La Playita: A Local Beach, a Hidden Gem

Looking for serenity? Or a party? Depending on the day, you can find either at La Playita, one of our favorite local beaches. La Playita, found at the end of a dirt road tucked among the mangroves near Puerto Real, is just a mile or two from our home in Cabo Rojo.

The beach can be completely deserted, offering a serenity that’s hard to find anywhere else. But a holiday weekend can bring entire families partying for the day, and even overnight campers, though there are no facilities.

This picturesque stretch of white sand offers shallow waters, palm trees, and mangroves. You’ll see fish and even rays jumping out of the water, pelicans flying by, and sand crabs scurrying around. Unfortunately, you will also encounter some trash, and maybe meet a stray dog or two. People park their cars right on the beach, so it’s not a bad place for people with accessibility issues. The water is calm, warm, and fairly shallow – perfect for swimming, splashing, lounging in the water sipping a drink, fishing, or kayaking.

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So grab your beach chairs, pack a cooler with drinks and some frozen Gasolinas (party in a pouch!), stop into Mercado’s Bakery to get sandwiches and chips and use the bathroom– remember, no facilities – and settle on in under a sea grape tree with a good book. Enjoy!

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Mercado’sBakery

Messy Suitcase Mini-Tour: Playa Corcega in Rincon

We spent a sweet morning at a beach in south Rincon that is popular with local swimmers and snorkelers. It’s a quiet beach with soft golden sand, but not a lot of shade. A reef can be found about 50 meters from the coastline. Unfortunately, the water kicked up a bit and kept us out of the water. Next time!

There are no amenities and no services, but the village of Rincon is a couple of miles away. Bring a cooler and your lunch.

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Mini-Tour: Bird’s-Eye View of Boquerón Beach

Balneario (Public Beach) Boquerón is one of our favorite beaches, and we showed it to you in an earlier video. But now Beto has a drone, and you’ll find the view is even better from the sky! 

The view of the crystal-clear water and the reefs and rocks below is astounding, with the stunning mountains in the distance. And Boquerón, which is a national park,  features many facilities you can’t see from the beach, including beach volleyball, a tennis court, a basketball court, a camping area (with cabins still being restored after damage from Hurricane Maria in 2018), and more.

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Balneario Boquerón
Messy Suitcase Original Boquerón Beach Video

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Mini-Tour: Combate Beach Walk

There is so much to do at Combate (pronounced Come-BAH-tay) Beach in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico! Beto prefers to relax in his Tommy Bahama beach chair with its cooler and cupholder for his frozen Pitorro rum drink, doom-scrolling on his smartphone or reading a book on military history while watching the pelicans fish in the Caribbean Sea and la Policía zip around in their black speedboat chasing nautical scofflaws.

But Lisa likes to explore, walking down the beach looking for shells and sea glass, or hiking or running in Boquerón State Forest, at the edge of a lagoon that attracts a lot of birds, including unique migratory birds. The hiking/biking trail that meanders through the dry forest by the lagoon stretches 7 miles south to the Salt Flats.

Join her for a walk!

(Watch our original Combate Beach video)

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Combate Beach
Boquerón State Forest Hiking Trail
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Is Combate the Most Beautiful Beach in Puerto Rico?

We almost hesitate to share this video because we love El Combate Beach (pronounced Come-BAH-tay) so much. It is one of the most beautiful beaches in Puerto Rico, with golden sand, calm turquoise water that creates perfect swimming conditions, and lots of shade trees. Pelicans dive for fish and rays occasionally jump out of the water. Combate’s location at the edge of Boquerón State Forest means we also get to enjoy a nearby lagoon that attracts a lot of birds, including unique migratory birds. The hiking/biking trail that meanders through the dry forest by the lagoon stretches 7 miles south to the Salt Flats.

The nearby village of Combate has our favorite waterfront restaurant, Annie’s, where you can sip a drink, nibble queso frito or red snapper, and enjoy the best sunsets in Puerto Rico.  It’s very quiet on weekdays but can become quite lively on weekends. But the faryher away from town you walk, the quieter it gets.

The biggest drawback to Combate is parking, or the lack thereof. There’s no lot and a long woodland path to get there. ! (We usually park on the street near Combate Beach Resort, and then walk in via the woodland path along the lagoon.) But it’s worth the effort!  

There are also no facilities, either bathroom or changing, so you might pay Annie’s a visit just to use the restroom. There are other places in Combate to get pina coladas as well.

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MiniTour: Playas Clavellina and Jauca

If you’re searching for a good beach near Ponce, Puerto Rico, you might want to visit Playas Clavellina and Jauca.

