Monday, June 16, 2025

Puerto Rico - Days 1 and 2

We decided last fall that we wanted to take a trip to Puerto Rico, and planning vacations is pretty much my favorite thing to do.  We have two in the works right now, with a couple of others on the "list".  My life just feels empty without a travel adventure on the horizon.  Puerto Rico has been hit with a couple hurricanes in the recent years, so we were trying to find an area that had mostly recovered.  We knew we didn't want to be in/around San Juan (read as:  off the beaten path; also read as:  get us away from the people), so we explored a couple of different, smaller towns and settled on Patillas.  It's on the southeastern-ish part of the island, very quiet (except for those damn roosters).  We found an amazing Air bnb, a house with a great outdoor pool area, and immediately booked it.  It was such a great place, nestled between two jungle mountains, with a straight-on view of the ocean.





We had a long day of flights getting there, followed by getting our rental car (minivan for all seven of us), stopping at a grocery store for food/snacks for the house, and then an hour+ drive down to Patillas.  Everyone was exhausted by the time we got settled, so that was the end of day one.






Day two was Randy's birthday.  We had a great breakfast at the house and decided to find some local beaches for a beach/swim day.  The first beach was Villa Pesquera Beach of Patillas.  This was definitely a family beach visited by locals.  There were numerous families there having BBQs.  There was quite a bit of seaweed, so the kids quickly decided they wanted to find a different beach.  While we were there, however, there was an ice cream truck that came through, so we all grabbed ice cream and sang Happy Birthday to Randy before heading out to find another beach.















  
The second beach we found was Playa el Faro de Arroyo, and was much better.  No seaweed in the water and hardly anyone else on the beach.  There are wild dogs all around the island, so a few made there way over to explore/pee on the minivan tires, and then laid underneath it for shade.  We were able to walk out into the water quite a ways, riding the waves. The kids decided we needed a boogie board, so we were able to go grab one from a nearby store to use another day.










After all of the beach fun we could handle, we decided to head back to the house for the remainder of the day/evening.  The kids, of course, immediately jumped into the pool.  We had homemade quesadillas for dinner, and set up three different phones to watch some baseball games.  The outdoor pool/patio area was top notch, and we spent quite a bit of time out there.  There were a couple horses on the property behind us, so we made a point to visit them often and give them snacks (one looked a little skinny).









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