Today we went to the Isabela/Moca area and visited the Palacete Los Moreau / Castillo Labadie house. It’s a big two story house built in 1905 on 1,300 acres of farmland (now down to about 100 acres, I believe). It is one of the first completely concrete houses on the island. (Older houses were made of wood, or other plant materials, since it’s cheaper/easier. Only in the last couple of decades did cement come down enough in price. Currently, nearly all the houses down here are concrete block.) The floors, however, are wood (very beautiful). It also has a basement, which is very very rare down here.
Unfortunately, the house was neglected and fell into ruin. In the early 1990′s the municipality of Moca purchaed the house and remodeled it. There are a number of before-and-after pics that really show how bad things had gotten. They did a really great job and, more recently, there have been donations of furniture and other artifacts to populate the house. In addition, they cleaned up the grounds, planted flowers, added paths and benches, etc. It’s a nice bit of history and worth checking out if you’re in the area.

I’ll post pictures of the house and its grounds shortly.

After visiting the house, we headed over the Crashboat beach again. Unlike the first two times (which were very very calm), today the surf was quite rough. The whole beach was running 2 to 3 foot waves, with some rare ones up in the 5 foot range. I went in there for a while, and went out far enough to avoid most of the breaking waves.

After a while things seemed to calm down, then I looked back and saw a big wave coming in (with a surfer, no-less). It broke right on top of me (in about 4 feet of water) and smashed my face, and the rest of me, right into the bottom. Nothing like having your face ground into wet sand!

Lucky (?) for me, I was in very shallow water, so I was able to pop right up. (I probably would have been safer farther out…at least I wouldn’t have hit the bottom so hard.) Anyway, I came out pretty dazed (hit my head pretty hard) with a bloody lip and abrasions on my face (felt like my face was getting rubbed by coarse sandpaper). Good thing this is a sandy beach. I’m okay now, but I’ve still got a headache, and I really can’t eat anything solid because of my cut up lip.

Needless to say, we’re going to be paying closer attention to the surf conditions before going out.

After checking out some beaches yesterday, we headed out today for some swimming. We went to Crashboat beach. The traffic around there is pretty horrible, but once you get there it’s nice. It was busier today (Fri) than it was yesterday, but not too bad…I’m sure it’s packed on weekends.

Ev and I found a spot on the south end of the beach and waded around, did some snorkeling, and generally hung out. It was a relaxing & slow day. Can you believe this is the first time we’ve really been in the water since we got here!

Tomorrow I think we’re going to head out to the center of the island and check out a couple of towns. (I might put this off, since I’ve been doing a lot of driving the last two days, and am pooped.)

Today Ev and I went driving around the Isabela area (in the northwest part of the island). My brother and his wife are coming down to PR in late March, so we wanted to do so “recon” on places to go.

We went to some of our usual places (a hidden beach by a golf course, a forest for hiking, etc) to get some timings. Traffic around here can be pretty bad, so I want to come up with the most efficient ways to get places. Nothing like being stuck at a stoplight during your vacation!

Since we were in the area, we checked out Crashboat beach. I heard that it was a surfing beach, so I didn’t have high hopes (meaning, it might be too rocky, or very rough surf). But, I was very pleasantly surprised. The water is very calm there and very clear. We walked down one of the piers and could see the bottom–in over 30 feet of water!

We could see a bunch of different fish, and there were people snorkeling around the piers (where the fish gather). Being a weekday, it was pretty quiet. Busier than our “hideaway” beaches (where there’s usually no one else there), but not bad at all–it’s probably a lot more crazy on the weekends. Plenty of good parking, lots of picnic benchs, and it seems well kept (except for the bathrooms, which are frightening).

I’m glad we were able to find a calm, clear, beach area in our vicinity. The other gin-clear beaches we’ve been to are all in the southwest (Boqueron, Gilligan’s Island). They are nice, but it’s a long daytrip (2 1/2 hours one way) to get down there.

I’m going to be putting together a “where to go” and “what to avoid” site pretty soon. I’ll let you know when it’s up.