January 4, 2017. Cruising' the Pork Highway!

LOCATION:  San Juan, Puerto Rico WEATHER:  Hot and sunny. High 90  

We sat in the hotel's pool  area for our morning coffee...

 

Beautiful purple flowers in the patio area where we had breakfast al fresco....

Our destination today was the "pork highway".  We had read about this, and learned that it is a popular excursion for San Juanians to go to this area, especially on a weekend, to eat roast pork.  Anthony Bordaine has been here, we heard.

We drove about 25 miles south of San Juan out into the interior.  We crossed over the highest mountains on the island.  The beautiful poinciana trees are in full bloom in the mountains.

Immersed in a lush forest of bamboo and palm trees, we got off the highway and entered the "pork route" road.  On a very scary winding mountain road are a series of small restaurants lining the road for about 5 miles.  Some seem to be just patios on people's houses.  Each one roasts its whole pigs using a secret sauce, and locals have their favorites.  We stopped at one that looked pretty authentic.  No one spoke English, which was a good sign.  

We watched the whole pigs being roasted over the fire.

We stood in line to order.  In addition to the roast pork, there were lots of strange looking sausages, rice dishes and plantains served in various ways.  We ordered the weekday lunch special.....

For $8.50, we got a platter of rice with some type of peas, the roast pig including some of the crispy skin, 2 roasted plantains and a local Puerto Rican (bad) beer.  

After ordering, the guy started chopping off our meat with a huge machete.

It was quite good.  The size of our modest platter, however, couldn't compare to the mounds of food other customers were ordering.  

 

Since we had the rental car, we decided to continue our journey south.  We drove across the mountains.  San Juan is on the north side of the island, on the Atlantic Ocean.  After the pig roast restaurant, we drove another 20 miles to the southern coast, the Caribbean.  The town where we ended up has not been developed; the tourist dollar has not reached here.  We watched a group of old men sitting under a shade tree, happily arguing and solving the world's problems...

We made it back to the hotel, after a lot of highway gasping on my part.  

 

We walked to a grocery store through a neat area of San Juan.  It seems very "gentile" and has a European feel.  We bought some chicken breasts, which we later grilled on the BBQ of the patio of the hotel. Cheap and tasty dinner. We ate in the patio area and enjoyed listening to Puerto Rico's famous tree frogs sing us a serenade.