Taking three generations of family members away for a holiday isn’t easy, but Helen Raine discovers this Caribbean island offers something for all ages.

Puerto Ricans know how to party.

I woke up at 6am under a lazy fan in the surfing capital of Rincón to find a salsa beat bouncing round my brain. The neighbours had the radio on loud and the infectious joy in the music kickstarted the day.

Rincón (meaning ‘corner’) is a little nook to the west of this Caribbean island.

Getting here in the dark from the capital San Juan was a crash course in the local driving culture.

Undertaking, weaving through four lanes of highway traffic and jumping red lights after midnight are all permissible, even expected. It’s highly unnerving for the uninitiated.

But Rincón was worth it. We were staying in a genial vacation rental (www.rinconpr-villasol.net) in the heart of the town.

It was a great price and the hosts did everything they could to make us comfortable.

At the end of the road was the exotic Mr Carrera’s Family Love House, a preposterous monstrosity of a building decorated with stucco angels, pharaohs and the odd decommissioned missile, all painted in lurid pastels.

The little bar under his house has a fence made of conch shells.

It summed up the local flavour of the neighbourhood.

As well as being famous for surfing, Rincón is a cattle ranching town, and the annual Milk Festival goes back to those roots.

To a background murmur of lowing cows, we wandered round stalls offering samples of the white stuff and free smoothies.

The highlight was a ride on a cart behind two huge, horned oxen that plodded stoically around all afternoon, showing little awareness of the havoc they could wreak if they rebelled.

The next day got even more country with the Yuntas de los Bueys (yoking of the oxen); bareback cowboys and dozens of oxen carts trotted past our apartment, their grinning drivers taking nips from bottles of lethal-looking spirits as they flung sweets over the gate.

Outside the local bars, horses were tied up among cars and bicycles.

If you’re not surfing in Rincón, you’re there for the beaches.

One of the best, ‘Steps’, had a concrete staircase to nowhere sitting in the water, usually with a heron perched on top.

In the shallows, forests of coral reef branched upwards and hundreds of enormous sea fans swayed in the current.

The little kiosk served excellent fresh empanadas (turnovers) with tasty fillings and cups of intense local espresso.

We rented paddleboards to cruise waters so clear that we could see the coral below.

Gargantuan stalactites and stalagmites have morphed into Henry Moore-esque shapes over time

At the balneario (public beach) about a kilometre south, three generations of my family rented kayaks to paddle out to more distant reefs. The grandparents took the children to give us more time to snorkel.

They hadn’t counted on the giant hole in the bottom of the boat, ineptly patched with the wrong material. About halfway back, the boat got perilously low in the water and capsized. They managed to swim to a nearby beach and were rescued by a hotel owner.

We were oblivious until my mother, wearing nothing but her sodden swimsuit and a pair of diving shoes, descended on the owner of the outfit and left his ears ringing.

If they hadn’t been wearing lifejackets, two pensioners, a three-year-old and a five-year-old would have been in serious trouble.

The police were blithely untroubled by our report.

Aside from the music, food is one of the greatest joys in Puerto Rico. La Cambija (located on Calle Cambija) is a tiny outfit run from the home of the owner with picnic tables spilling into the street.

They dish up fantastic fries loaded with spicy mince and cheese and supreme shrimp skewers.

Further out of town, we tried Cowboys (www.cowboysrincon.com) a huge ranch that offered pony rides, rabbit petting and hefty portions of local meat, barbecued and served with grilled sweetcorn, crispy plantain fritters and minty mojitos that muddled the head nicely.

New Year’s is a big deal there and our hosts recommended the Villa Cofresi (www.villacofresi.com).

We worked off the giant buffet by dancing salsa badly, then stood in the surf and watched the locals sending paper lanterns soaring into the night sky.

At midnight, there was Champagne, rum straight from a coconut, cheering and the best chicken soup in the world.

The Camuy River Cave Park (www.parquesnacionalespr.com) is about two hours from Rincón if you factor in getting lost three times and a prolonged divorce fantasy.

