surf's up

When we weren't exploring the hills, we were scoping out the Atlantic beaches.

$70.85/night and it's right on the beach

We stayed at a cheap guest house right on Playa Jobos. I forgot to ask how it got that name, but since the next beach down is called Playa Shacks, I assume it is a Spanish transliteration of "hobos". There was one guy fishing on the beach, but I'm not sure he qualified as a hobo. Otherwise, it was all surfers and Puerto Rican daytrippers. It seems the beach is the place to be on weekends in rural PR.

my favorite: Playa Jobos

Anyway, it's an impressive beach in many ways. It was the busiest beach we had yet seen, with lots of young Puerto Ricans chillin' with their friends. Supposedly it is a good place to learn to surf; clearly some of the guys we saw were just starting out. The water is crystal clear, and the waves a rich sky blue when they crest. The beach itself is steep, but levels out immediately upon hitting the water, and is shallow enough to wade in up to a couple hundred feet from shore. The low headland protecting the east end of the beach is constantly pounded by large waves. Check out this picture:

it landed over there

A couple guys got right under that spray to take pictures. One particularly large wave broke over the top (sending water up maybe forty feet), and knocked these guys back thirty feet. Needless to say, their camera was hosed. I used a zoom lens.

We weren't satisfied with just Jobos and Shacks, though, so we set out for Rincon. Reputed to have the best surfing in the Caribbean, it is mentioned in the Beach Boys' song Surfin' Safari.

best surfing in the Caribbean?

Well, maybe the weather was not favorable, because the waves looked like nothing special to me. Southern California waves break more regularly (with fewer jagged rocks), and the waves at Jobos were larger. There weren't many surfers out either. After an hour or so, we went back to Jobos.

On our last day, we stopped at the Bacardi plant across the bay from San Juan, and then settled into our last hotel in Condado.

Condado: Spanish for condominium?

As you can see in the picture, it is completely built up, centered around the (slightly) upscale shopping street Avenida Ashford. It had rained the night before, and the wind had picked up. So, despite the hot sun, the beach was not great. They had closed off one end of it, due to heavy surf.

¡piso mojado!

We did some last minute souvenir shopping, sampled the local Baskin Robbins and a pizzeria, then called it a night. We went to the airport the next morning.

And that's it for Puerto Rico. Try it sometime. It's always warm (even when it's rainy and windy), has great beaches, and, for better or worse, it has all of the comforts you enjoy in the States. It's relatively undiscovered by Spring Breakers. And where else can you vacation for twelve days and not meet another Californian?