Patillas Puerto Rico: Green, Rocky & Cool 

Adeli­na Cin­trón Square, Patil­las, PR
(click on image to see it larger)

Last week my wife and I vis­it­ed the town of Patil­las, on the south­east­ern coast of Puer­to Rico. It’s one of those small and sleepy towns that are best vis­it­ed in com­bi­na­tion with adja­cent munic­i­pal­i­ties. How­ev­er, we did dis­cov­er some gems that make this town unique and well worth the visit.

I must admit that the words Green, Rocky & Cool don’t gen­er­al­ly go togeth­er. When a place is rocky it’s gen­er­al­ly not cool and it’s def­i­nite­ly not green either. But some­how Patil­las man­ages to pull that all off at the same time.

As always, we left San Juan around six in the morn­ing. Our goal was to catch the Catholic church open, explore that first and then pro­ceed with the rest of the town. Well, this time we hit the jack­pot in more ways than one.

Immac­u­late Heart Of Mary Parish
(click on image to see it larger)

Not only was the Immac­u­late Heart Of Mary Parish open, but it was one of the nicest tem­ples that we’ve vis­it­ed since we start­ed this series back in Jan­u­ary, 2023. Of course, most tem­ples are beau­ti­ful in the eyes of their parish­ioners, but we look at them from a “tourist’s” perspective.

Believe it or not, there are tourists that go around the world vis­it­ing old church­es and Puer­to Rico has some of the old­est and nicest in the New World.

The Immac­u­late Heart Of Mary Parish was estab­lished in 1811 and has under­gone sev­er­al restora­tions through­out the years. Its elab­o­rate wood­work, vault­ed ceil­ings, stained glass win­dows and exquis­ite dec­o­ra­tions make it a joy to visit.

When we got there the tem­ple was open but the lights were off. The atten­dant was kind enough to turn on the lights so we could shoot our video bet­ter. You will find that video in the side­bar or under the “Videos” menu.

Across the street from the Immac­u­late Heart Of Mary Parish you’ll find the Adeli­na Cin­trón square, a huge space where “Patil­lences” con­gre­gate. Adeli­na Cin­trón was a local land own­er who donat­ed the land for the orig­i­nal town back in 1811.

The square has a nice water foun­tain in the cen­ter, that was actu­al­ly work­ing, as well as mon­u­ments for the town’s fall­en sol­diers and a band­stand for fes­tive and offi­cial events.
On the north side of the square there’s a green and white build­ing, with a huge Puer­to Rican flag and the word “Cobián” at the top.

Cobián used to be the name of Puer­to Rico’s largest movie the­ater chain dur­ing the 1950’s and 60’s.

By now you will have prob­a­bly noticed that most of the pic­tures of church­es that appear in our blog have the sun behind the build­ing. That cer­tain­ly doesn’t make for the most flat­ter­ing light­ing. The prob­lem is that most of those pic­tures are tak­en ear­ly in the morn­ing. And since Catholic tem­ples always have their altars fac­ing east they always appear with the sun behind them.

Patil­las City Hall
(click on image to see it larger)

After leav­ing the Adeli­na Cin­trón square we went by City Hall a few blocks south. It’s a nice mod­ern build­ing. Hence, it holds no his­toric val­ue. So we made our pic­ture and con­tin­ued on to the town’s beaches.

Accord­ing to my research, Patil­las has 6 beach­es that peo­ple vis­it the most. Those are: “Los Hote­les”, “Malecón de Patil­las”, “Cór­si­ca”, “Guardar­raya”, “Inch­es” and “Vil­la Pes­quera”. How­ev­er, what I soon dis­cov­ered is that some of them are inac­ce­si­ble (more on why in a minute) and oth­ers are sim­ply the same.

Let’s deal with the sim­i­lar­i­ties first. Most, if not all, beach­es in Patil­las are “peb­ble” beach­es. That means that if you’re look­ing for that pow­dery white sand, that’ll slip through your toes, you’re not going to find it. Instead, you’ll find a rocky ter­rain, with 1–2 inch peb­bles, out­side and below the water.

This isn’t unique to Patil­las. Many of the beach­es in the neigh­bor­ing town of Arroyo are the same. In fact, many famous beach­es around the world are actu­al­ly “peb­ble beach­es”. So if that’s your cup of tea, then knock your­self out. I per­son­al­ly pre­fer the pow­dery stuff.

If you would like to pro­tect your feet from the rocky sur­face, one way to do it is to bring boat shoes. They’re like under­wa­ter sneak­er and they don’t slip either.

Guardar­raya (Las Poc­i­tas) Beach
(click on image to see it larger)

We also met a cou­ple of locals who told us sev­er­al inter­est­ing facts about these beach­es. It you look care­ful­ly, around 200 feet out, you’ll see the water break­ing in a straight line par­al­lel to the shore. That’s because there’s a reef there. There’s also an under­wa­ter cave sys­tem that runs par­al­lel to the shore.

This makes for abun­dant rip cur­rents and occa­sion­al drown­ings. I sup­pose scu­ba divers must love a place like that but I wouldn’t go any­where near it. If you do, do it at your own risk.

In the end we vis­it­ed only two beach­es: “La Guardar­raya” (which the locals referred to as “Las Tres Poc­i­tas” because there are sup­pos­ed­ly three ponds there and “Inch­es” beach, which is actu­al­ly very appro­pri­ate­ly named because that’s what it has in the way of shore: “inch­es”.

