Beachwalk - For Exercise

Lichen growing on a fallen log in the beach forest

Each Beachwalk is unique...

We may walk this beach a thousand times...

But no two will be the same!

We have a beach in our back yard. That's the truth of it. Any time we want to go to the beach, our own beach is always the easy choice. But we don't often go to the east, where there are rocks to contend with... and a forest.  We normally walk the easy route to the west for joy, but today, we walk the beach for exercise so we chose the more challenging path!

A vacation on the calendar alway provides me with the motivation I need to take off a few pounds.  And with the decrease in calories allowed per day, I can add a little bit back in by dutifully exercising!  Extra points for making it fun!

Here's where it gets tricky!

We began with the open beach that is strewn with many piles of rocks.  This part of our beach is almost never just sand, and the rocks are difficult to walk on, more of a scramble than a hike!  Our new all-terrain beach shoes made it MUCH easier, so we'll be doing this more often now!

Once we reach the end of the open beach, it gets a little tricky.  We have to choose either the inland path, or wade through the water.  Our choice depends upon where the tide is at the moment.  When we have to go inland, there are some rough trails, probably made by coconut poachers.  They can be obscure and difficult to find, and we often lose the trail coming back at least once!

But it's cool in the shade of the palm forest, with plants that would make any greenhouse proud!  Everything just grows wild here!  Finally, after huffing and puffing, and climbing over fallen logs and ducking beneath leaning trees, we arrived onto the open area near the mouth of the Rio Grande de Patillas.

The mouth of the river.  Beyond the far point we can barely see where our friend's boats are anchored.

Looking inland at the river plain.

We combed the shores and walked along the clear, fresh waters of the river.  Judging from the relative calm of the waves at the river mouth, I think the tide is going out.  Otherwise there would be more of a surge here.  We saw signs of iguanas, some birds complained noisily of our presence in their sanctuary, and we found some little snails moving about in the sand.

There was a fair amount of driftwood washed up on the shore, but surprisingly not much human trash!  We definitely want to bring our kayak here somehow, but it will either have to be a calm day that we can paddle here, or we'll have to carry it!  But that's a post for another day!

Today, we wandered and collected sea glass and pretty shells for the growing piles I've got at home!  It's nice to be able to collect things after having lived so long on the boat with limited space.

If I could have taken this log home, I would have.  Guess I'll settle with a photo!

I only added the shell...

Are you SURE we came this way before???

Eventually we turned back homeward, trying to retrace our steps, but as expected, lost the trail through the forest a time or two.

Once we broke free of the forest, we put a little more effort into finding treasures, and there are a lot more shells at this end of our beach.  We found several good sized conch shells for our front garden!

When we finally got back to our place, we had a backpack full of goodies to be washed and sorted.

We were both sweaty and tired.  My knees were shaking a bit from the exertion of walking through the sand and rocks, and maybe a little woosie from decreased calorie intake....  It's not as easy as you might think!  It took us about two hours from start to finish, and I don't know how many calories we burned... but I think this earns me the right to partake in the homemade ice cream our friends are offering after dinner tonight!