Six beaches for a swim this weekend, one for each stretch of the island, from Vega Baja to Humacao, and each came back clean on its latest water test. Here is what you will find when you get there.
Six beaches for this weekend
| # (Its number on the map above) | Beach (The beach as our guide holds it; the reading belongs to the DRNA station it sits on) | Town | What's there (Features mapped in OpenStreetMap within 350 m of the beach — presence, not a count) | Last reading (Colonies of Enterococcus per 100 mL at the joined station; the federal action value is 70. The date is the day that sample was collected) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Balneario Puerto Nuevo ✦ | Vega Baja | parking, food and drink and boat ramp | Clean · Sep 9 |
| 2 | Balneario de Rincón | Rincón | restrooms, parking, food and drink and playground | Clean · Sep 9 |
| 3 | Punta Salinas ✦ | Toa Baja | parking | Clean · Sep 9 |
| 4 | Balneario Caña Gorda | Guánica | restrooms and parking | Clean · Sep 9 |
| 5 | Playa Hilton Ponce | Ponce | parking and playground | Clean · Sep 14 |
| 6 | Balneario Punta Santiago | Humacao | parking | Clean · Sep 9 |
✦ Balneario Puerto Nuevo and Punta Salinas carry a Blue Flag for the 2025-26 season, an international award for water quality, facilities and management, published for Puerto Rico by OPAS.
A balneario is a public beach with an operator — usually the Departamento de Recreación y Deportes or the municipio — which is where the restrooms, the gate and the parking come from. Five of the six here are.
What each coast offers
The list runs North, West, San Juan, Southwest, South and East, so nobody has to cross the island for it. The west-coast beaches sit on the calm Mona side and the north coast takes Atlantic swell, which is the difference between a morning of floating and a morning of being knocked over — worth knowing before the car is loaded.
The weekend forecast
Saturday’s forecast is drizzle at three, thunderstorms at Punta Salinas, mainly clear skies at one and partly cloudy skies at one, with highs of 88 to 92°F. Rain is likely at all six. Sunday brings thunderstorms at five and drizzle at one.
| Beach | Saturday | Sunday |
|---|---|---|
| Balneario Puerto NuevoVega Baja | Drizzle92°F 75% rain | Drizzle89°F 94% rain |
| Balneario de RincónRincón | Drizzle88°F 53% rain | Thunderstorm89°F 78% rain |
| Punta SalinasToa Baja | Thunderstorm91°F 55% rain | Thunderstorm88°F 70% rain |
| Balneario Caña GordaGuánica | Mainly clear92°F 54% rain | Thunderstorm91°F 90% rain |
| Playa Hilton PoncePonce | Drizzle90°F 40% rain | Thunderstorm88°F 83% rain |
| Balneario Punta SantiagoHumacao | Partly cloudy88°F 55% rain | Thunderstorm87°F 78% rain |
Forecasts are Open-Meteo’s for each beach’s coordinates, read the morning this was published.
Before you go
Across the island, 34 of the 49 beaches Puerto Rico monitors came back clean on their last test. One beach is under a DRNA advisory this week and best skipped until the next notice lifts it: Pico de Piedra (Aguada).
What a reading does and does not tell you
“Came back clean” means one water sample, taken at one station in the sampling run of September 9 and 14, came in under the 70-colony federal action value — what DRNA calls within limits. It is the strongest thing the monitoring program can say, and it is a description of that morning, not a forecast for Saturday. Rain is the variable that moves these numbers fastest: runoff after a heavy shower can put a beach over the action value hours after a clean sample was taken, and the next notice is a week away.
14 of the 49 stations carry no sample from the last 21 days. A beach that appears on no list at all has not passed anything; it has not been measured. An advisory is lifted by the next notice, not by the weather.
Every monitoring station, with its own number and its own date, is on the beach water quality page, and the official list is DRNA’s current beach notice.
This is the first Where to Swim.