Last Updated on June 6, 2019 by PowersToTravel
Many people may wonder at my choice of Puerto Rican highlights. A banana boat? A jet-ski? How old are you, and why would you find such wonder in such ordinary events? I presently am 53 years old, and due to a number of factors have never been a water-bug.
I wear an insulin pump, and insulin pumps don’t mix well with water, or with sand, or with being taken off, or perhaps stolen from a beach. I would always choose activities in which I (and my pump) were in control. Secondly, my parents seldom took me to water. Why? Growing up in New Jersey, I believe they had higher standards than the Jersey Shore. Lastly, I had learned at an early age that my maternal grandfather had drowned and my maternal grandmother had died young of melanoma, probably from sun exposure, leaving my mother an orphan.
That’s enough for me! Scottish beaches and dipping my toes were satisfaction enough for me.
However, the Christmas-New Year shutdown at my company forces me to travel at Christmas, if I don’t want to spend ten days staring at the brown, or worse, white twigs on the trees. My husband, not carrying any of my water baggage, was happy to adventure to Puerto Rico, since Puerto Rico is more than just sun and sands.
However, although Puerto Rico is so much more than sun and sand, it does have a great deal of sun and sand, and with the help of my husband, I ventured out.
We had spent the previous night in Guánica. It was early morning, a Sunday morning, and Guánica itself was dead. No one at the harbor front; nothing moving. I located a beach on the map, Playa Santa, and considering it was Sunday, some saints appeared to be in order. We drove the fifteen minutes to the beach, and found it to be back beyond the edge of the world. Because it was Sunday morning there were few people out and about. We quickly changed into our bathing suits in the car, grabbed our towels and found a place right at the water, under a palm tree.
I just loved many of the beaches in Puerto Rico because the palm trees line the shore, and give shade. No melanoma for me! I could relax in the shade and then quickly pop up to dunk under some cool waves.
Playa Santa lies in a curved bay. Gentle waves lap the shore. The swimming is very pleasant. It is certainly not a surfer’s beach. Greg, however, became bored. He watched the pleasure craft, the banana boat and the jet-ski, running back and forth beyond the swimming area.
“Oh let’s do it!” I said. I’ve never been on a jet-ski, but Greg had owned one, when he lived in Virginia, and had frequently jet-skied his river.
Well, I can certainly tell you that jetskiing on the sea is nothing like jetskiing a river! The surf was not strong in the swimming area of the bay, but it was strong enough beyond. I had brought along swimming goggles, but stupidly had left them in the car.
We rented the jetski for forty-five minutes, but we were only allowed to go back and forth at the edge of the bay, kind of like running a 600 yard run as a series of 50 yard sprints. The jetski slammed into the waves and the water poured into our faces. I don’t know if I got the worst of it because I was the passenger, hanging on for dear life behind Greg. Finally I found that if I ducked my head sideways and looked down, I could breathe.
No, it was not an enjoyable event. The goggles would have made all the difference. However, it was a first time wild ride for me, and I was just the passenger.
I wonder if I could ever drive one?
The morning was topped off by pinchos pollos from a street vendor for only $1.50 ea! By then the world had woken up, and people were scrambling for parking spaces. We easily and gracefully changed our clothes in the car and drove off to our next adventure.
