Rincon

As often happens when you travel you set off to see one thing and end up seeing quite another. Today we set off for the town of Rincon, located in the hills and the center of the island. It is a very old town, settled by the Spanish in the 1500s. Our plan was to go to the town, walk around and see what there was to see, then get something to eat at the one restaurant there. It turned out to be a very quiet place aside from the preschool where several  women wrestled a dozen or so toddlers on a fenced in porch. The restaurant, despite the sign announcing it was closed on Wednesday, was closed today—a Tuesday. So we set off in search of the Blow Hole, a section of rocky shoreline on the east coast where the surf spouts up in the air. We were side tracked by a sign for “Indian Inscriptions” which took us down a long dirt road through a cactus forest to a coastline strewn with enormous boulders and lined with craggy limestone caves. The ceilings of several of the caves were decorated with red ink drawings. A sign posted at one site told us the Arawak and Carib Indians had astrologers that came to these sites to document the movements of the stars, whereby they predicted weather patterns and other natural phenomena. On a more modern note there was also a row of a dozen or so giant wind turbines.

We moved on along the coast in search of the Blow Hole but never found it. Instead we ended up following another long dirt road through a cactus forest, this with the occasional house surrounded by junk cars. One even had a tipped over cement truck in the yard. Eventually there wee no more houses. We encountered several enormous dump trucks coming from the opposite direction filled with coral rock boulders. Oddly we passed a tiny, brightly painted piece of green wood about 8 inches long laying on the ground on the side of the road that said “Golf.” We kept going. Eventually we came out on a desolate plain with a slight dirt track which we followed. We eventually came to the coast, which was lined with mountainous piles of enormous pieces of broken coral which a big piece of heavy equipment was pushing around. Continuing on the track, scattering herds of goats, we came upon what else but a golf course, just as the sign had said. There were no people there, no grass either really. Just thinly scattered goats and a few donkeys, tattered yellow flags with numbers on them flapping in the breeze and pieces of coral painted red saying “Par 7” and the like.

We headed back. We stopped at what we thought might be a goat farm to ask directions. It turned out to be a chicken farm. Fortunately we did not get out of the car as three vicious dogs came running out from under the fence snarling and barking. Never having found the Blow Hole we headed back to town for lunch.