Sun & fun

Yep, we’re still in Puerto Rico, and will be for a total of 3 weeks. And we’re VERY happy that we’re still considered as being in the US. See, when we return, it’ll be a domestic flight, and we don’t have to try and figure out where to get a rapid COVID test here, which the CDC will be mandating for international arrivals as of 2 days before we get back.

So we’re now in the NE corner of the island, specifically in the towns of Luquillo and Fajardo. There’s so much to see, do and eat here!

We started with Luquillo Beach. We arrived just after they opened the parking lot at 0900, and staked out our place in the shade. This beach is a mile long -

…and you can probably see the white buoys out in the water, delineating the swimming area (i.e. keeping the jet skis away from us). I’m not usually one for swimming (I’d rather snorkel or dive), but this beach was just too perfect to pass up the opportunity. I truly have never seen finer sand, more gentle slope, lack of any rocks/coral to step on, or gentler waves than on this beach.

The picture above was our view to our left, and to our right:

Those brownish piles on the sand are not stinky seaweed, but soft pine needles. Not so soft were the little pine cones under the trees.

We walked up the beach to our right, and around the point was another long stretch of deserted beach.

As we turned back to walk to the main part of the beach, we’re greeted with a view that I can only call “quintessential tropical beach”.

I really liked the colorful beach umbrellas and lifeguard’s surfboard -

The shaved ice vendor’s constantly ringing bell was interesting…

The next day our activity was first to find, then dare to try, a natural waterslide. I had read about this on a website called puertoricodaytrips.com. That site has provided me many different ideas and plans (that Steve’s not so sure about sometimes). Anyway, after stopping at an anonymous house with an old man and his younger companion out on the front porch, talking to a group of young men in bathing trunks and with towels over their shoulders, we felt we were at the right place. They wanted $5 “for parking”, even though we had parked on the side of the road and walked up the hill to them. We were then shown the trail down a steep muddy hillside and given instructions in Spanish, with recognizable hand signals…and off we went! (We had read a decent description of the site from that website, so felt comfortable proceeding.)

As we came to the river, we could see this small waterfall, but from pictures I had seen, I thought we were supposed to head upstream. Luckily there was a couple cooling off in the pool at the bottom of the slide, but they apparently hadn’t attempted the slide. At first, they directed us up another trail, and in Spanglish, we figured that this was the approach to the top of the slide. We climbed the hill only to find the trail leading to someone’s backyard and carport. So back down we climbed, to find the young men we had seen on the road, enjoying the slide. They showed us how to climb up the side of the rocks, and where to sit to start the fun.

our guides

the slide

View from the top:

And away we go! (there’s no sound on these)

Well, I felt like 20-something at the top of the slide, but post slide with numerous bruises has me feeling a bit older. ;-)

While we’re sharing videos, I’ll close with this audio only clip. This is the sound of Coqui frogs that are everywhere on the island, and we fall asleep to their music every night. All this sound comes from a frog no bigger than your thumbnail. I hope to get a picture of one before we leave…