A hike in the nature reserve around the Cabo Rojo Lighthouse (Los Morrillos) served us up spectacular vistas, with stomach-dropping white and red cliffs, fascinating rock formations, crystal-clear Caribbean Sea, and even cacti!
We found the loop trail, part of the Cabo Rojo National Wildlife Refuge, on the All Trails app. It took us around the rocky coastline of this peninsula, then past the salt flats, before dumping us out on Playa Sucia, or La Playela, a gorgeous beach.
It’s located on the southeastern point of Cabo Rojo, on the Morrillos Peninsula, in the southwest corner of Puerto Rico. Learn all about this destination at the Discover Puerto Rico website.
Make sure you come between 9 AM and 5 PM, because the park rangers lock the gate!
It’s a new year — thank God — and despite the inconvenient evolution of Covid-19, Messy Suitcase plans to forge ahead with our traveling life this year, as safely as possible. We hope you will come along for the ride! We plan to continue helping our friends and followers stay abreast of what we’re doing with our creative retirement.
Whether you love to travel or just want to live vicariously through our adventures, we hope our journey will inspire you to think differently, to look at life through the prism of possibility, to get out there and explore!
Where are Bob and Lisa now?
We’re in Washington, DC, till mid-January, enjoying holidays with family and college break with our son Gavin and his cat, Ellie, and exploring the Nation’s Capital.
When Gavin goes back to Champlain College in Vermont, we will return to Puerto Rico. Why? Because international travel is just too difficult with Covid spiking, and Puerto Rico is a warm, lovely space to spend the winter. We lived here in the mid-1990s, and being back this past fall has felt like returning home.
1st Stop: Cabo Rojo We will spend our first month living in the beach town of Cabo Rojo, on the SW coast of Puerto Rico. Cabo Rojo puts us within a short drive of a number of stunning beaches with excellent snorkeling, La Parguera with its bioluminescent bay, towering limestone cliffs, idyllic nature reserves, creative restaurants, and so much more! It will also give us a sense of really town living, Puertan Style. the town square is just around the corner.
2nd Stop: Isabella After a month, we will travel to Isabela, on the northeast coast. We will stay in a resort condo community right on the ocean, with a cycling trail nearby, and access to a number of surfing and snorkeling beaches.
3rd Stop: San Juan We are just not done with San Juan. We barely scraped the surface of our to-do list of activities and places to visit in Puerto Rico’s capital city, with its diverse combination of awesome beaches, historic sites, and urban culture. So we will be back in Punta Las Marias in mid-March for another month of city and urban beach exploration.
We took a Thames River Tour to Greenwich, England, which then surprised us with a bounty of attractions: The Cutty Sark, the Greenwich Market, the Royal Maritime Museum, and, of course, the Prime Meridien, where East meets West!
The Spaniards built Castillo San Cristobal in the 1500s to increase the fortification of the strategic island of Puerto Rico. Let’s walk through history together!
Why did the US Army leave two giant tanks at the end of Flamenco Beach on the Puerto Rican island of Culebra, considered one of the most beautiful beaches in the world? Find the answer in the latest Messy Suitcase YouTube video.
Puerto Rico is the rum capital of the world! So we have set out to visit as many rum factories as possible. We started with the island’s oldest, Ron Del Barrilito, in Bayamon, just outside the capital San Juan. In this part, we learn how Barrrilito rum is made with help from an excellent tour guide named Edgardo. Next time, we will taste it!
This is Part 2 of our Hacienda Iluminada Tour. We learn how coffee is processed for 787 Coffee, and then taste it! Visit our previous blog for Part 1, touring the farm and learning how the coffee is grown!
Enjoy the video, and don’t forget to subscribe to our channel!
It’s a splurge, at 109 pounds ($145 US) a person (plus tips), so if you can’t afford to do it, join us on a Bateaux London dinner cruise on the Thames River! London at night is lit up like a Christmas tree, especially the bridges. (Forgive the background noise in spots, but a lot of other happy celebrants were also enjoying the night!)
How does coffee grow? What does a coffee bean look like? We tasted 787 Coffee in San Juan and had to jump on the first tour of Hacienda Iluminada, where this rich, full-bodied is grown, processed, and roasted. Enjoy the video, and don’t forget to subscribe to our channel!