In our most recent effort to find that elusive quality south-coast beach, we followed the map to the coast, east of the Ponce Airport, past the giant windmills, to these small gems in Santa Isabel. They are located in a rich agricultural area that produces an abundance of tropical fruits such as mangoes.

Playa Clavellina is good for one thing: kite surfing. It was so windy we could only stay for a couple of minutes The sand whipping against our skin actually hurt! But for kite surfers, it was likely a gift from God. And it explained the location of the nearby wind farm.

Further down the same road, on the edge of the Punta Petrona Nature Reserve, we happened upon mostly deserted Playa Jauca. It was a black-sand beach with a few shade trees and a lot of mangroves, in quiet, shallow Jauca Bay, well-protected from the wind. We spent a relaxing couple of hours and even enjoyed a visit from the piragua guy!

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Map: Playa Clavellina
Map: Playa Jauca 

Messy Suitcase Mini-Tour: Playa Rompeolas

Rompeolas means breaking waves, but what we found at this local beach in Aguadilla were not surfers but lots and lots of jet skis. The playa had a bit of an urban feel, with an expansive parking lot, a boat put-in, and a food truck area nearby. A local man befriended us and showed Lisa where to find some really nice snorkeling, and we whiled away an enjoyable afternoon under a palm tree in the golden sand.

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Exploring Exquisite Boquerón Beach and Town

There’s a reason why Puerto Ricans put Boquerón at the top of their list of things to do in Cabo Rojo, the southwestern part of Puerto Rico. Its delightful combination of beach and beach town makes it an awesome place to spend a day!

We visited beautiful Balneario (Public Beach) Boquerón (pronounced Boh-kay-RONE) and discovered all kinds of wonderful things – soft golden sand, clear water in a languid mile-long bay, a grassy park dotted with flamboyant trees, a huge parking lot, a working (kind of) bathroom, a jumping stingray, some awesome open-water swimming, a boat club, and (possibly) Puerto Rican parrots. Just get there early enough to snag one of the shade trees and you are set for a lovely day. 

This beautiful public beach sits a short walk (or drive) from the colorful beach town of Boquerón, which bustles with shops, restaurants, bars (of course; this is Puerto Rico, after all), and a bunch of sidewalk kiosks. It’s quiet during the week but very lively (and loud) on weekends.

A big beach cleanup and reconstruction project to fix the damage inflicted by Hurricane Maria in 2018 is starting this month, so Boquerón should become even nicer very soon.

Definitely worth a visit!

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Balneario Boquerón (described from a local’s point of view)

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Balneario Boquerón
Boquerón Town

Messy Suitcase Mini-Tour: Buye Beach

Buye is a popular family beach in Cabo Rojo, on the west coast of Puerto Rico. It can be a little crowded on weekends and very lively. The water is calm, perfect for swimming, and there is a kayak concession at the southern end and some decent snorkeling at the north end. You’ll also find an open-air restaurant, a mini-market and a frappe place (usually only open Friday through Sunday). The beach fronts a popular family cabin camping area.

Don’t expect Buye (pronounced BOO-yay) to be as pristine as some of the public beaches you’ll find on the island. But if you’re looking to sit under a shade tree and watch the kids play in the sand while you listen to someone else’s radio pumping out Bad Bunny and take in the beauty of the turquoise water, you could do a lot worse than Buye Beach. It’s not a pristine touristy beach. What it is might be even better: a true Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, beach experience.

Buye has some unique features: a close parking area ($4, or park farther away for free), bathrooms, showers, and a spectacular hiking area nearby, Guaniquilla.

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Messy Suitcase Mini-Tour: Playa Ostiones

Playa Ostiones is the very definition of off-the-beaten path. It’s a little neighborhood beach, not mentioned in any tourism brochures. It has a small, deeply-potholed dirt parking lot among the palm trees, a put-in for small boats and jet skis, a small beach and swimming area for families, and a few wooden benches. No bathrooms. No restaurants. No facilities. There are a couple of small condo complexes behind it. But if you have simple tastes and a deep appreciation of nature’s beauty, it has everything you need.

You can walk through a nature reserve down a path beautifully maintained by a dedicated local man by the name of Harvey John Ducot, and take your choice of countless small beach areas tucked within the mangroves. You can sit under a low shady tree and watch the placid water. You can snorkel from a beach, or kayak out onto the water, and see countless reefs, plants and sea life. You can do yoga in the sand, fish off the jetty, or just laze the day away.

(Shh, don’t tell anyone!) Playa de Ostiones is our definition of Paradise.

Note: In the summer, the crowds on weekends can be loud and raucous, with lots of jet skis and speakers blaring Daddy Yankee.

Map: https://goo.gl/maps/Nb2xz99utRrFkgug9

 

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