You feel as though you’ve gone to the end of the earth when you stand atop the stunning cliffs rimming the peninsula beyond pristine Playa Sucia, the beach at the extreme southwest corner of Puerto Rico, and look out across the vast turquoise sea.
Most hikers who come here take the breathtaking 1 ½ mile trail that encircles the iconic lighthouse Los Morrillos. We did it, ourselves, a couple of years ago. (Here’s the video) It was amazing!
But if you sneak off to the very left side of Playa Sucia (also known as Playuela), you’ll find a billy goat trail of about 2 ½ miles that gives you devastating beautiful views of the lighthouse from across the bay, with waves crashing into the cliffs below. You’ll also take in the crescent beach and the vast ocean beyond. The area is called Acantilados de Cabo Rojo, which translates to the Cliffs of Cabo Rojo. If you’re afraid of heights, don’t go too close to the edge! Otherwise, prepare to be blown away, by both wind and natural beauty.
There’s no shade, so wear sunscreen and a sunhat, and bring water to drink. But the most important accessory is your camera! We suggest you drop your beach chairs and swimsuits under a seagrape tree on the beach before hiking so you can cool off afterward with a dip in the warm waves.
Playa Tres Tubos is a cozy neighborhood beach just a few short miles up the road from us in Joyuda, Cabo Rojo. There’s parking along the main road, but finding the pedestrian entryway was a bit of a challenge. The short path to the beach offered lovely mural art and shady trees.
Tres Tubos itself was a little gem of a beach, with soft sand; clear, calm water; but no shade. There are no facilities or shops nearby, so we brought our own lunch, and took the opportunity to test out our new shade tent for the beach.
INFO
Playa Tres Tubos – Sorry, no links to provide, there is no official info. Consider yourself scooped by an insider!
La Poza del Obispo in Arecibo is widely considered to be one of the most beautiful beaches on the North Coast of Puerto Rico. We wanted to know why so many people recommend it!
Here’s why: Lots of parking right by the beach. Deep, soft golden sand. A few shady palm trees perfect for hanging hammocks. Incredible views of cliffs and turquoise sea in every shade imaginable. Food trucks nearby along the road to the beach. A “poza” (pool) of calm water protected by rocks from the jaw-dropping waves, which creates a perfect pool for kiddies to safely swim.
What’s not to love?
La Poza is also located right in the shadow of the beautiful Arecibo Lighthouse, so we hiked up a small mountain into a brisk wind to get a better view. Definitely worth it!
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.
We are spending the day enjoying Playa Almendros in Rincón after yesterday’s house closing.
That’s right, we now own a house in Cabo Rojo!
There’s a sea turtle swimming around out there, poking his head up now and then. A sea turtle greeted us at a different beach, Playa Ostiones, the day our offer was accepted a month and a half ago! Do you think it’s the same turtle, welcoming us to the island?
I feel a new sense of belonging here now that I own a home, even though I don’t live in it yet!
We’re starting to explore beaches on Puerto Rico’s southeast coast, beginning with Playa de Guayanés in Yabucoa. The warmest water my tootsies have ever been dipped in! It’s a popular local beach, but still very quiet. The sand offered up magnificent seashells in various shades of brown.
But watch out for the red ants that sting in the grassy sand under the palm trees!
Who would expect to have to stop for wandering horses when driving along a dirt road on a Caribbean island? Or to see swirls of neon blue when you dip your kayak paddle into an inky bay at night? Or to see a cluster of plants and rocks on the seafloor start moving, only to realize that clump is actually a creature?
Surprise! That’s the best word to describe the island of Vieques.
To the uninitiated, Puerto Rico is a popular Caribbean vacation destination, a bigger island than most. But most people are unaware that PR is actually made up of a number of islands. The two largest (besides the mainland), Vieques and Culebra, are tropical paradises sitting a few miles off the east coast, their natural wonders just waiting to be discovered.
We visited the larger one, Vieques, this week and will spend a couple nights on Culebra in December.
Bienvenidos a Vieques!
