The Puerto Rican city of Lajas wants to build a landing strip... for UFOs! The mayor of that town insists it will be for tourist dollars, and that no city money will be spent on the project, he's just helping it along.

A bright green sign along a lonely country road in southwestern Puerto Rico proudly displays a silhouette of a flying saucer and two words: "Extraterrestrial Route."

Most Puerto Ricans laughed when a horse farmer installed the sign on his property at the request of Reynaldo Rios, a local elementary school teacher who says he's been communicating with alien visitors to this U.S. territory since he was a child...

Rios, who leads a group called "UFO International" that holds nighttime vigils to search for signs of alien life, lets Negron worry about details like investment costs and permits while he envisions the design. The landing strip would be 80-feet (24-meters) long and have pyramids as control towers because aliens are attracted to the shape.

(Lonewacko notes: 80 feet? Many ET craft require at least a couple miles for a full landing; not all are VTOL as you might have seen in the movies.)

The mayor hopes that UFO enthusiasts will flock to Lajas as they have to Roswell, New Mexico, the site of a supposed UFO crash in the 1940s. Hundreds of visitors have come to check out the Extraterrestrial Route since the sign went up, Irizarry said...

...But it's a little-known aerostat off the Extraterrestrial Route that inspires UFO lore in Lajas. The U.S. military uses the aerostat, a tethered blimp with a radar system, to detect low-flying drug smuggling planes.

But many Lajans don't believe that. Even Irizarry has suggested that the aerostat's true purpose is to detect UFOs.

A paved road leading to the blimp curves out of sight between two hills. Two signs warn against trespassing. Rios claims he was once briefly detained while trying to see the aerostat...