Feliz Navidad Próspero año y felicidad en Puerto Rico

The Parachuting Beavers
Dec 26, 2025
8 min read

I know I've been slacking a little bit on the blogging, but I hope that you all have had the happiest Christmas. This is Mike's and my first a Christmas away. We always love to be home with the family, but I have to say this has been a really nice getaway.

When we woke up on the day before Christmas, there was a rainbow in the sky. I wish that I could show it to you here as we saw it, but my camera's not good enough. I swear we could see infrared and ultraviolet hues. It was the most complete rainbow. I've seen in my entire life. I asked Mike how far he thought the bottom of the rainbow was. He said he thought it was halfway to the Bahamas. That means no pot of gold for us, or the pot of gold called the lottery! Either way we ate our breakfast,

egg tacos with vegetable, salsa, and cotija while we watched the beautiful rainbow appear and disappear. We then set off down south to do.... well, we weren't sure what we were going to do. The first place that we found that we couldn't resist was this lovely beach.

If any of you are intimately equated with Mike, you know that he hates to sit on the beach. On this trip, I found out that there are very small number of caveats to that dislike. He is willing to sit on the beach: if there is no one else there or if the people who arrive have polite children and love to fish. I love to sit on the beach if I have a book and the sun is at bay. This meant that the both of us had an incredibly lovely time for almost two hours on this beach. It was ultimately, the sun that chased us off. I am currently reading a super fun book called My Lady Jane. It was recommended to me by one of my students. I have to say it's perfect for this environment.

Mike and I skipped a couple of beaches in Rincon because they were way overcrowded. We did stop at BONUS the Boiling Nuclear Superheater Reactor Facility. There used to be a museum here, but unfortunately, it is now closed. The magical thing is that if you look at the red trash can in the first photo and swing your gaze to the left, it is a major surfing beach in Puerto Rico. I wanted to come and see the reactor because it was a prototype that was being tested here. Unfortunately, there were major mechanical issues, and the cost was prohibitive. Electricity in Puerto Rico is incredibly expensive, so I wish that this had proved a go. The construction started in 1960, and it has its first controlled chain reaction in 1964, and it was decommissioned in 1969. Mike and I drove back down the road and tore at the beautiful lighthouse we found there. I was glad that we did because we found the Geiger tree and it told me that the nuclear regulatory agency was correct, the nuclear facility was negative for radiation. We ate some of the white fruit just in case. One can never be too sure, because radiation is invisible. If you want to see the geiger tree, just look at the third photo above. Yes I am cracking myself up, thanks for asking christine🤣

The Faro de Punta Higüero is a historic lighthouse located outside Rincón. The original building was built in 1892 by the Spanish government and was rebuilt in 1922 by the United States Coast Guard. If you notice it has a distinctly mediterranean, feel due to the beautiful white stucco. It is decommissioned now mostly because of lack of need and the fact that it was severely damaged by the 1918 earthquake that struck the west part of the island. Now it's just a lovely tourist destination to take a walk and look at the water. You can also see people surfing and kite surfing in this area.

Once mike and I got home, we decided to have pasta for dinner and then go on a beautiful walk to see the sunset. Unfortunately, the sunset was way too far away, but we did have a beautiful walk on the beach and took this photo.

I skipped this yesterday because I didn't have a photo. We stopped at a store on the way home and the incredible owner told us to go to Ponse and tour Don Q. When most people think of puerto rico, they say, hey doesn't Bacardi distill there? They sort of do and they sort of don't. Technically, bacardi is a Cuban brand but we all know the issues with that. If you come to puerto rico and you'd like to do a distillery tour, I cannot recommend Don Q enough. When we were on the way to the brewery, I was a little confused. In my mind, I assumed, Don Q meant Don Quixote. As you all know, the island was colonized by the spanish, and so I thought they would not want to honor that. Don't worry I got schooled.

When we got to Ponce, the first stop we wanted to make was at the Parque de Bombas. This is in the center of the city of Ponce. Originally, they were a volunteer firefighting organization, and they saved the city, nany times, from utter destruction. The museum is lovely, and it signs that are in both spanish and english. As you all know, this is the best for me. I try to read them in Spanish, and when I get to the point in which i'm confused, I get to look up momentarily at the english, to make sure that I am understanding the significance of the artifact.

After this, Mike and I went up the hill to visit the Don Q distillery. We were quite a bit early, and so we were able to take a photo of Cruceta Del Vigia, or the Watchman's Cross. This is a 100-foot tall observation tower offering panoramic views of Ponce and the Caribbean. You can also see Japanese Gardens there, but we opted not to, as it was fifteen dollars per person. We took a quick photograph and headed down the hill to our primary destination, Don Q and the Museo Castillo Serrallés.

