Tag: adventure

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Palmas Del Mar: Paradise or Gringolandia?

When we started looking for a home in Puerto Rico, realtor after realtor recommended that we buy in Palmas del Mar, a massive oceanfront resort development on the southeast coast. The largest planned resort development in the Caribbean, Palmas del Mar bills itself as “Puerto Rico’s #1 vacation destination.” But is it? Not for us.

The many rings of gated security work for some people, but for us they made us feel disconnected from real Puerto Rico. We visited the beach and were underwhelmed, and access to it is extremely limited.

Palmas del Mar started as a vacation spot and evolved to include residential opportunities, and features a golf course, tennis club, athletic club, equestrian area, a forest (Bosque Pterocarpus), marina, school (Palmas Academy), shopping area, hotels, restaurants and more. The residents ride around in golf carts, and their association has regular social events.

So what’s it like? Take a tour and see if it’s your cup of tea. We decided it’s not ours. Lisa calls it Gringolandia.

Links

Info
Palmas Promotional Brochure
Map

Photo Attributions

Alina Santiago, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons – Palmas Marina

Alina Santiago, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons – Palmas

Alina Santiago, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons – Golf course

Bjoertvedt, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons – Houses

Col Nesty Delgado, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons – Palmanova plaza

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Messy Suitcase Mini-Tour: Isla Verde

Let’s take a quick tour of Isla Verde, a beachfront high-rise neighborhood on the eastern end of San Juan, Puerto Rico, that offers a wealth of amenities and options for upscale travelers and residents.

Isla Verde is a resort strip of San Juan known for its beautiful urban beaches. This neighborhood offers a plethora of dining and lodging options for upscale travelers to the Enchanted Island, as well as for well-to-do homeowners with deep pockets. Its popular white-sand beach backs up to high-rise hotels and condos, with shade trees and many dining and drinking options.

Most travel articles describe Isla Verde’s exquisite urban beach in the heart of the city, but we thought we’d show you the other side of the neighborhood: the avenue that offers all the amenities you need to enjoy your time on the eastern end of San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Enjoy our mini-tour!

Info

Map

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Kayaking in the Humacao Nature Reserve

Turtles and ducks and iguanas, oh my!

The Humacao Nature Reserve offers a wonderful kayaking experience, through a creek dodging turtles among the mangroves into a large lagoon. Breathtaking! The lake of course boasts a couple of Puerto Rican flags, since residents’ pride in their island is displayed everywhere you go. Our adventure also offered the chance to see a large variety of birds, turtles, and even a couple of huge iguanas.

The tour guides give you a laminated map so you can follow a specific marked route and learn about the flora and fauna of the region.

Humacao Nature Reserve, also called the Punta Santiago Nature Reserve, is located in the southeastern coast of Puerto Rico, between the municipalities of Humacao and Naguabo. In addition to kayaking, which only cost $15, the reserve has trails for walking, hiking and mountain biking. The birdwatching is spectacular, and you can also go fishing. There are large, clean bathrooms and even showers.

Links

Info: https://www.discoverpuertorico.com/profile/punta-santiago-reserva-natural-de-humacao/7844

Map: https://goo.gl/maps/xyCoWpT1z1mtdoZM8

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Pelican Feeding Time at Palmas del Mar

We wandered down to the coastal area of Palmas del Mar and discovered pelicans having a feeding frenzy on fish in the Atlantic Ocean. It was an amazing sight! Thought we’d share.

Palmas del Mar is a lush golf course/tennis resort development on the southeast end of the island of Puerto Rico. We spent 12 nights there. The beach is largely inaccessible, except by golf cart or walking over to this stretch. There was a lot of sargassum, and it stunk. But the views were gorgeous and clearly the fish — and thus, the seabirds — loved it!

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Does Melones Beach on Culebra Have the Best Snorkeling in the World?

Judge for yourself!

Locals on the island of Culebra told us we would find the best snorkeling at Melones Beach. This area didn’t show much promise at first — we were greeted by screeching chickens, not much in the way of sand, and stones underfoot. But we decided to give it a go anyway!

The undersea world was truly spectacular. The video below doesn’t do it justice. You will have to go see for yourself!

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The Pterocarpus Forest: A Nature Enclave Within a Sprawling Resort

Who would expect to find a beautifully preserved nature preserve in the middle of the largest resort development in Puerto Rico? But that’s what we discovered when we entered the Pterocarpus Forest.

The Pterocarpus Forest nature preserve at Palmas del Mar is a 51-acre swamp forest, one of the largest remaining swamp forests in Puerto Rico. It serves as a habitat for 44 species of flora and 52 species of fauna, and this is a relief to see when elsewhere in Palmas del Mar, trees are being razed to create the latest luxury developments.

This wetland forest is named after the Pterocarpus Officinalis tree (“Dragonsblood Tree”), which has awesome roots that spread out majestically. It can grow more than 65 feet tall.

