Today was another road-trip day. We headed pretty much due south, toward the town of Yauco. We wanted to go there because there is a lake to the north and a forest to the west (near Sabana Grande). All of this is toward the south-west part of the island, west of Ponce.

We took route 128 down. It’s a very scenic route, though washed out in places (with various debris and rockfalls to keep things interesting). Since the road is small, and it goes through the Cordillera Central (the central range of mountains), it has many many twists and turns. This was Evelyn’s turn to get car sick, since I was driving. Luckily we had some Dramamine on board, which helped a bit.

Note to tourists (and locals): If you are gonna hit a twisty mountain road, make sure to pop a Dramamine beforehand. It will make things a lot easier. Even people with iron stomachs get sick on some of these roads. In fact, as we are documenting our routes, we are marking down the “car sick” sections.

Our first major stop was Lago Luchetti. It’s quite nice–about 1/2 to 1/3 the size of other lakes we’ve been to (Guajataca, Dos Bocas, Caonillas). Once again, it’s man-made, which means–another dam! I tell you, if you like dams, this is the place to be. Every lake of any size we’ve been to has been man-made via a cool dam of some sort. Most were constructed between the late 1940′s to the late 1950′s. There are some trails here, camping, boating (bring you own), and fishing. Plus, there are lots of picnic tables with BBQ areas. It’s quite nice. I’m sure it’s very busy on weekends.

From here we had lunch in Yauco at the Very Exotic Wendy’s. Sometimes you just need a triple cheeseburger and fries. Damn! I should have had a Frosty, too. Oh, well. Maybe next time.

After a late lunch (it had taken us over two hours to get from the house down to the lake–we ate at 2 PM), we headed to the west toward the Bosque Estatal de Susua. You take a long, long road into the forest area–it terminates at a campground and a huge picnic / outdoor event area. It was dead quite there today, but I’m sure it’s hopping at other times.

This forest, like many at this part of the island, was much different than most of the terrain you see in PR. It’s much much drier down here, almost like a desert! This is because the mountains in the central part of the island “stop” the rain. You end of with a lot of rain to the north and east, and very very little in the south west. As we were driving we even spotted cacti!

We didn’t stop to hike, but there are a lot of spots to stop along the road, so we did that. This area reminded me a lot of New Mexico. Very dry. Very rocky. Very different from the lush green that you see elsewhere on the island. It was also SUPER quiet. You could hear a pin drop out here. No cars. No planes. Nothing. It was very nice to get away from the usual honking and other human noise that you hear around the island.

From the forest we headed west, toward Sabana Grande. Stopped at a nursery there and picked up a couple of flowers for Ev’s mom. If you are into flowers and exotic plants, this is the place to be. So much stuff grows so easily down here. Even though it’s the dry season right now, there’s still much to see.

(Skip this next paragraph if you get sick easily. It’s not that gross, but I want to give fair warning.) 

After the nursery, headed up 2 toward Mayaguez and did some shopping stops. Nothing too exciting there, except for the kid who decided to puke all over the floor in K-Mart–right at the Express Lane (ha-ha) register. Ev got a bit sickened by that, but it was nothin’ to me. (From my years as a mechanic, et al, I’ve stuck my hands into some pretty disgusting places. Pull puke out of drains with my bare hands? Yea, done that. More than once. Ah, the life of A Man Of The World.) On the bright side, it looked like the kid didn’t have lunch. Maybe it was too much Coca Cola and Pop Rocks.

(And speaking of Coca Cola, we now carry our camera nearly every day, so I’ll take a few snaps of the next International truck for Mike [he used to work for International, a la Navistar, a la International Harvester]. Funny thing, the other day we passed a fleet of school buses, all made by International. They had the big red “roads” logo in their back window! I tell you, these people love that company. Too bad it was run into the ground by a bunch of f**k ups. It used to be a great company.)

Okay, so that was our day. There are a ton of pictures (including a lot of flowers for Erika) that I’ll be posting in a bit (it takes time to re-format them and do all the captions). We got ones of a cool stone bridge built in 1920, the lake, the forest, and even some vultures. Of course, there will also be pictures of the dam.