Loiza Beach

For the scenic route going east from San Juan or the airport, take Highway 187 along Loiza Beach. Now THIS is your uncrowded beach near San Juan, and it’s a nice beach too. Long and undeveloped. Uncrowded meaning you brought the majority of the beachgoers in your vehicle. It’s a long beach so find your own spot. Nice sand, nice water and lots of vegetation along a beach where you see no buildings or very few buildings. You can park yourself in a shade spot on the beach and close to the water and not be bothered by anyone if you picked your group members correctly.
A better beach than Luquillo Beach, though there are no facilities here and they are really two different types of beaches. Luquillo is good too, though good and crowded.
All along the highway are vendors cooking up lechon in those round black grills, just smokin’ away on the side of the road. Smelled so GOOOD. Having just had breakfast we didn’t stop and assumed that the roadside BBQ’s were elsewhere in PR. Unfortunately we didn’t see them anywhere else but right here and we didn’t come back this way. Those people who say they wouldn’t change a thing if they relived their life are just plain loony. I wanna go back and do some things differently, like stop for roadside BBQ lechon on Hghy 187.
The actual town of Loiza is a bit further along. Supposedly the Spanish sent slaves here in the 1600s and some of the local residents are descendants. In 1719 the Spanish government officially declared Loiza to be a town. It was later demoted to rural area again, and in 1962 became a town again, with a population of 1,146 residents.