Getting to Vieques
Vieques is located just 7 miles off the east coast of Puerto Rico. You can take a ferry to get there, but we opted for a ten-minute flight on Vieques Air Link from the east coast airport of Ceiba. The flight was $80 round-trip, much more expensive than the $4 R/T ferry ride. But the ferry can be unreliable, waits can be long, and the water can get very rough, inducing seasickness – unless you’re truly unlucky and can’t get on board at all. Get more info here.
We chose comfort, convenience, and guaranteed seats – which meant packing like sardines into a tiny 8-seat plane for the eight-minute flight. There are also flights to Vieques from two airports in San Juan, but which are more expensive. There are also several air providers, but we chose the local one, Vieques Airlink. Get more info here.
View from the plane
Getting our luggage
Exploring Vieques
People don’t go to Vieques for nightlife. They go for the nature. The island is quiet, lush, and uncrowded, with unmatched natural beauty. Vieques is home to the brightest bioluminescent bay in the world, Mosquito Bay. Travelers will discover countless undeveloped beach coves, as well as the largest natural wildlife refuge in the Caribbean. They’ll also discover rough, bumpy roads, which is why renting a 4WD vehicle is essential.
Vieques is 20 miles long and four miles wide. The Atlantic Ocean crashes against its rocky shore on one side, while the Caribbean Sea gently laps the golden sand beaches on the other.
The island has two main towns — Esperanza on the Caribbean coast and Isabel Segunda on the Atlantic coast. Between them, stretching west to east, are lush mountains crisscrossed by narrow dirt roads, with a jumble of colorful concrete houses built to weather hurricanes and the beating sun.
Isabel Segunda, to the north, has all the resources islanders need for their day-to-day lives — a couple of small supermarkets, a few gas stations, Town Hall, the main Plaza, the Ferry Terminal, and a bunch of restaurants and shops.
Isabel Segunda main drag
And side street
Esperanza, to the south, has a more bohemian island-life vibe, with a number of open-air bars and restaurants boasting overprices pina coladas and American barmaids, facing a malecon (kind of a boardwalk, only built Caribbean-style with concrete instead of wood) along the coast with spectacular views of Esperanza Bay. Esperanza has a beach within walking distance, making it possibly a better choice if you choose (or are forced) to come to Vieques without a vehicle.
Esperanza by dayAnd by night
All over the island, businesses and homes are painted with colorful murals featuring mermaids, iguanas, horses, and tributes in memory of lost relatives. It’s a truly charming place.
Getting Around
There is no public transit on Vieques, and we read that taxis don’t like going to the deserted beaches, and may not be available to bring you back at the end of the day. So unless you stay in Esperanza, which has lots of restaurants and several beaches within walking distance, you need to rent either a golf cart or a 4WD vehicle. Why 4WD? Because some of the roads to the beaches, like the one to Black Sand Beach, are car-swallowingly big.
The biggest piece of advice we got about rental cars was to book your car first, then build your vacation around it, because there are a limited number of vehicles available. So the availability of this red jeep at Island Jeep and Coqui Car Rental for Nov. 9-11 pretty much decided our timing!
We didn’t regret the expense. A golf cart would have been cheaper, but they only go about 15 mph, and you have no protection from the tropical heat or sudden rainstorms except the small roof. We experienced some very bumpy roads, and Bob enjoyed tooling around in the jeep on them, while I clenched my teeth.
Our Lodging
There are no big chain hotels on Vieques. You’ll find a choice of boutique hotels, guesthouses, Airbnbs, and hostels for the backpacking crowd. We stayed at the Bravo Beach Hotel, a boutique hotel located on the edge of Isabel Segunda. For just $90 a night, we had a spacious room with a queen bed, refrigerator, large bathroom, and little porch with a bench.
The entrance to the Bravo Beach Hotel
This boutique hotel also had two swimming pools, one of which was right next to the ocean, where I was able to witness a couple of stunning sunsets and one incredible rainbow.
Sunset view from the pool
Rainbow behind
The hotel also gave us the use of beach chairs, swim towels, and even a cooler, which turned out to be really useful since the beaches we visited had no amenities.
The hotel wasn’t serving breakfast because of COVID, but we found a place called El Café de Rincon (Coffee Corner) in a food truck park on the other side of town that we really enjoyed.
