As the last article mentioned, my husband and I recently took a Caribbean cruise out of San Juan. And I have to say, it wasn’t very long before I was asking all kinds of people to describe how something smelled, most namely San Juan’s air.

Upon arriving in San Juan and stepping outside the airport, I was thrown by something: the taste of the air. Coming from a family of beach and ocean lovers, growing up there wasn’t a summer that went by that I didn’t visit a beach (most summers were spent in Ft. Walton Beach, FL where my parents first met). And year after year, I’ve come to look forward to certain ocean/beach-related sensory experiences, (that is…those that I can in fact sense). One experience that I hadn’t expected to miss, however, was the salty taste of the air, a taste that was completely absent in San Juan.

I couldn’t tell if my taster was off (as it sometimes is being an anosmic and all) or if this was something specific to San Juan, so I began to ask the people standing closest to me if they could “taste” or smell the ocean. Most people just stared at me (in fairness though I don’t think those people spoke English), but some kind souls (my husband and my family) humored me with an answer, which was…“not really.”

Apparently, the ocean air near San Juan just isn’t as salty as other beachfront locales to which we’re more accustomed, (a fact that probably caused me to pour more salt over my food than normal to compensate). In fact, the air in San Juan (to me) tasted exactly like the air in my bathroom—an odd and unexpected disappointment to say the least. It was still an awesome vacation though!