My husband and I plan to travel by car in Dec. We will rent a car from the airport when we arrive on Sat around 11am. The first 2 nights we will stay in Humacao area. Our plan is drive to Old San Juan to visit for the rest of the day before driving to Humacao to check in. Then we will visit El Yunque on Sunday for some minor hikings. The next 2 nights we will stay in Ponce; then 1 night in the mountains (Jayuya); then drive to Camuy Caves before heading back to San Juan for the last 2 nights.

I have some questions about my plan.
1) Is it a bad idea trying to find parking in Old San Juan on Sat? Is it ok to leave our lugguage in the trunck? Where is the good place to park the car in the parking lot?
2) We also want to go to Luquillo Beach while we are in the area on Sun. Is it possible to combine both El Yunque and the beach on the same day?
3) While staying in Ponce, is it worth driving to the Phosphorescent Bay? I saw mixed review about visiting the bay. I understand sometimes the view is affected by the moon light. The time that we want to visit is probably few days after the full moon. Is it still too bright at night? Or should we save it and try going to the one in Fajardo during the last 2 nights in San Juan?
3) We are staying at Hacienda Gripinas in Jayuya for 1 night. We want to drive to Camuy Cavews the morning after. Can we drive directly from there or do we have to drive back to Ponce for easier road access?
4) We may want to go snorkeling during one of the day for few hours. Any idea where is the better place to do it? Around Ponce or San Juan? Can we do snorkeling around the beach or need to join the boat tour? If we join the boat tour and snorkeling in the middle of the sea, does the tour company provide life jacket since we are not a confident swimmers?

Thanks for any advice.

I am curious as to why you selected the places you did (?). Ponce is worth little more than a drive-by, & then only if you are into architecture. Rincon would be a better stop. The Caves were closed at one point, I would make sure of their status prior to setting out to visit them (much closer to your departure date of course). Fajardo is the better of the two, but it will also depend on the phase of the moon as to how successful your trip may be. Obviously the darker, the better. Parking in San Juan will be a challenge, I would likely do excursions from San Juan while staying there. You can get to the beach & El Yunque probably via your hotel. Although it may or may not be cheaper, it will most certainly save the headache of driving/parking in San Juan. There are several posts on here re: PR. Doug Stallings (one of the Editors) & myself often contribute. I'd look over some of those.

We only have 1 week in PR and want to visit the mountain and Camuy Caves without a lot of extra driving time. From looking at the map, seems like we can make a shorter round trip from cutting north from Ponce without going all the way to the west. We thought we can use Ponce as a base and drive to the south west such as Guanica for the beach and snorkeling or State Forest for day trips. Is staying in Ponce really a bad idea?

PR while a large island in the Caribbean, is not a large island. It will be well worth the little bit of extra drive time to stay someplace like Rincon - www.rinconpr.com, www.rincon.org. Ponce to Rincon is probably a little over an hour.

Have you considered a day or 2 trip to Vieques or Culebra to snorkel?