Adventure Tuesday

Mail boxes along the side of the road near Dorado.

This week's Adventure Tuesday was on Wednesday, a roadtrip to San Juan. It was not all fun and games: We had to deliver some documents to a government office for Elaine's SLP license here and to - ARRRRGH! - go to Plaza Las Americas, the biggest mall in the Caribbean. We had a specific goal for Plaza Las Americas but of course got sidetracked and took longer than we'd planned.

From there we drove along the coast to Dorado. We stopped to check out the Agrotourism Park near Dorado. Elaine went to a rodeo in this park last weekend. She wanted me to see it and to check it out as a possible site for a kite festival, possibly even the American Kitefliers Association's National Convention and Grand Nationals competition. So we flew our kites there for a little while.

It is a very cool site and would work great for a kite festival. Hmmm....

We checked out a couple of beaches along the way and were reminded (once again, as if we needed to be reminded) of how lucky we are on this side of the island. There were a few open beaches along the roadway but nothing like our beaches. There is a lot of money in Dorado (that's where the Donald's golf course, home of the Puerto Rico Open, is located). There may be some very nice beaches in Dorado, but mostly they are sealed off from the public behind heavily secured gated housing communities. There is a pretty nice balenario (public swimming beach) in Dorado; we stopped there for a beer.

The nicest beach we saw on this trip was the balenario at Cerro Gordo a little west of Dorado. It was getting late by the time we got Cerro Gordo and we didn't have much time to spend there. We will go back again, I'm sure.

The balenarios are essentially public beach parks. You can walk in for free but there fees to park inside. The ones we've visited have (mostly) pretty nice facilities. The one in Dorado had a bar and pool tables. Facilities, such as restrooms and trash pick up, are one of the advantages of these beaches. But unlike our beaches, these balenarios are behind fences and gates. They are nice but not open.

From the cliff at Dunas, past Sardinera and Villa Pesquera, Shore Island, Middles, Golandrina, Jobos, Bajura, Shacks, and Martinique to the rocks at Survival, we have more than eight miles of open and accessible beaches. Then there is Surfers, Wishing Well, Natural, Crashboat and the beaches along downtown Aguadilla. And those are just the ones nearby.

We are so lucky here on our side of the island!