I hope you enjoy some of these recent island scenes from our yard and out and about.
Some of the delicious produce we grow here at our place: pomarrosa (large pink pear-shaped fruit), mulberry (black berry) and Surinam cherry (little pumpkin looking fruit)
This sort of captures a feeling of Rincón doesn’t it? Horse and sea
Britton with a house jack through the tropical gardens to the cabin
At the WOK for a fun fundraiser for DAR, the animal rescue group
Check out this awesome frog we saw against a restaurant window after a heavy rain!
A wild parrot up in a tree
Turkey mama and even more pavitos came out of the forest. We’re going to have to downsize on the number of turkeys as we are getting overrun!
Roadside fruit vendor under a mango tree (and/or broken down truck 😉 )
One of our very favorite water activities here in Puerto Rico and Rincón specifically is snorkeling. It is inexpensive -all you need is a snorkeling mask and some fins. I often go out without fins because it is less of a hassle, but if I were to go out for a long session I would wear them as they help tremendously in propulsion underwater. It’s fairly easy to learn how to do too. Pretty much as long as you can swim in the ocean, you can snorkel. It takes a little bit to get your bearings, but once you’ve done it a few times it’s super simple. And it’s also something you can do basically all year round. It is sort of like the yin to the yang of surfing. They are both an ode to the sea, but in different ways.
Surfing needs waves. Snorkeling needs flat waters. Surfing is floating just above the waterline, snorkeling is just below it. Surfing needs plenty of space to move, snorkeling can be done just floating in one area if desired. Surfing is about focused power and snorkeling is about focused gentleness. Surfing is mainly about the action, snorkeling is mainly about the observation. Surfing is fast and snorkeling is slow. To me, that we have both world class surfing and snorkeling in Rincón is a perfect expression of these two complementary sides of life.
Our favorite place to snorkel is at the Tres Palmas Reserve that is right off Steps Beach. It’s a little of a challenge for some people to enter because it doesn’t have a sandy bottom, but once in, a magical underwater world opens up. It has one of the best Elkhorn coral formations in the world! And with that comes lots of fish and sea turtles too! This has been a long process of conservation and it has really paid off. It is just bustling with life as you can see in the above video. We float around completely immersed in this other world almost like spacemen with minimal gravity on another planet. And then we enjoy learning about and identifying the various strange life forms we see.
Close up of an Elkhorn coral
We have snorkeled some other places in Rincón, but Tres Palmas is by far the best. Over in Corcega or Almendros the waters are super clear with long sandy beaches, but there’s not nearly as many fish. The Marina can have some good snorkeling as it’s directly connected to Tres, but there are too many boats going in and out and that scares the fish away. At the balneario, there are sandy bottoms so it’s easy to enter, but pretty much only little fish like sardines.
On the other side of the point at Sandy Beach we have seen sea snakes (or maybe eels?) and a few other cool things, but it often has too many waves to have good clarity for regular snorkeling. Overall, though I always enjoy snorkeling pretty much anywhere because by simply putting on a small piece of transparent plastic we suddenly have a little window into a part of the world that is rarely visible. It’s pretty incredible and I am so grateful to live in a place with this wondrous space just under our noses.
Driving through the mountains with gorgeous views lined in coffee plants
We went up to celebrate our friend Papo’s birthday in Maricao. He had a similar party in December for Christmas but instead of lechón, the main meal this time was sancocho de conejo – a very delicious rabbit stew.
Backyard pelea de gallo
We learned from the last party that we needed to have something to do otherwise we would end up milling around aimlessly since we don’t bet on the roosters or dice. Papo set up a domino table for us, but we ended up finding the perfect station for us: bartenders in the little cantina.
I tended to the customers and served up the drinks of Coors Light, Medalla Light, Busch, and Heineken and made change while Britton juiced the fresh oranges for the Finlandia and OJ tragos. The pineapple pitorro and sancocho were free.
Britton on the exprimidor
We are definitely still the exotic guests of Papo and I overhead quite a few comments about the “Americanos” from Rincón. I also got a lot of questions, attempts at English, “oye rubia” and even a request for the change to be in besos instead of pesos. So of course I had to ask… how much is a kiss worth and they told me…maybe $3? I thought that was pretty funny. When it got really busy even Britton worked the bar passing out drinks using his broken Spanish. His Spanish has really improved since we arrived! He can have a passing conversation fairly easily!
¡La rubia a la orden!
One thing I noticed as the bartender was that no one paid any tips (besides the requests to buy a kiss). Not even when the total was $4.50 and they handed me a $5. I thought maybe I was doing something wrong but Papo said that it’s just not the custom to tip. He said that these people are too poor to tip (but managed lots and lots of beer and gambling!). I wonder if tipping is just not very common in other service industries like restaurants. We continue to tip when we go out, but it made me question what the cultural standards for tipping are in general here in Puerto Rico (and partially why there is an assumption that all gringos are rich -sort of a hey they just give their money away feeling?).
It’s such a different world especially way deep in the mountains like this but we are starting to get more accustomed and comfortable. In addition to the sancocho we also loved the homemade pasteles and Britton told me he thinks pasteles are one of his favorite foods now! We really enjoyed our short foray into Puerto Rican country bartending and our time at the party. Not a day goes by that I don’t learn something new about my new homeland.
Rooster ready and waiting with his plastic spurs and partially plucked body (not sure why they pluck them like this)
This sort of captures a feeling of Rincón doesn’t it? Horse and sea
At the WOK for a fun fundraiser for DAR, the animal rescue group