The fact that most of Patil­las’ beach­es are basi­cal­ly the same was one of our rea­sons for vis­it­ing only two. The sec­ond was because of a sad real­i­ty that’s becom­ing more and more preva­lent around the Island. You can see it at “Las Picuas” in Río Grande, at “Piñones” in Loíza, at “Joyu­da” in Cabo Rojo and in many more places.

Peo­ple have sim­ply squat­ted next to the coast and shut out every­body else. In some cas­es, like the ones I just men­tioned, you can hard­ly see the water. In Patil­las I actu­al­ly saw a sign that read: “Pri­vate Prop­er­ty. Only For Friends And Family”.

Why? Because you say so? How did they obtain that plot? They obvi­ous­ly can’t have a deed because it’s sit­ting right next to the water!

Inch­es Beach
(click on image to see it larger)

And the sad part is that the gov­ern­ment knows about this sit­u­a­tion and sim­ply looks the oth­er way. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, vis­i­tors observe this mess, go home and tell their friends. And do you think it’ll help tourism? Hell no!!!

So that’s why we vis­it­ed only two beach­es, because after a while we got turned off by the same old same old.

In all fair­ness, I was told that there are sev­er­al good seafood restau­rants in the area, so if you would like to explore them go for it.

After leav­ing Inch­es Beach we drove north to see a 400+ year-old cei­ba tree that’s out in the mid­dle of nowhere (don’t wor­ry, the coor­di­nates are below).

Cei­ba is a word from the Taíno lan­guage that means “boat”. The Taínos used the wood from cei­ba trees (which is very hard and has a very high buoy­an­cy fac­tor) to build their dug out canoes.

Ceibas are native to trop­i­cal and sub­trop­i­cal areas of the Amer­i­c­as (from Mex­i­co and the Caribbean to North­ern Argenti­na) as well as in trop­i­cal West Africa.

Cei­ba Tree (my wife and grand­chil­dren are includ­ed as a ref­er­ence)
(click on image to see it larger)

Ceibas are actu­al­ly the offi­cial tree of Puer­to Rico. They are also called silk-cot­ton tree or kapok tree. Often the tallest tree in the for­est, the cei­ba attains heights over 150 feet. It has a ridged colum­nar trunk and a mas­sive umbrel­la-shaped canopy. Its far-reach­ing limbs often host aer­i­al plants, such as moss and bromeliads.

At an esti­mat­ed age of 400+ years the cei­ba tree in Patil­las is now the old­est known to man. There was an old­er one, but due to human incom­pe­tence it died. It was over 500 years old and it was in the neigh­bor­ing town of Ponce. So why did it die? Because the riv­er that goes by it was canal­ized in 1990 and 30 years lat­er the tree “starved to death”. Not enough water, not enough nutri­ents, no tree.

And the fun­ny thing is that I parked right next to it and stopped a guy that was dri­ving by to ask where the tree was. The guy said: “you’re parked right next to it”. And that’s because the tree is so humon­gous that I thought I was parked next to sev­er­al of them.

Well, I was wrong. It was just one huu­u­u­u­u­u­uge tree. To illus­trate its sheer size I made a pic­ture with my wife and grand­chil­dren stand­ing next to it. They look like a speck in the picture.

Right next to the cei­ba there’s a small bridge that goes over the Marín Riv­er. When we crossed there was hard­ly any water but I can only imag­ine what this entire area must’ve been like dur­ing hur­ri­cane María.

Marín Riv­er riverbed
(click on image to see it larger)

Anoth­er thing that caught my atten­tion was the rocky riv­er bed. I had nev­er seen so many rocks in one place. Let alone in a riv­er bed. This speaks vol­umes about the geo­log­i­cal nature of Patillas.

We were almost ready to leave, but before we did we decid­ed to go by Patil­las Lake. There are no real lakes in Puer­to Rico, so Patil­las Lake is actu­al­ly a water reser­voir that was cre­at­ed by damming the Patil­las Riv­er. It pro­vides excel­lent eye-can­dy for land­scape pho­tog­ra­phers like me and hope­ful­ly like you.

To get to back to San Juan (or any­where else) your best bet is to retrace the steps that you took in the morn­ing to get to Patil­las. Bet­ter yet, make sure to copy the GPS coor­di­nates for your hotel before leav­ing in the morn­ing. That way all you’ll have to do is punch them into your GPS and it will do the rest.

And talk­ing about San Juan, if you’re plan­ning to vis­it the Old City, save your­self the has­sle of tra­di­tion­al city tours. They’re expen­sive and you’ll be herd­ed along with peo­ple that won’t nec­es­sar­i­ly share your interests.

Instead, order The Old San Juan Walk­ing Tour. It’s packed with use­ful infor­ma­tion about all the main attrac­tions, as well as every GPS coor­di­nate and two hours of exclu­sive online video.

That way you’ll be able to —vis­it before you vis­it— and hit the ground run­ning when you arrive in the Old City.

See you next time!

©2023,Orlando Mer­gal, MA
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Bilin­gual Con­tent Cre­ator, Blog­ger, Pod­cast­er,
Author, Pho­tog­ra­ph­er and New Media Expert
Tel. 787–750-0000, Mobile 787–306-1590