Patillas To El Combate
Anyway, next day we drove east to Ponce, which was a disappointment – I was never much of a fan of architecture anyway, and most every city in Mexico has nicer parks and buildings – and we drove around town looking for unsecured wireless networks so I could check my Email, then headed west. Got lost a few times along the way because Puerto Ricans don’t seem to like using road signs. Well, they’ll use them occasionally, but not AT the corner – just about a half mile down the road as if to say “Yes, you guessed right, this IS the road!”.
But then, Puerto Ricans don’t really care about road signs or rules anyway. The traffic violations I’ve seen are just unbelievable. People (pedestrians, mind you!) will walk out in front of traffic, stepping off the curb without even looking at the cars coming, and just expect you to stop. Cars will back out into the street, without a thought that there might be someone coming. And no one seems to find this strange.
For example, as we were heading west out of Ponce that night, we got off the main road to get gas and somehow got turned around, headed up into the mountains. So here we are, on what is barely a 1-lane road, heading up into the mountains, after dark, on winding mountain road, and we turn a corner and find about a dozen cars parked in the middle of the road; people on them, around them, just having an impromptu fiesta! Apparently a few friends had passed each other on the road, then a few more had stopped and made it a party. Right in the middle of a curve, too, and no one bothered to get off the road!
If I had to describe the drivers here in a word, it would be “selfish”. That’s just the only way to put it. I’ve been to Mexico, where the driving is insane, and Ecuador where it is absolutely suicidal, but nothing compares to Puerto Rico. They just don’t care about anyone else on the road. They are going where they are going, and they’ll cut you off, back out in front of you and anything else necessary to get where they are going. They’ll open their door while parked alongside a major highway, double-park, and even park in the middle of streets in the middle of town!
To illustrate this is an event from a bit later in the trip; hands-down, this was the Puerto Rican Driver Prize. We were driving down highway 2, which is the main road that circumnavigates the island around the coast, which is usually a divided 4-lane highway. We were getting off the road to grab a bite (at Wendy’s, where else?), and noticed an 18-wheeler in the turning lane. It wasn’t moving.
As we got closer, we realized it not only wasn’t moving, it wasn’t even running! We thought this odd, at best, but figured he must have had engine trouble? What else could explain a trucker parked in the turning lane on the only major highway on the island?
Then we went to Wendy’s. And found the driver in line, ordering lunch. And that sums up driving in Puerto Rico. Moving right along, after arriving in the southwestern area of Cabo Rojo, we set out for the local salt flats. We’d read about these before leaving home. Apparently this corner of the island has a few shallow inland salt flats where people have been mining salt for thousands of years. The ocean blows spray in periodically, then it just dehydrates leaving salt behind. The salt flats themselves were kinda boring, but we were surprised at the amount of people we passed on the narrow gravel road.
So naturally we kept going to see where the people came from. Rounding a bend in the road, we found Playa Sucia – an absolutely gorgeous mile-long stretch of sand and blue water hidden at the end of the road. There was also a lighthouse up on the cliff, but I was never a huge fan of lighthouses. Nonetheless, we hiked up there for some fantastic views, such as:
Then we got in the water, which was remarkably salty, even though it was in an open bay. There were probably 50 people in and around the water, which didn’t really fill up the beach much, considering its size. We tried snorkeling, which didn’t work very well since the sand was so fine. Much finer than what they have even in the nicest beaches in Florida. But it made snorkeling lousy because everything was covered in dust. So we went for another hike on the other side of the bay, and got a really great picture:
I’m really proud of that one; it captures the colors really nicely. So much so that I’ve uploaded a full-resolution copy, so you can follow that link and save to desktop or screensaver if you’re as fond of it as I am. It’s pretty big, so I only showed the link on this page. Of course, I took pictures of other things too, such as this unidentified waterfowl:
It was quite a long hike. And a fun one. It’s amazing the things being exposed to the elements can do to rocks, and how it affects different ones differently…
But it was a very nice day trip. We got back in time to catch this sunset:
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Posted on October 19th, 2008 by Natnee and filed under Puerto Rico |
