After about 25 minutes of trekking, finally reached the famous beach. The beach itself was very beautiful. But there was seaweed all over. Which made it not so great – compared to El Combate, for example.

Near where all the trees were dead, I could see what looked like salt formation on the shores. Crossed a fence to check it out. Poked the white surface with a stick. It was not salt. It was a lot of foam!

Now that raises yet another question. How come this portion of the water consistently had foam on the shore as far as the eyes could see? The water was very shallow and relatively still.

Does this mean the water has certain chemicals that makes it foam? And that is what killed the trees?

The walk to Playa Sucia was interesting. You could see mangrove forests thriving in the blue waters. But then there was a huge section where all the trees had died in the brackish waters. See the picture.

I have seen similar things in South Florida too.

Does anybody know the explanation for why all the trees are dead in one portion of the backwaters? It could not be the salt content, could it?

After spending some lovely time in El Combate, I got back in the car to hit another beach I had heard of – Playa Sucia. Everything went well till the GPS took us to a closed entrance! The GPS insisted I was still a mile from the beach.

But there were a lot of cars in front of the closed gate. There was not a person to be seen anywhere. The best guess I had was that everybody simply crossed the closed gate and started trekking it.

Decided to follow suit.

I was walking along El Combate beach when I heard a loud bird in the trees. Or what sounded like a couple of birds. Curious to see what kind of birds they were, I approached the tree and started scanning it. Much as I strained my eyes carefully covering inch by inch of the tree, I could not spot anything. I was expecting to see some gray color in the otherwise bright green with the full glory of sunshine hitting the tree. I could still hear the birds.

With each every bird caw, I tried to ascertain the direction and finally hit pay dirt! The reason I could not spot the birds is because they were not gray in color at all. These were green parrots fairly effectively camouflaged in the green leaves.

See if you can see them in this zoomed in picture.

For the 45 minutes that I lay down on the beach, this bird did not even move once. First, I thought it was patiently waiting for a fish. Now, I think it was merely sun bathing.

Blue waters, white hot sand, cool shady trees and some mojito! Only one thing was missing.

I had the day to myself. Decided to explore the island. Got myself a rental car and drove to the furthest end of the island. This is the Southwest end of the island – about two and a half hours drive away.

El Combate beach was to die for. The water stayed true to the Caribbean colors and it had a lot of green trees giving shade right up on the sand – which was as white as it could be.