On our first attempt, we encountered a barred gate and a bunch of baffled tourists; the workers were on strike. Instead, we had to settle for the nearby Arecibo Observatory (www.naic.edu).

This holds the largest single dish radio telescope in the world, suspended over a gigantic sinkhole with a gargantuan platform anchored above.

It is capable of receiving radio waves originating galaxies more than 100 million years away and achievements include confirming the rotation rate of mercury and the discovery of the first planets outside the solar system.

The telescope featured in the James Bond film Goldeneye and the visitor centre will give you a fascinating glimpse into this sci-fi world.

On our second go, the caves were mercifully open. Throngs of tourists are managed by numbered tickets.

When your number’s up, you’re shuttled down to one of the cave entrances in an electric buggy and then escorted by a guide who offers a commentary distinctly light on fascinating facts.

Still, the interior inspires wonder despite the insipid patter.

Puerto Rico is famous for its bioluminescent bays. On a moonless night, tiny dinoflagellates glow in the water

Truly gargantuan stalactites and stalagmites have morphed into Henry Moore-esque shapes over time and the soaring ceiling is enough to make you reflect on your own insignificance.

On the way back, we headed to Playa Jobos to give the children a break, getting caught en route in one of the labyrinthine road system that plague Puerto Rico.

Signs are confusing, roads end abruptly and it took us half an hour to escape from a housing estate after a wrong turn. Jobos, sadly, wasn’t worth the trouble.

The country seems to be littered with beaches that are touted by the guidebooks as ‘unmissable’ or ‘spectacular’, but have descended into a mess of litter and abandoned buildings. Rincón’s low-key beaches stretched for miles and beat this one every time.

Puerto Rico is famous for its bioluminescent bays. Tiny dinoflagellates live permanently in the brackish water and on a moonless night, when the water is stirred, they glow.

La Parguera was the closest bay to us. It’s a miserable little town, full of shuttered buildings and empty bars. Around dusk, it fills with the zombie-like herds of tourists coming to see the bay.

We paid a surly man at the dock for the tour and went off to eat a dismal dinner and wait for night to fall.

We motored out past the mangrove with about 20 other people and another barge alongside us.

In the centre of the bay, the driver killed the engine and the slowing wake began to glow luminously.

It was disconcerting to jump into the invisible brine below the boat and find it light up on impact.

Every movement created an explosion of twinkling light, which was especially bright in the shadow of the boat.

Unfortunately, we discovered afterwards that boat engines actually kill the glowing organisms they are conveying people to see.

Reputable outfits use only kayaks and electric boats and follow local laws prohibiting swimming.

Companies in La Parguera are killing the goose that laid the golden egg. The ethereal glow has reduced considerably in this bay and seems likely to vanish completely unless these rogues are regulated.

The two bays in the east are better managed so it’s best to avoid this one if you possibly can.

A better proposition in the south is the Cabo Rojo lighthouse.

Here, we were loaded on to an ancient bus and driven about 200 metres up the hill.

The primary purpose of this transportation seemed to be to terrify us.

The driver drove past the gates of the lighthouse and eased the bus on to the edge of a crumbling cliff.

Just when I thought he couldn’t possibly get any closer without tipping us all to our doom, he did.

I stared down the limestone face at the rocks below, pounded by surf.

The driver rocked contentedly in his seat at our discomfort, slapping his knee with mirth. It was a heart-stopping moment of utterly gratuitous and baffling danger.

We toured the lighthouse, revelling in the fact that we were still alive, then trekked down to a gorgeous beach.

A graceful scoop of sand was framed by rocks and contained a shallow bay of seagrass where manatees are sometimes seen.

There were plenty of high value attractions in the region, but even so, much of the fun of the trip came from hanging out in the local neighbourhood.

People were universally friendly and the children had fun just playing on the distinctly battle-scarred playground or drinking juice at the concrete kiosk on the beach as giant speakers blasted salsa out to sea.

At the end of our street, an alley lead to the ocean, where the beach front houses were fighting a losing battle with the waves.

We swam here at sunset, the soft orange of the sun dipping behind each wave until it was gone altogether, while pelicans dive-bombed for fish metres away from us.

Life does not get much better than that.