Bloomin' Marvellous Bioluminescence
Trip Start
Mar 30, 2007
1
18
29
Trip End
Apr 28, 2007
Fajardo, Puerto Rico
Friday, April 20, 2007
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Woke up bright and early, due to the very early hour that I had crashed, (around 8.30 ). My room is great, I love this hotel. It seems to have been built there by mistake. It is right in the residential area , you come out of your room motel style, at the back of the hotel and there are lovely palms but most unusually you are backing onto blocks of flats and you can hear the day to day noises of the people who live there. I rather liked that. Then to the front I had a balcony that opened to a stunning view of the sea. I was staying on the surfing beach so the waves were crashing on the shore and of course to make it a Jackie ideal location , lovely tall palm trees. True bliss, I love the sound of the surf.
So after taking some time to suck in that lovely sea air and truely appreciate my balcony view I went for breakfast. The concierge was in the kitchen making his own breakfast and there was only one other woman. I went and sat down at the only laid table in the outdoor terrace dining area, the sun was warm there was a slight breeze mmm lovely. I was still a bit knackered and when the woman asked me the very normal question of would I like a cooked breakfast, my face must have looked as tho she'd asked me to eat poo! I just couldn't be arsed to eat but I needed feeding , so just had cereal and toast.
After breakfast i decided i would walk to what is called the Public Beach , 45 mins away, firstly taking in the ' Town Centre ' Luquillo Plaza. I was looking for a veggie sandwich shop that was in my lonely planet book. I circumnavigated the plaza in around five minutes. It had the air of the jackmans shops. There are some open but you're not sure if you want to go in or not, and the others look as tho they haven't been open in years. No sign whatsoever of veggie man.
I carry on following the map in the direction of the beach. As I walk along I feel quite alone and quite white and definately not local! Part of me is loving, really loving ,how untouristy Luquillo is, but on the other hand there is some comfort to be gained in numbers. I get to the end of the street and then have to walk along a highway. This is where I really made myself look completely like ' I appear to have come here by mistake' ( Withnail reference ) As I walked along the highway I got a couple of honks which I put down to randy senors, it wasn't until I saw some people who had very obviously been to the beach walking on the path on a paralell road that it dawned on me that I had been walking on the hard shoulder! Luckily it had only been for about 200m, still long enough to get killed tho! My only real disappointment was that I hadn't been hauled up by one of the Harley driving policemen!
So then I embrked on a very isolated walk along this road, highway one side and big fence the other, very picturesque! Then yes , there it was, just ahead to the right. It looked a bit scrubby and this had been billed as one of the most beautiful beaches in the world, so I decided to walk along a bit. I knew I was generally in the right place because I was at the 'Kioskos ' Beachside kiosks that are bars, restaurants, eateries and souvenir shops. This also was a main tourist destination for seeing a bit of Puerto Rican life. Today it looked like a shanty town, there are around 75 kiosks and I reckon there was barely ten open. So that I didn't look like a complete tourist cos again i felt I had gone there by mistake I stode purposefully past the long line of kiosks, thinking there must be more to this somewhere. It was so hot and I was dehydrating madly and was also hypoglycemic, the end of the kisk line was coming up and I could see the end one was open. I braced myself because I just had to get fed and watered otherwise i would just pass out , so no matter what this place was like I had to go in it. Now you have to bear in mind all the other food places that had been open were the Puerto Rican versions of greasy joes, so there was great potential for language problems and all the palarver of trying to get some veggie food. Latin cuisine in general is quite veggie friendly, but I wasn't sure I had the capacity to explain to a street vendour, " No , no fish, or chicken, or gravey " etc! Again God shined his light on me. I rattle on quite a lot about getting off the beaten track and stuff, but when you are travelling alone as a woman it can become quite a trial, but as it happened this last place was pretty touristy. Before
