I was a teenage orienteer. I know some people say, "I was such a dork!" because they spent their teenage years alphabetizing anime collections or writing Commodore 64 programs instead of banging cheerleaders; but I was a dork because I spent my free time searching for control points in the forest with nothing but a topographical map and a thumb compass. Orienteering is a sport that combines the cool factor of cross country running with competitive map reading. Oh yeah, ladies.

This background has led to two unfortunate side effects: the first being epic bouts of frustration with a wife who loses her car in parking lots and gets tripped up over the difference between left and right (don't even think of asking her where she's headed in relation to one of the four cardinal directions). The second side effect is the inevitable indoctrination of my children into adults who won't need to call me on their cell phones to talk them out of the IKEA marketplace after they switched back to look at the textiles and then got hopelessly turned around. In order to fight against their mother's disorientating genes, I do a lot of drilling and shouting, spinning them around and then barking, "Point East. . .Not South, EAST GODDAMN IT!" Sometimes we walk somewhere random and I force the 4-year old to lead us home. "Landmarks!" I shout as she marches in the wrong direction. "Pay attention to landmarks!"

I'm afraid all these skills are set to become useless, however. Before we left for our recent vacation my wife bought a GPS. I generally don't believe in newfangled technology. You mean to tell me there's a satellite up in outer space tracking this here gewgaw you bought at Office Depot for $69.99? Sure, dude. Next you'll tell me you've got some kind of telephone that fits in your pocket and allows you to listen to music and send your friends brief messages in mangled English. But GPS, it turns out, is a useful luxury for a woman who once spent over an hour driving around looking for a store she'd been to twenty times.

Still, I couldn't help but feel that skill set I spent years developing being supplanted by a Swedish robot voice named Sven who methodically led us through the bumper-to-bumper commuter traffic of San Juan's environs to the house we were renting inside El Yunque National Forest. Once there, a ghostly troupe of stevedores, elevator operators, scriveners, lamp lighters, rag pickers, and piano tuners offered me a consolatory piña colada.

Our rental was on a road that used to go through the heavily-visited rainforest, and we were on the quiet, southern side near the economically-depressed town of Naguabo. In the late 1970s, the southern half of the road was closed permanently after four major landslides, with damage later exacerbated by Hurricane Hugo. We decided to do a full-day hike along the old road and see if we could reach the peaks on the other side. We figured it was a road once: how tough could it be? At first it was a road, and we wondered if this was going to be a boring hike. "We could have brought a stroller," I groaned with the weight of my daughter on my shoulders. My wife reminded me that we hadn't brought a stroller with us to Puerto Rico.

About half a mile past the padlocked gate, nature had begun obliterating the road that had been there since the 1930s. You could hardly see it as flowers grew over the old asphalt.

Soon enough we were crossing the landslides. My wife had our son in a sling on her back, and I had never been so thankful that our daughter is as tiny as she is. In certain spots I had to take her down from my shoulders and carefully help her climb through the spots where the road had been swept away long ago. Where low vines or tree limbs threatened her head, she ducked down low and with her breath on my cheek whispered, "Careful, pops."

[Click that photo to see it bigger] I should note that my wife and I have a long and storied history of back country hikes where we bite off far more than we can chew. We're the opposite of boy scouts: we never come prepared. We get weirdly competitive with each other and push ourselves until we're both exhausted and hungry then we realize we still have to turn around and go back, like the time we climbed Half Dome at Yosemite without water when she was five-months pregnant. Hiking with the kids just makes this whole phenomenon worse. The few snacks we did bring? Those little freeloaders ate them all up. With every mile that passed my daughter grew heavier in my arms. I don't know why we do this. Somewhere along the line we made the mistake of thinking self-imposed martyrdom made us better parents, that our suffering would one day be repaid tenfold. What a crock of shit. All we get for it is back aches.

The landslides destroyed the rainforest canopy, granting opportunistic vines and the ubiquitous yagrumo trees a chance to thrive in the sun. I could tell from the foliage along parts of the trail that someone had recently been through with a machete. As we climbed the ridge towards the castle-like towers on the summits of the more popular side of the park, I doubted that we'd be able to hike the full length of the closed road, where my wife envisioned someone selling bottled water and fried snacks. The kids, when we put them down to walk themselves, were slow as hell.

At some point we'd been carrying our children through the jungle for nearly six miles without seeing another soul when we heard a vehicle approaching on a road that barely existed. Soon a ragged truck passed full of young men searching for an elusive cell phone tower. They said it was three miles to the point where was road open. My wife said, "Three miles, that's nothing! We can get there in an hour." I reminded her that would mean twelve more miles beyond the six we'd already carried our increasingly whiny children who were only being placated by the lie that silence would increase the chance of seeing monkeys. "I want to turn around," I said. The victorious look in her eyes said it all: Wuss.

