Introducing Rincón

You’ll know you’ve arrived in Rincón when you pass the group of sun-grizzled gringos cruising west in their rusty 1972 Volkswagen Beetle with a pile of surfboards attached to the roof. Shoehorned far out in the island’s most psychedelic corner, Rincón is Puerto Rico at its most unguarded, a place where the sunsets shimmer scarlet and the waiters are more likely to call you ‘dude’ than ‘sir.’ For numerous Californian dreamers this is where the short-lived summer of love ended up. Arriving for the Surfing World Championships in 1968, many never went home. Hence Rincón became a haven for draft-dodgers, alternative lifestylers, back-to-the-landers and people more interested in catching the perfect wave than bagging $100,000 a year in a Chicago garden suburb.

Rincón’s waves are often close to perfect. Breaking anywhere from 2ft to 25ft, the names are chillingly evocative: Domes, Indicators, Spanish Wall and Dogman’s. The crème de la crème is Tres Palmas, a white-tipped monster that is often dubbed the ‘temple’ of big wave surfing in the Caribbean.

Though Rincón is crawling with American expats (many of them residents), the tourist/local divide is more seamless and less exclusive than in the resorts out east. However, with a new, more affluent surfing generation demanding a higher quality of living than their ‘turn off, tune in, drop out’ parents, Rincón has increasingly embraced car culture and witnessed a noticeable expansion in the boutique hotel market. Indeed, these days the dudes with the boards are more likely to be lawyers than high school dropouts.