This week I am embarking on a trip planned since Christmas 2020 to Puerto Rico. My boyfriend’s family lives in various spots on the island, but he has never visited himself. As a Christmas gift, I wanted to give him the gift of travel to a place he had been longing to visit. With excitement in his eyes, he was thrilled to finally have the chance to explore his heritage firsthand.

Throughout the time we planned this trip until now, we underwent a lot of financial changes and decided to challenge ourselves to the lowest budget trip we could. I saw a stack of scratch-off lottery tickets from Halloween we never cashed in and decided to gamify our trip. Using only the money we won from these lottery tickets, we would have to budget for food expenditures. Since these tickets had been scratched months ago, we completely forgot how much we had won. Scanning them one by one into the machine at our closest Wawa, we saw the dollar amount rise — $50, $20, $5, $30 until we scanned the last one. We had a grand total of $202, way more than we anticipated.

That night we pulled YouTube videos up on our phones to see what spots we should visit in conjunction with suggestions made by Jason’s father, Hermie. The No. 1 spot we knew we had to visit was Guavate, also known as Hog Highway. Hermie had told us about the glorious food stands that line the highway with full pigs roasting on spits. We looked up videos and saw the multitude of food stands with juicy, tender roasted pork served right to your plate roadside. This is where we will get the most bang for our buck. By the end of this trip, we both agreed to have so much monfungo, pork, plantains and pastelillos that we gain 10 pounds.

While in Puerto Rico, we will visit with family who permanently reside in the rain forest. We have been told his uncle Ray lives on a coffee farm, so we hope to bring home some of our own beans to roast and savor during the chilly autumn months. Hopefully, we will also get to enjoy some of Uncle Ray’s favorite food spots for the most authentic experiences.

Our adventure is just beginning, so stay tuned for my next blog entry on how we end up spending our $202 worth of lottery winnings.

— Audrey Lee, assistant editor