Salt Air and Slow Days at Playa Bonita

Midway through a week of salt air and slow days, this one finally had a plan. The morning still went nowhere — towel spread on the sand under the coconut palms below the hotel, seaweed thick along the tide line, a pelican working the shallows near the half-sunk hulk offshore. This side stays calm enough to swim. The other side does not, which is where we drove.

Inland first, past a small stone ruin with a tree grown flat against one wall and a red carved seat parked in the doorway, white flowers dropping onto the roofline from the branches above. Then out to the windward coast, where the vegetation flattens to knee height and the first thing you meet is a hand-painted sign: Rasta's, Freedom in Paradise, Yeah-Man, desde 1987, no ambulantes.

Playa Bonita itself sits a little farther on — a green and white restaurant bar with palapas planted in the sand, a lifeguard tower with nobody in it, and surf coming in over the rocks hard enough to settle the swimming question. Couldn't see anyone in the water in either direction. The tables under the palapas sat empty too, chairs stacked against the wind.