Day 9 Patillas

The morning started off well enough with a brisk walk up the beach after breakfast. When we got up the beach as far as we wanted to go it started to rain, and that was the way it was for pretty much the rest of the day. The only break in the weather we got was around noon when we took a ride up the coast and over the mountains to a few beach towns up towards Fajardo. The mountains are right next to the ocean and the drive there is spectacular. We stopped for lunch at a mountain top restaurant (El Nuevo Horizonte) that overlooked an endless ocean and miles and miles up and down the beach. We had octopus salad, fried calamari and fried pork. It was much more than we wanted, but it was sooo good. We only ate about half the pork, the rest of which we took back to the hotel for our new found friend (see picture). This little puppy, who is much smaller than she looks in the picture, was living on our porch when we arrived yesterday. She was extremely skittish and at first we couldn’t get close to her…the pork cured that. She would follow us everywhere and sneak up and nip the back of our legs. She was really cute, but last night she decided to start barking at the trees or something and I just went outside and politely (sort of) asked her to stop, and she did…women never listened to me before. She really is a fun dog. According to one of the workmen here, people drive by and turn their unwanted puppies loose at the hotel. He said a lot of the guests take them to the vets to get their shots and return home with them. When we first arrived we saw a young couple carrying around a small dog that they we taking back to the states. It sure is tempting, but we’ll be leaving in the morning dog-less.

For dinner we were not hungry, so we stayed at the hotel and sat on the veranda and drank wine instead. Although I did have s bowl of Pigeon Pea soup and Sylvia had a piece of chocolate cake. Tomorrow we’re going up to the northeast coast town of Fajardo.