Day Trip to La Playa Sucia

During the past week, I have had numerous experiences that I will remember for the rest of my life. It has been amazing to get to experience Puerto Rican culture and their ways of life, while at the same time, learning how to solve environmental problems in the future. So far, my favorite part of the trip was when we went to Playa Sucia (“dirty beach”). Before we left, our professor explained that there would also be about 10 miles of hiking trails. Therefore, we could hike as much or as little as we pleased. I have always enjoyed hiking and viewing the incredible biodiversity along the way. So naturally, I expected to do a fair share of hiking along with enjoying the beach. However, little did I know, we would be hiking up a series of massive, breathtaking cliffs.

The drive to the beach was pleasantly brief. When we arrived, I was shocked to see that the so-called “beach” looked a lot more like a bay or inlet. It was not the type of beach that I had in mind. As we walked along the water’s edge looking for a shady spot to unpack, someone spotted a hermit crab crawling across the sand towards the water. This fascinated me because, before this, I had never seen a crab in the wild. While we observed it, our professor informed us that hermit crabs do not form their own shells. Instead, they inhabit the empty shells of other organisms such as snails and mollusks. When the crabs grow too big for their shells, they are forced to molt it (which greatly increases their vulnerability) and migrate to a new one. After we were finished studying the crab, we dropped our beach equipment in a shady cove and hopped in the sky-blue water. Despite its calm and beautiful appearance, the water was initially cold and filled with sizeable waves. After we adjusted to the temperature, we could venture deep into the water. The beauty of the bay greatly impressed me. The sun was shining so bright and was so high in the sky that it appeared to be directly above our heads. The water was a beautiful aqua while the sky was a deep navy. It seemed like heaven on Earth. Therefore, it was very hard to imagine that at that same moment, there were many places in the world that were cold, overcast, cloudy, and simply unpleasant (including my hometown). I simply did not want that moment of beauty and tranquility to cease.

When we were done with the water a few of us spent time in the sand. We started out building a sand castle, but later we made a small pool. Our goal was for the waves to crash onto the beach and fill the pool with water. We even built a small canal in the sand to make this process more feasible. Although this was a fun, simple activity, it reminded me a lot about the water crisis that exists in many parts of the developing world. It made me realize that people around the world desperately need others to create systems that can transport scarce resources. This moment opened my mind to the numerous career opportunities that exist in environmental science/engineering.

My favorite part of the beach was the hiking. However, this was no ordinary trek along the coast. Not only was there no forest, but the entire hike involved going up a series of rocky cliffs that seemingly led to a lighthouse. This reminded me more of a high adventure only seen in the movies. In the beginning of the hike, we walked along a rocky coast at ground level. As we were walking, someone pointed out group a sea urchins near the coast. Unfortunately, just as I was about to snap a photo, a gigantic wave came out of nowhere and nearly swept my phone out of my hand. That was the last time I got near the water to take a picture! As we trekked along, we saw even more wildlife including eels, lizards, iguanas, and pelicans. Gradually, we climbed higher and higher. A few of my peers asked me to take pictures of them standing on the edge of the cliffs, but my fear of cliffs would not allow me to go closer than 10 feet from the edge. At this moment, it was hard to imagine that we were in Puerto Rico. The rugged, rocky coast reminded me more of the Atlantic coast of Maine. Although the crashing waves seemed violent, the scene was spectacular. I had never seen anything like it before. When I looked down at the beach, it no longer seemed like a bay because I could see the vast ocean from the top of the cliff. My mind was at peace.

When we got back to the beach, I noticed some exotic-looking birds near our beach clothes. Previously, we learned that there were 16 species of birds that are endemic to Puerto Rico. The bird in front of me looked like one of those. It was black with orange on its shoulders and a slender body. I photographed it and found out it was a yellow-shouldered blackbird. It was very cool to get the chance to photograph an animal found nowhere else in the world. Before the exploitation of forest materials and other natural resources, there were many more endemic species to the island. It is my career goal to properly manage natural ecosystems to maintain high levels of biodiversity all over the world.

As the day progressed, I went on to climb more cliffs and take in more vistas of Playa Sucia’s remarkable landscape. This was my favorite excursion because I have a tremendous appreciation for nature. Unfortunately, natural areas are quickly disappearing due to our increasing consumption of natural capital. Due to this trip to the beach, I was given the opportunity to get to know some of my peers better. I greatly look forward to having many more amazing experiences during the rest of my stay in Puerto Rico.

3 thoughts on “Day Trip to La Playa Sucia

  1. This was also one of my favorite days that we spent in Puerto Rico. The main concept that we covered in ABE 199 was biodiversity, and Playa Sucia definitely had a large variety of wildlife that we were able to see. The yellow-shouldered blackbird was a very cool discovery; I wish that I had noticed it! I definitely think that we should use a lot of the pictures that we took that day in our Open House booth presentation to show all of the different animals that we were able to see in Puerto Rico. The cliffs were also interesting, and I think that we could tie that in by talking about how diverse the island’s terrain is. Puerto Rico has everything from sandy beaches to rugged cliffs to tropical rainforests, and I think that documenting that in our presentation would generate a lot of interest.

  2. You did a great job in this post of explaining the extremely diverse ecosystem we all had the chance to experience on our day at the beach. This biodiversity needs to be emphasized in our booth because that has been the one of the main points of our journey thus far. To portray these experiences to our viewers we will need abundant pictures and videos of the many beautiful creatures and sites we have seen, including this day at the beach. It is very important we keep documenting our trip with many pictures so we are able to give our audience as much of a real-life encounter as possible.

  3. This story really illustrates one of the main concepts of this course, Biodiversity. We could use some of our own pictures as well as professional ones to show the organisms we saw in the booth. Even though our pictures may not be the best, it would show that we personally saw the endemic species .

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