We arrived very early for our one o'clock tour and we're pleasantly surprised by the complimentary beverage that was provided. It was a traditional Puerto Rican Christmas beverage that is similar to our eggnog, called Coquito. Don't you worry, Mike and I will be making it for next year, so you'll be able to share it with us. Before we took the tour, I was really surprised that the distillery was named Don Q. I assumed that it was a nod to Don Quixote who is of course, Spanish. After our welcome video, it all became clear. Don Juan the original owner of the land which now houses the distillery, originally came from Spain to Puerto Rico to take advantage of the sugar cane industry. When the market fell out from underneath sugarcane, he needed to find something to do. So he started a distillery, and called it Don Juan. It didn't sell terribly well because the name just didn't have a good connotation for the Puerto Rican people. So eventually the name was changed to Don Q. The original owner was a pretty good guy. I say this because he allowed his workers to live in homes on his land, and pass it from from generation to generation as long as they didn't sell it. He also worried that someday his business would fail, so he made a bank account for each of his workers and put money into it. He was a very forward thinking man.Because his business hit hard times during prohibition. He had to lay off many of his workers and while they found new work, they could live on the money that he had banked for them. The even, more magical thing is that one of the men that was on the tour with us had lived in this housing, as a child and spoke very fondly of the community that has grown up around this distillery.

The woman who is pouring rum out of the barrel was our tour guide. She was so well informed, and I truly appreciated her detailed descriptions. If you have any interest in distillation, watch this video.

If you look at the photograph of the city of Ponce you'll notice that there's a big green swath in the back. This land is still owned by the Serrallés family. This is the largest city in Puerto Rico by area, and the second largest by population. So this land is incredibly valuable, and i'm so glad that it has not yet been developed. On the tour, you get to learn to blend rum. In the first part, we got rum that came out of the barrel at ~130 proof. This is about the same apv as moonshine. I had my take a video of me, smelling and tasting the rum so here's what I thought...

If you know anything about making moonshine, it escapes through the cracks in the barrels, making that the angel share. What's not so well known is that what gets left behind in the barrels is the devil's share!

Don Q doesn't do their distillery tours at the distillery, because they have this beautiful historic home that was sold to the city of Ponse in 1981. Most of the family's historic furniture went with the property. And that includes this interesting, the statue portraying Don Quixote and his faithful sidekick. You also get to go through some wonderful historic rooms. If you look in the center photograph, the left hand side are tokens that indicated the employee's number and the right hand side we're chits. This is the was the currency that the workers used when they shopped in the area around the sugar cane farms. The right hand side is the sugar that was made on the Serrallés family cane farm.

The last part was definitely Mike's favorite. We made a caribbean old fashioned and a pina colada.

As you can see, I'm pretty excited too. I've never been to a mixology class and so really enjoyed this experience. If you're wondering what makes it a caribbean, old fashioned just look at the top central photograph. It's made with rum of course, but, it has star anice and a cinnamon stick in it. Generally old fashioned are not my favorite because I find them too sweet, but this one was lovely.

After the tour, we walked around the extensive properties and really enjoyed the plants. We got ridiculously lucky because it torrented for the last fifteen minutes of the tour. When we went outside, we looked at the radar and realized we had about twenty minutes before it rained again. After a quick tour, we got back in the car and headed home. This really was a christmas eve to remember. Oh P. S. people who are on the tour had also done the one at bacardi and said that this one was much better. Bacardi may be bottled in Puerto Rico, but it's a cuban rum, and the people liked to remind you of this.

Mike and I decided that Christmas day would be super low key for us. We love our rental so much that we decided to just stay here and walk the beach. If you watch the video above you'll get to see where the Rio Grande of Puerto Rico comes into the Caribbean Sea. And of course.What kind of a day on the beach would it be without a wild life encounter...

He is a an Atlantic Ghost Crab (Ocypode quadrata) or a Tufted Ghost Crab (Ocypode cursor). To my untrained eye I was unable to tell the difference. I love the way he camouflages himself, and let me have a photograph with him.

We had another wild encounter on Christmas Day...

He is a Tropical House Gecko (Hemidactylus mabouia) also known as the Cosmopolitan Gecko. Just for the record, he prefers the second name because it makes him much more swave! He made a wrong turn at the door and then up the bed... the poor little nugget was so confused. It's not very often you get to have an up close and personal encounter because they are generally hanging out high up. Well, I'm going to close out now, Happy Christmas to you all and this was our Christmas meal!