With the owner of the Love Castle, Don Cuchi Carrero
I had the recent pleasure of talking with the owner of the “Love Castle” or the conch house in Rincon. I have written briefly about this strangely cool place before, but I never knew the back story. We just happened to run into the owner one day and struck up a conversation and got it on video. It turns out he is looking to sell it although he is still (and always) doing more work to it!
Check it out!
We had heard of this “wedding cake house” from our friend Linda and finally saw it as we were driving on 115 near Stella/Rincón and so we had to turn off and take a good look. It is so strange and cool at the same time.
It is a large concrete three story building covered in ornate designs of things like sea creatures, parrots, lion heads, native figures, and conch shells. Lots and lots of conch shells.
Most of the designs are painted in vivid primary colors while one side is left completely white giving it that classic white-wedding-cake-with-swirly-frosting-design look. Seeing scaffolding, it looks like they are still adding to it with plans to paint the rest of it. They must have spent a ton of time making this and painting it so many colors. Just gathering the conch shells would have been quite the feat, let alone setting them as structural components like balusters. With this many conch shells everywhere I would say this family lives on conch meat alone! Well, conch and family love, of course! 🙂
It is officially called the Mr Carrero and Sons Family Love Castle. I think perhaps something got lost in translation. I am not sure if it is a private home or a guest house or a museum of strange things, but it does have a small refreshment stand out front. You never know what you might find in Puerto Rico!