There’s also a lookout tower and a pond, which provide lively bird, turtle and iguana-watching.

Although Palmas is a private development, the Pterocarpus Forest is open to the public. Just tell the guard at the gate that’s where you are going. They have even been known to give out forest maps. There’s also an app that offers a walking tour of the forest.

Links

Info
Map

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Messy Suitcase Mini-Tour: Guayanés Beach in Yabucoa

Guayanés Beach, in Yabucoa on the southeast coast of Puerto Rico, was lovely, quiet, and tranquil, for most of the day. It even had bathrooms! It was a beautiful crescent of sand and turquoise sea with lively waves. I walked down to one end and found the most beautiful seashells I have seen on any beach in Puerto Rico, including a sand dollar.

Mid-afternoon, the peace was broken when a rural Puerto Rican family arrived with their horses in a trailer, and inadvertently entertained us by riding back and forth along the beach, and even taking their horses into the waves for a swim! By mid-afternoon, they had set up a party, complete with blasting speaker, behind us by the parking lot.

About then, we noticed the ants under our feet in the grassy sand under a palm tree were starting to bite us viciously. We ended up with burning, itching bites and blisters on our feet for days.

I have a feeling that Guayanés Beach is a rollicking party on weekends! If you want quiet, weekday mornings are probably best. Just watch out for the red ants underfoot!

Links

Info
Map

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Messy Suitcase Mini-Tour: La Pared Beach in Luquillo

La Pared Beach is a year-round popular surfing spot a block from Luquillo’s main town square. We never swam there because the waves were too high, but we did enjoy watching the surfers, including kids’ classes and competitions, while enjoying munchies and libations at Boardrider’s Restaurant.

Enjoy the mini-tour!

Links

Info

Maps

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Sneaking into Vivo Beach Club on Carolina Beach

While trying to enter Ocean Lab Brewing Company from the beach at Carolina, Puerto Rico, we were stopped by a burly security guard. He told us we couldn’t walk through this private club named Vivo, and pointed us around the building to the street side to enter the restaurant from the parking lot with the rest of the lowly non-members.

Well, exc-u-u-u-u-se me! (Fellow Boomers will recognize that reference.)

Our table on the third-floor balcony at Ocean Lab gave us a bird’s eye view of the Vivo Beach Club, so we googled it. It calls itself “the hottest private beach club in town.” You can join, or pay $40 for a day pass. This video shows you what you get.

After lunch, Bob tried to sneak through the club again to get out to the beach. Despite putting on his very best I-belong-here-don’t-mess-with-me act, he was stopped by the alert security guards and rerouted to the pedestrian exit. Foiled again!

Links

Info:

Vivo Beach Club
Ocean Lab Brewing Company

Map

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Snorkeling Buck Island, St. Croix. Four Thumbs Up!

No visit to St. Croix is complete without a trip to its crown jewel of underwater glory: Buck Island.

What lies beneath this turquoise water? We’ll soon find out!

Located one and a half miles from the dock at Christiansted across the turquoise sea, Buck Island Reef National Monument offers over 19,000 acres of both submerged and dry lands that are pristine and perfect for nature exploration. The only way to get there is on a National Park Service-approved boat tour. We chose to take a half-day catamaran trip with Big Beard Adventures.

Leaving Christiansted Boardwalk
Enjoying the boat
First view of Buck Island

There are hiking trails on Buck Island will take you through a tropical dry forest to the hilltop; we didn’t have time to do this. (Take the full-day tour if you want to hike.)

Beaching

But we did have time to visit the beach, where we watched gray pelicans and magnificent frigatebirds fish while novices were back at the boat learning how to snorkel. Then the Big Beard crew honked the horn for us the re-board the catamaran, and took us around to the other side of the island.

Snorkeling

We pulled on our masks and fins and jumped in with the first group and snorkeled for an hour and a half above an outstanding reef teeming with colorful fish and majestic elkhorn coral. Enjoy Bob’s YouTube video!

Drinking

On the way back to Christiansted, we enjoyed punch made with St. Croix’s own Mutiny Vodka (we will visit their distillery on our next visit to the island) while visiting with our new friends, Jane and Rick from St. Louis! (Jane originally hails from Adelaide, Australia, and both are scuba divers.)

We saw these creatures on the relaxing trip back

Messy Suitcase heartily recommends Big Beard’s Adventure Tours. Four thumbs up! The captain made the safety instructions hilarious; his crew did a great job of getting to know every participant’s needs and aspirations for the trip; and they were all extremely capable – and fun! (And yes, all the men did indeed sport big beards, though the new guy’s was still a bit scraggly.)

LINKS

Buck Island Reef

Big Beard’s Adventure Tours

St. Croix Activities

The Queen Conch

Maps

Buck Island

Big Beard Tours

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