Saragasso Sea mats along the current lines in Rincon, PR

This morning when I awoke and went out onto the terrace I was treated to an exquisite soft sunrise and..... magnificent current lines of Saragasso Sea mats. They stretched along the multiple current lines as far as I could see. Above you see what I first saw as the sun rose. What you cannot see in the photograph are the current lines behind this one, they were just too far away for my camera to capture.

When I was mating on a local boat, we took folks out for whale watching cruises in the winter. We always looked for these current lines of mats of vegetation because underneath them were tiny fish and under the tiny fish were larger fish and under those were sometimes the whales we sought.

In the photo above you can see the current line as it winds sensually through the water as the waves carry it toward shore. As these current lines moved along, the pelicans were diving for fish along their sides. Pelicans are always thrilling to see diving head first into the water and always coming up with a fish.









The sea mats came into closer view and above you can see two of the mats of Saragasso Sea plants.

Finally, a few actually hit shore and I took the shot to the right. All in all a beautiful and sensual plant a long way from home.

Ferries del Caribe resumes service and is seen from Rincon, PR

Ferries del Caribe has resumed service between Mayaguez and Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic! We can see the ferry from the Lemontree and this morning I took this photograph of the ferry sailing proudly over to the Mayaguez port.

The 4-star M/S Caribbean Express will sail on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 8:00 p.m. to the Dominican Republic. When it leaves the ferry is all lit up with lots of lights and we enjoy watching it sail off. Despite the distance, sometimes if the wind is right, the sounds of the music from the ferry will reach us.

The ferry will sail from Santo Domingo to Mayaguez at 8:00 p.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays.

If you want a brief visit over to Santo Domingo from Puerto Rico, this is a great way to go!

Birthday lunch at the Horned Dorset Primavera, Rincon, PR

Today we celebrated two birthdays at the Restaurant Aaron at the Horned Dorset Primavera here in Rincon, PR. The Horned Dorset is just down our road, Carr 429, less than a minute from the Lemontree. The picture above shows you my view from my seat at our outside table. We like either sitting outside as we did today or on the terrace. The Horned Dorset has a French menu and very gracious, old world service.



Our Lunch... The bouillabaisse, pictured above, was simply delicious. A rather simple dish, the tastes melded and blended to make for a very happy palate! Along with the crusty bread and creamy butter, we had a delightful lunch. If you are wondering about bouillabaisse, click on this and see the history of the bouillabaisse dish.

The chef prepared a special birthday cake which I can report was absolutely delicious and I was happy to have some to bring home too. Unfortunately, we cut it before I had taken a picture so I don't have one to share. Sooooo, imagine a three layer, six inch cake with very thick and creamy vanilla buttercream icing swirled on in an intricate pattern. Add to that chocolate swirling writing of, "Happy Birthday," and slices of fresh strawberries accenting the top and placed all around the base. Between the three layers, the chef had another creamy subtly flavored coconut buttercream icing with slices of fresh strawberries. Perhaps from my description you are able to understand why I forgot to take the photograph and simply asked our waiter to proceed to the serving!

We highly recommend the Restaurant Aaron at the Horned Dorset Primavera for either lunch or dinner. Restaurant Aaron has a facebook page which you can follow to see what special events they are hosting. To serve you better, reservations are always required.

Avocados in Puerto Rico

This is an avocado that Marilyn, Lemontree's assistant manager and housekeeper, brought to me from a tree in her backyard! She knows I love avocado and I was thrilled when I saw this one. I photographed it on the dinner plate to give you a good idea of its size. We have avocados here in Rincon, PR from mid July through November and there are so many different varieties, we have had great fun trying them all. They each seem to ripen a little differently and the size of the seeds varies greatly too.


I decided to try and cut this avocado as close to the seed as I could and from the photograph below you can see I rather succeeded. The seed is just poking through the left side. The seed was actually small, only about 2 1/2 inches and narrow in diameter so there was a lot of avocado to eat!


Now, I bet you never thought of avocado slices quite like this. The smaller half at the bottom of the photograph was all solid avocado "meat." The larger half had about four inches of solid meat. You can see the seed poking out of the larger half of the avocado (look in the middle of the plate).

The slices fit just perfectly on a sandwich and were easy to cut up for salad. I did some research on avocados and found that they are very, very healthy for us. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avocado...the health benefits section. Hooray...we can eat lots of them! Our favorite way to eat them is either in salad and sandwiches or just mashed up with a squeeze of limon and spread on crackers or as a dip. You might like to see this recipe site though if you are more active in the kitchen, http://www.avocadorecipes.net/..................Yum, yum.