nonprofit that maintains food stations and even arranges adoptions. Old San Juan has cobbled streets, picturesque plazas and narrow alleyways that form a grid between the port, where almost daily dockings of cruise ships drop off hundreds of passengers for shopping and sightseeing, and Castillo San Felipe del Morro, the ancient castle and stone walls that protected Puerto Rico’s shores from pirates and conquistadors for centuries.Įl Morro is a fascinating several-hour walking adventure around the border of Old San Juan. That was the magic choice for our tastes. We opted to stay in the old city, just to the east. Enormous banners proclaiming “Puerto Rico Fuerza” (Strong) hung from buildings in modern downtown San Juan. Pride and resilience were on display everywhere on this first anniversary of Maria’s punishing visit. The island is so casual that you can get by with just a few changes of clothes. We ended up alone on white-sand beaches under cloudless blue skies, feeling that we had cheated the weather and the tourism gods. Our timing couldn’t have been better, with summer visitors having returned home and others fearing travel during the risky storm season. Heading to San Juan, we had hopes for a little sun on clean beaches and no stormy surprises. Making our way to the island, we felt a twinge of guilt and relief as we flew in and out of Atlanta, where just days before the airport had canceled hundreds of flights in response to Hurricane Florence’s devastating sweep through the Carolinas. Paul, picturing myself on a beach just as snow flurries would be landing on my balcony back home. Ever frugal, I could not resist the $350 airfare from Minneapolis-St. He had been anxious to go back to see how the Caribbean island was doing. We were in Puerto Rico, a place my travel partner had fallen in love with just before Hurricane Maria’s devastating visit in 2017. When my friend finally coaxed me to shore, I sat under the palms and watched 5-foot-long iguanas roam the park like pets while I sipped on a cold cocktail. We have one coming in for review and will report back later this summer.Floating in a tranquil sea of aqua water, my body raised to the sun, I knew I’d made the right choice. It includes a telescoping ladder and a foam mattress with a removable cotton cover.Īvailable starting June 2020, you can preorder now at REI or here (free store pickup) and through authorized Thule/Tepui dealers. The interior of the ABS-and-aluminum shell is felt lined and insulated both for noise and temperature. Zip it on for camping, zip it off to turn the Hybox into a storage container. The Hybox Wedge has a 3-season 260g breathable cotton and 3000mm waterproof polyester mix of wall fabrics, plus mesh netting for airflow. This means better aerodynamics and better fuel economy for you. At just 12.5″ tall when closed, and with a smooth, rounded front end, it should reduce both drag and wind noise. This should make it the easiest to use, fastest to setup, and the quietest. Same for the Hybox Wedge, except that it uses an even faster clamshell design that hinges at the front and opens from the rear. Pull the mattress out and you can use it as a rooftop storage box. The original Hybox debuted last year with a vertical popup design. It’s also a great solution for taller vehicles, like if you wanted to add a rooftop tent to your Sprinter or Transit. The new Thule Tepui Hybox Wedge solves for all that, as long as you only need to sleep, two people. And while spacious, they also take a little bit more time to open up. Prior to this, Tepui’s soft-shell tents are quite box-like, sitting rather un-aerodynamically on your vehicle’s roof. The all-new Thule Tepui Hybox Wedge rooftop tent is the first major new release since the brand was acquired by Thule in 2018.
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