Not so much a food adventure

We're not always obsessed with food. In fact, ever since we got back from vacation I've been sick with a nasty cold/flu, where I haven't been interested in eating for two weeks. It may have started on vacation, since our trip to Puerto Rico wasn't all about the food. It was also about the relaxation - sun, sand and surf. On our last day, we headed a few miles east of San Juan - here's a view from the front seat of the road to Playa de Pinones:

The lush greenery all of a sudden turned into this:

There was something about the area that reminded me of Martha's Vineyard - probably the wide expanse of coastline, but when I said it out loud, the husband looked at me like I'd gone mad and said "Without the palm trees?". Ok, and maybe without the blue-green color of the Carribean.

Note the turbulence with the crashing waves, as compared to this:

Same stretch of beach, but this area had a natural rocky outcrop that acted as a wall to keep the waves away from shore, which created this expanse of water that was as gentle as a bath tub.

But the best part of this beach is this:

This is a stretch of recently built, well-maintained food shacks. The road to Playa de Pinones is mostly filled with ramshackle huts on the side of the road with flames shooting out of the top of the grill and smoke billowing into the air. On Sundays, there are mile-long traffic jams as families flock to the beach, but we were here on a Monday afternoon and missed the chaos. The one stop that was highly recommended ("Donde Olga" has got to be the best name for a food stand) was unfortunately closed, so we made do with some sort of fried thing (empanada? taco?) stuffed with spicy shrimp. Perhaps not the full eating experience had we come on a Sunday, but we were in search of something other than food that day, for a change.