We spent a week in Puerto Rico this winter it was a nice winter beach get away.  We flew into Old San Juan and stayed in the middle of the city. This is a 465-year-old neighborhood. The streets here are paved with cobbles of adoquine, a blue stone cast from furnace slag. The city includes more than 400 carefully restored 16th- and 17th-century Spanish colonial buildings. Narrow streets and cobblestones feels like you are in a walled in city of europe. Except you have beautiful beaches, good food, rum and salsa music.

We drove to the west side of the Island and went to Rincon a quaint surfing beach town. The drive down to Rincon was a food truck Highway, I image there are not a lot of roads running through the Island so they park there trucks on the side of the highway with lots of traffic flying past. We stayed at a beautiful resort on a nice calm beach cove. The bartender introduced us to the Puerto Rico Egg Nog called Coquito, traditional served on the holidays. The mix of rum and coconut milk is to die for, I will be making a batch come this christmas.

We stopped at our first food truck on a recommendation. I had to try the traditional dish of Mofongo. “Mofongo is a fried plantain-based dish from Puerto Rico. Mofongo is generally made from fried green plantains which is mashed together in a pilón (which is a wooden mortar and pestle), with broth, garlic, olive oil, and pork cracklings or bits of bacon. It is often filled with vegetables, chicken, crab, shrimp, or beef and is often served with fried meat and chicken broth soup.^{“ Wikipedia} 

Joey’s BBQ was parked in front of his house, with his mom taking orders. And lots of locals stopping to pick up their dinner. It was delicious, I had the chicken with some tasty sauce on top.  The laid back attitude of Puerto Rico was seen on the signage on his truck as it was misspelled  as Joy’s, oh well. We also tried the Pork Mofongo it came with a bottle of ketchup and Mayo.

The nest road side stop was a little restaurant serving empanadas. Empanadas are cheese or meat filled pastries. They had lots of flavors, we tried several ,chicken, shrimp, pork and octopus. A great cheap lunch.

The rest of our time was hanging at the beach and checking out some of the close coastal towns. We found our favorite surfing beach and restaurant, Calipso Cafe they had a great dish of local fish with rice and beans. This tasty spicy sauce sat on all the tables. I could not get enough of it and ordered some online when I got home.  The rum and Reggae music was a great place to hang out on the beach.

I would like to go back to Puerto Rico sometime and explore the other side of the Island  try some more of the local cuisine, hike the rain forest, Kayak the coves, and walk the beaches on the Island.