Day 4: Around Rincon

Today I decided I was going to walk to a bizarre looking community that, according to google maps, had something that looked like a half-built skyscraper. Normaly, I try to get airplane shots to find out more information, but in this case micrsoft was convinced Rincon was still in the age of 1980's blurry black-and-white satellite shots. So only one way to find out, right! It was only a mile, maybe a mile and a half away, so even if I walk the coast around to it... should only be two or three miles and get a taxi back. Heck, I can do 3 miles in 18 minutes! Lets do this! I was feeling superconfidant. I even skipped the boots and treated myself to shorts (good idea) and sandals (less good idea). I even got an email back about a possible rental I could check out while I was out there... only the street didn't show up on any map...

I walked to the grocery store, which didn't have suntan lotion, and set off down the street toward the center of rincon. I

bought an orange from a streetside vendor, things were looking good. I checked another two stores for suntan lotion and traded between the beach and the street as I went. I even lucked into the street the rental was on, and found it! "One block to beach, ocean view" means 3 blocks, 2 fences to jump, and a view if you stand on the roof. So I continued, sometimes the road, sometimes the beach, until I got to...

La Punta, the westernmost piece of Puerto Rico! The point and the lighthouse are up on 40' cliffs, and I pondered climbing around the point on the rocks, but decided against it. There's always next time. Turns out, it was probably a good decision, since three police cars showed up to help a boogie-boarder who'd been caught in the current and ended up against the rocks. I took a picture of the lighthouse, watched the surfers, and continued on my quest. Which brings us to this picture, which was labeled on the map as BONUS! ... Turns out it's actually a decommissioned nuclear reactor. They shipped the core back to the state, put all the contaminated material in the core and then entombed it. Pretty cool stuff, at least for infrastructure nerds like me.

I saw one surfer my entire trip up to the point, and he wasn't even in the water. 100' to the north of the point there were two dozen of them. So I stopped to have lunch and take some pictures.

Eventually I set off again, walking in front of the century (centuries?) old Spanish wall before being forced to climb it to get away from the waves. Which was easy, though uncomfortable since the coral they used to build it is really just thousands of sharp points held together by spite.

I spent an hour in the shadow of a undercut rock while the worst of the sun beat down. After

climbing through some more rocks where I found this guy (He was, legs included, almost 3 inches wide, bigger by far than any I had previously seen in the wild.) Then I found the spot with the best waves without being overcrowded by people, the appropriately named Sandy Beach... and, not surprisingly, I found the tourist district of Rincon, which meant I could finally find some sunblock. Not to be deterred, I continued on towards the neigherborhood that was my goal.

After following some streets that looked like they should lead to it, but just lead up and down some very steep roads instead, I bushwhacked back to the beach and hiked to it along beautiful beaches with beautiful breaks and no people, I found it.

It was a gated community, with expensive toys and only half the houses occupied. All the identical houses looked better from the ground than it looked from the satellite pictures, but it was still a little stepford-wives. Luckily, with a weeks beard I turn into a chameleon. Oversized watch on, I look like a lazy tourist on vacation. Watch off, I look homeless. Needless to say, watch-on and no-one looked twice. And my half-hotel? It was a swimming pool with changing rooms. Bah.

And they all had cars, no need for taxis... So I walked back home, a little more on the roads, a little less site-seeing. Stopped for desperately needed water at the lighthouse, stopped for dinner (which was a cheeseburger. Perfect hiking food.) and eventually made it home 8+ hours after I left to go on the vacation.

Those of you who can't read a train-table without it turning into a word problem are probably realizing I'm the slowest hiker in the world, or my numbers are off. Well, I double checked with the Advanced Google Maps Distance Calculator and it turns out that instead of 1, 1.5 tops it was 3.5 miles to the community. A rough guess for my route in the calculator spit out 11.5 miles, so realistically all chances are I did a half-marathon today. Half in sand, and mostly in bare feet. I'm making a pattern of stupid hikes a week into a trip. Tomorrow, I'm going to hike 3 blocks to the beach and not a step more.