Horses
Horses roam freely throughout the island, thousands of them. Everywhere you go you will see them: mothers feeding foals on the roadside, herds hanging out in the nature reserve, horses strolling down the main street or passing through a food truck park, islanders riding horses in a choppy trot up hilly, narrow streets. Their omnipresence feels like a return to a simpler time. Learn all about them here; it’s hilarious!
We also saw many roosters, a couple of wild pigs, a couple of huge green iguanas, and countless snowy egrets, pelicans, and other seabirds.
Up next in Part 2 … Beaches, spectacular snorkeling, and the world’s brightest bioluminescent bay!
Here’s an important Spanish word for you to learn if you’re going to read our blog while we’re in Puerto Rico: Playa. It means beach. Puerto Rico is covered with gorgeous beaches — the northern ones facing the Atlantic Ocean and the southern ones the calmer Caribbean Sea — and we want to visit as many as we can while we’re here! There are endless varieties of sand-and-sea to be found on the Isla Encanta, each one more beautiful than the last.
We pulled out Google Maps and saw that Playa San Miguel was just one exit or so east from our condo in Luquillo on Rte. 3. We packed up a cooler with drinks and snacks, grabbed our beach chairs, towels, and sunscreen, and headed out.
irst look at Playa San Miguel. Guau! (That’s “wow,” in Spanish
Rough Road
To get there we had to drive our low-hanging rental five miles down a dirt road that seemed fine at first … until we hit the puddles. Small ponds might better describe them. Then they became lakes. I help my breath as Bob slowly navigated the Corolla along the edge of each, praying we wouldn’t get stuck in the muck in the middle of nowhere. Where was Bob’s Toyota Tacoma when we needed it? (Back in a parking lot in Manchester, NH.)
Bob commented that when we lived in PR in the 90s, he bought his guagua (truck, specifically a Jeep Cherokee with a cow-catcher grill on the front that Puerto Ricans call a “rompamonte”) so we could easily navigate these types of roads, but back then, I was working so much that we never did. This is part of the reason we have returned. Same adventurous spirit, more time — but sadly, no guagua.
The long road traversed the La Reserva Natural Corredor Ecológico del Noreste, a nature reserve and a prime ecotourism destination.
Somehow we made it to an entrance to a beach, where we saw a sign that told us, essentially — don’t drive on the sand, pack our your litter and don’t mess with the sea turtles that nest here.
We parked at the edge of the road, walked through a break in the trees, and found … paradise.
An Empty Beach
The sand was golden, stretching for miles in both directions, and the beach was completely empty of humanity. Three pelicans flew over, followed by a snowy egret. Little birds scuttled along the sand. To our right, a large, low-hanging tree with fat round leaves provided the perfect shady spot for setting up our base camp, which we did.
View toward Luquillo
Keeping It Clean
As I walked down to the ocean, I found a bit of litter wrapped up in the brown seaweed that had washed onto the sand with high tides. I picked up a paint can from the debris and began filling it with plastic cups, a mask, food wrappers, plastic forks, and more evidence of mankind. The disadvantage of an unmaintained beach is that it’s not cleaned regularly, and this debris was clear evidence of the litter that’s filling our oceans. I decided that one way to leave my mark on this island is to leave it cleaner than I found it. I filled another plastic bucket found with trash as well, and will bring trash bags next time.
Glorious Beach
But despite the litter, San Miguel Beach was perfect. The tide was rougher than in the bay where we are staying, waves crashing loudly onto the sand. I was wearing a bikini, which normally makes me nervous about bodysurfing, but no one was around, so who cared if the top or bottom got pushed down? We bodysurfed for a long time, laughing. It was amazing! I felt like a kid again. We were aware of a slight rip current, so we kept an eye on each other and made sure we didn’t go too deep.
San Miguel Beach Panarama
Alas, lunchtime came too soon, and it was time to go hunting for food. Next time we will pack a lunch, because it’s not very appealing to drive this long, wet road twice.
We definitely plan to return to Playa San Miguel, many times. But not today. It poured last night, and our car would likely sink into one of the lakes on the dirt road and disappear.
We also need to learn more about this Ecological Reserve. We’ll keep you posted!