If I had a topographic map I could have explained the difficulty of it all perfectly, how we wouldn't make it back before the sun set over the mountain and how we'd probably have to kill a mongoose or a boa to feed the children. Still, I had an even better option: I turned on the GPS. I showed her how far we'd gone and how far we still had to go, and then asked it to calculate a route to where she hoped to reach.

"When possible, turn around," Sven said.

And that was all she needed to hear.

"Oh, if a robot says it," I grumbled as we tramped back. We stopped only to swim in a natural pool at the top of a waterfall. As we dried in the sun it was like we'd never sweated. Back at the house, packmules at the end of a long day's work, nearly broken, we threw off our boots, put the kids to bed and rubbed each other's aching backs. "Not too old for this shit yet," I said.

"Nope," she replied. "Not yet."

So I always thought the wild dogs of Detroit were kind of crazy; roving in packs, many of them part Pit Bull or Rottweiler or German Shepherd. Sure, I've encountered a few truly scary former fighting dogs that seem to have been dumped due to their injuries and a few mutts that seemed rabid, but after a week in Puerto Rico I no longer think having stray dogs all over the place is that big of a deal. I've been to countries before where a few well-fed hounds lounged around in the sun, but I couldn't believe the sheer number of strays we saw in Puerto Rico. I didn't have my Polaroid with me but I still couldn't help taking a picture of this tiny thing we encountered heading up into the mountains near Utuado:

Someone had dumped her some time ago at an isolated scenic overlook that wasn't very scenic. We gave it all the food we had and my wife almost couldn't handle leaving it there. I just didn't have the Spanish to explain to some indifferent veterinarian or dogcatcher-equivalent in the next town that my wife gets very sentimental about tiny, frail creatures that are clearly dying. "Besides," I said to her as the pup mournfully watched us drive away. "You lived in Cambodia. Remember that French restaurant in Phnom Penh where you felt those tiny hands reaching through the wall behind your back begging for scraps? In parts of the world, creatures like that dog are human beings."

There comes a point where you have to accept that there's a tolerable level of cruelty to the universe, or else you just wouldn't be able live with yourself, I thought, considering my gut as I drove up into the mountains and our $135 a night hotel.

The next day we drove all over Puerto Rican coffee country between Utuado and Jayuya, the area where ancient Taino culture was best preserved due to the relative isolation from the coast. It was beautiful country. These were towns where a horse or two was tied up in front of every roadside bar or, in this case, Texaco station:

The roads up there were built about one-and-a-half cars wide, so around every harrowing curve you either meet your doom or another car still just far enough away to cause only a mild jolt of panic. To make matters worse, Puerto Ricans achieve maximum speed up and down the mountains by driving directly in the center of the road. They make Italian drivers look like lost Grandpas navigating 1972 Oldsmobile Delta 88s around a church parking lot.

In Jayuya we ate a traditional meal of roast pork, greasy flank steak, pigeon peas, and some fried things, some of which were plantains. Twice-fried plantains (tostones) seem to always come served with this disgusting sauce called "mayoketchup" in which my daughter dipped everything she consumed. About halfway up the mountain she started complaining from the backseat that her stomach hurt. "Keep coloring," we said, busy trying to figure out where we were headed among the endless twists and turns. In the rearview mirror I noticed a car tailgating me with one of those massive roof-mounted dual-bullhorns that seem to be popular among Puerto Rican lunatics who feel compelled to share their apocalyptic visions and salsa music with everyone within a quarter-mile of their vehicle. At a wide spot in the road I pulled over to let him pass, and then went on our way only to find him parked in the middle of the road a mile up, out of his car and waving at us frantically. For all I know he was just making sure I was going to VOTE FOR GOMEZ but I didn't stop, narrowly missing him with half the tires skimming along a slate ridge.

"My stomach really hurts," I heard from the backseat, but I paid no attention because suddenly I was James Fucking Bond in a rented Nissan Sentra, actually living out that fantasy with both hands on the wheel handling those mountain curves at nearly twice the recommended speed. Suck it, Steve McQueen, I thought once I put enough distance between our car and crazy car-roof-mounted dual-bullhorn guy.

That's when the pack of dogs started chasing us.

I've been chased by wild dogs before, but we were going almost 25 mph around those curves and those dogs were still right on our tail. I couldn't shake them. Juniper quit complaining about her stomach long enough to get a laugh or two at the stupid mutts, and I begged my wife to take a picture while I drove. This is what she captured during the confusion:

After a while they got tired, and I looked at my wife: "Are we dragging a dead goat carcass?" We continued down the mountain, but the constant switchbacks and swerves finally took their toll: from the backseat we heard the unmistakable sound of vomit and smelled the pungent stew of sugary orange drink, mayoketchup, and stomach acid. Then we heard the sound again.

