Going the extra (golden) mile.

(Joyuda Beach, Puerto Rico)

What do you do when you’re living on a sailboat and find yourself with your own transportation for a week? You take real showers, maybe even blow dry your hair, put on semi decent clothes, and head out on the road to pack in lots of sight-seeing fun, of course!

And Joyuda Beach was just one of the great coastal towns we visited one night that week!

Just north of Boquerón and south of Mayagüez, Joyuda is a dining destination – famous for its string of seafood restaurants and known islandwide as the Milla de Oro or “Golden Mile.” It might be a bit generous to call these places ‘gourmet,’ but the seafood is very fresh, and more than a dozen family-owned restaurants line the 2-mile seaside stretch of Route 102.

Somehow we managed to dine at not one, not two, but three spots along “Golden Mile.” Okay, we only did an appetizer and drinks at the first two. And then surprisingly squeezed in an entree at the third spot. And boy were we full after! But hey, when in Rome, right?

We started the evening at Vista Bahia and grabbed a seat right over the water looking down at the insanely large tarpon who are just waiting for a handout from restaurant goers. After ordering two cold Medallas and some tasty empanadas, we were ready to sit back and enjoy the gorgeous view as the sun set over the water. Both the lobster and chicken empanadas  we had were golden, crispy, and super delicious!

But knowing that we wanted to try more than just one spot along the stretch of restaurants, we left Vista Bahia and made our way to El Bohio, which came highly recommended from some of the folks we spoke to at the marina.

With a very low-hanging awning and dark walls, the view from El Bohio wasn’t nearly as great as Vista Bahia, but we went ahead and ordered a round of pina coladas and another appetizer. The appy of fish balls, cheese balls, and corn sticks was pretty great; however, the pina coladas left a little to be desired. Our drinks came to the table half melted. Such a bummer and never a good sign. We drank what we could and decided to move on to our third and final spot for the evening, Mao’s Seafood.

Rated the seventh top restaurant in Cabo Rojo on Tripadvisor, Mao’s turned out to be the real deal family-friendly restaurant, with lots of local families dining here. Jereme and I settled into a table inside the restaurant (since it was dark at this point) and scoped out the large menu of nearly any seafood/sauce entree combo you could dream up. But leave it to us to not even order seafood. Lol. I ordered a steak and Jer a garlic chicken dish. Figures. Both were delicious, although by that point we were so full we only ate about half of our meals (oliver got lucky that night with my steak leftovers). I’m pretty sure our favorite of the night was the warm bread they served here. Man was it good!

After seriously stuffing our faces for a few hours along Joyuda Beach we were too full to do anything else, so we hopped back in our little Mitsubishi rental and headed home to Puerto Real.

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