With Caribbean hurricane season in full tumult it’s possible you’ll end up in San Juan, Puerto Rico with time to kill between flights, so what’s there to do besides hang out at the airport? If you have a minimum of a few hours you can see and do a lot: tour the famous castle El Morro; wander the blue-stoned streets of Old San Juan; luxuriate at a nearby beach; even escape to El Yunque, the only tropical rainforest in the U.S. National Forest system. But be careful to watch the time because it’s easy to get lost in your surroundings. In fact, people have got lost in the rainforest. A few years ago an American biologist got disoriented and ended up spending a week or more wandering around the jungle, surviving on what he could scavenge.

Also be sure to give yourself plenty of time to get back to the airport. I almost missed a flight a while ago because I got confused in the scrambled-spaghetti highway network around the airport when trying to return a rental car. That experience convinced me never to rent a car from an off-site agency again, because the return to the airport was clear, but finding the rental agency was not. I only made it because a good Samaritan led me through back alleys and parking lots to my destination, then smiled and waved good-bye before I could thank him.