A few seconds later we pulled into the roadside parking spot at some old woman's hovel and my daughter was crying on a rock in her underwear, the two of us bathing her with handiwipes when crazy car-roof-mounted dual-bullhorn guy finally pulled up and started shouting at us through his dual bullhorns. I fantasized about the electric sizzle those bullhorns would make if I threw a fistful of vomit into one of them, but the kindly old woman (onto whose parking spot we were squeegeeing what looked like thousand island dressing from our daughter's body) yelled at him to go away and he did, just as two of her neighbors came over to stand around speculating. It was probably the most exciting thing to happen in that parking spot all week.

Eventually we cleaned everything up and drove away, and even though the car had a new smell there was a softness in the air, the softness that comes whenever your child is truly sick and all the whining and complaining is lost and forgotten, and all you can think is how brave she is and how much you love her. I thought back to my own childhood, remembering my father standing at an edge of road on Pike's Peak with a hose in his hand, washing out a car he'd rented that I'd filled with the sludge of pancakes consumed that morning, a story I heard time and time again whenever we spoke of our first big vacation.

I looked at her face in the rearview mirror, redcheeked, recovering. "You'll remember this, kid. I promise."

I wake up in an airport. Like automobiles, inside they all have the same instinctive design: my first thought is which one is this? It has been more than two years since I've flown but the Old Life comes back to me: document review in Tucson; depositions in Minneapolis; trainings in Manhattan. I have woken up in airports before, but never with one of these on the floor next to me:

I blink. For a second the janitor pushing his cart through the lonely concourse is the piragua man, his spray bottles of green disinfectants and red germicides and purple window cleaners exotic syrups waiting for cups of hand-shaved ice; before I add chemical hallucination to that provided by sheer exhaustion, my wife hands me a squirming baby, saying "your turn," as her eyes shut.

This morning I woke within the high-thread-count sheets of a five-star hotel built in 1646, and eighteen hours later I'm trying to keep my eyes open in the misery Dulles Airport. We've spent an incredible week with the beautiful people and landscapes of Puerto Rico, and now through some mangled English the United Airlines gatekeeper communicates that it's 30 degrees in Detroit. I don't want to believe her. I've never been a blogger who gives the play-by-play of every day; I like a few days to reflect on the currents of life, so I'll probably have something to say about it next week. But today I'll just say we had the best time, thanks in part to readers' wonderful advice.

I did take some pictures. If you stick around, I'm sure I'll play the annoying neighbor: dimming the lights and forcing you to sit through them until the carousel projector clicks to white air and you can finally escape the dank shag carpet of our den.

Last week I was pretty miserable. The weather was taking a toll and I turned a year older. If the temperature was never going to go above 31, why did I have to? And if I had to be 32, couldn't I at least be 32 for five years like Jennifer Aniston? Even worse than getting older was all the checkwriting I have to do at this time of year: car insurance; car registration; the bill from the liquor store. And my bar dues. Why do I pay $400 every year to the California Bar Association? All they give me is junk mail. And last I checked I don't need to be a member of the bar to change shitty diapers. I guess I could file a nuisance complaint against my daughter for Crayola marker proliferation. But she's already a far better lawyer than I ever was.

Turning 32 and paying all these bills and sitting around in this glass box looking out at the impenetrable winter with two kids hellbent on havoc during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression wore me down to an uncharacteristic gloom.

But then, my wife gave me my birthday present: three dirt-cheap plane tickets to Puerto Rico this coming March. I've never been to the Caribbean. I am told it's somewhat different from Cincinnati. I haven't even set foot on an airplane since November 2006. I am pretty excited.

When it comes to vacationing with children, though, I don't think I'd enjoy the spontaneity we enjoyed traveling while childless. I actually want to have an itinerary. With reservations. Just as I became overwhelmed with the information on Puerto Rico available online, my wife said, "Why don't you just write about it? The blog has some of the most well-traveled, smart, articulate readers out there, and I'm sure more than a few of them have been to Puerto Rico. Plus: they know you, and the sorts of things you like."

So dear readers, I'm asking if any of you have ever lived in or traveled to Puerto Rico. What do you think we should do? Basically, I'd like to avoid places full of drunk college kids and crowded beaches. Kid-friendly is obviously a plus. Also, I want to avoid places that are difficult to get to logistically (Vieques sounds awesome but challenging to get to). I'd like to stay a few nights in a coffee hacienda somewhere in the mountains. Has anyone out there had a good or bad experience in Puerto Rico they would be willing to share? A great hotel or rented villa? Well-kept secrets? An amazing restaurant? Can anyone feed our goldfish? I'll bring back some cheesy t-shirts from the cheesiest t-shirt shop in San Juan. . . .