Day 8 Rincon to Patillas

I’m sitting here writing yesterday’s post while watching the sun come up over the water. The picture was taken from exactly where I’m sitting. I think we picked a nice spot to spend a couple of nights.

Yesterday we left Rincon fairly early and drove south along the coast through the towns of Yauco, Ponce, and Guayama on our way to Patillas. It was only 135 miles but it took all of six hours because we stayed on mostly old roads, plus the police were diverting all of the major highway traffic through the little town of Yauco. Turns out that one of the highway overhead lights needed to be repaired and it wasn’t even in the line of traffic AND they closed both sides of a four lane divided highway!! After we got back on the highway, we saw how long the line of cars was on the other side – folks were making U-turns and heading back in the wrong direction plus just backing up on the shoulder and up the ramps. I never saw anything quite like it.
It wasn’t as nearly a pretty drive as we had hoped for, but we did manage to find a neat beach restaurant for lunch in Salinas. I had eaten seafood twice a day for the past seven days so I was starving for some meat. Damn if the menu had forty seafood dishes and only one meat dish (Carne Frito with Mofongo) and Sylvia ordered it. Damn--red fish for me again.

We arrived at the Caribe Playa Inn in Patilla around four o’clock and were more than satisfied with the location. It’s a small 25 room inn and all the rooms are within 30 feet of the ocean. There are two reefs within 30 feet of the shoreline. We spent the next few hours before dinner by sitting and watching pelicans work the small schools of fish in the little lagoon. The Inn had a little restaurant (see picture again), but the check-in person said that you had to put your food order in at least one hour before you arrived for dinner. We placed our order at six so we could eat at eight, and I ordered spaghetti and meatballs. It was both the worst and best spaghetti and meatballs I’ve ever eaten. Sylvia had Ceviche and cod cakes. It was a nice evening in a nice place.