Day 10 – Monday All we did today is walk around old San Juan. We visited another fort Castillo Cristobal, a cemetery, Casa Blanca….. and then we went to a wine reception.
Day 9 – Sunday Trevor’s dinner restaurant recommendation turned out to be a shack on the beach. We met two US government employees there who were enjoying our tax dollars at the bar. After an unremarkable dinner, the excitement started. Pulling out of the dirt parking lot, we noticed we had a flat tire. Numerous calls to roadside assistance resulted in unfulfilled promises of help that never materialized. Luckily we got help from fellow diners and in 15 minutes put on a donut spare and drove to Ola Lola. Fortunately, we were not far away from Aguadilla airport, which has an Enterprise office so we drove there in the morning and got a new car.
The drive to San Juan was uneventful. Our hotel is an old convent built in 1651 and converted to a hotel in 1959 by Woolworth. It’s really beautiful. Old San Juan is the oldest part of the city, located on the tip of a peninsular and filled with pastel-colored buildings along narrow cobble-stoned streets. Very picturesque. It is surrounded by fortifications dating back to the 16th century. Its military history is fascinating. The fortifications were used by the Spanish to defend the city from the invading British, Dutch and Americans.
The evening traffic is unbelievable with never ending lines of cars. We were told that Sunday is the biggest party night for Puerto Ricans, and it certainly looks like it is here.
Day 7 and 8 --- Friday and Saturday The drive through the mountainous Ruta Panoramica was beautiful, but very winding, like driving through a rainforest. We picked wild mangoes on the way. We were heading for the north-west corner of the island, but had no place to stay. After getting lost a few times, we stumbled across a small beach community called Playa Shacks, tucked away far from any main roads. We found a rental place owned by a young Canadian, Trevor. We couldn’t believe our luck --- the house was sitting right on one of the most beautiful beaches imaginable, just steps from the ocean. Our big wooden patio overlooks the ocean and within seconds we can be swimming in clear turquoise waters with no other people in view.
Trevor also told us about a local bar, Ola Lola and a few places to eat. In the evening we went to Ola Lola, which is a shack with 3 tables just up the road from us. It turned out to be a very interesting place, a gathering of transplants from the US and other English-speaking countries. The owner and his wife are from Michigan – he wrote grant proposals for the Kalamazoo county and she taught speech pathology at the university. Now, they are running this beach bar and seem to be doing quite well. Saturday lunch was lechon asado (roast pig) which we had to drive miles over curved narrow roads to find. Regretfully, we couldn’t get any veggies to go with it because Puerto Ricans do not eat vegetables or fruits. It’s very hard to find any in stores and fruit stands are few and far between. It’s hard to understand why in a tropical climate people would eat just fried stuff and meat and rice and beans.
Day 6 –Thursday We left La Parguera in the morning for Baja Roja, the south west tip of the island where the Caribbean meets the Canal de la Mona, which separates Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic. We followed route 301 which abruptly ceased to be paved and became a dirt road with large water-filled potholes. Fortunately none of them were deep enough to swallow the car and fortunately Al ignored Bo’s pleas to turn around. We were rewarded with a spectacular view. We encountered one of the most beautiful beaches we’ve ever seen --- a pristine crescent of white sand with no indication that humans have ever been there. Al was going to skinny dip, but when he went to the car to get a towel, people started to arrive.
From Baja Roja we drove to San German, the oldest town on the island (established in 1506). It has both French and Spanish influence reflected in its architecture. Evidently it doesn’t get many tourists because when we walked into the tourist office, they jumped to attention. The manager called the church to tell them we were coming to see it and personally escorted us to open the back door to show us the cathedral. It has 14 altars and he proceeded to describe every one of them until we excused ourselves saying that our parking meter was expiring. San German is a beautiful colonial town, amazingly clean and colorful.For the night, we checked into Hacienda Juanita, a lovely former coffee plantation high in the mountains near Maricao.
Day 5 – Wednesday As we checked out of hotel Melia in Ponce this morning, the sky opened up and torrential rain started coming down. We barely made it to the car and drove in a wall of rain for a while. We had a reservation at Hacienda Buena Vista, a historical coffee plantation about 2o km north of Ponce. We had a tour (still in the pouring rain) of this non-operating coffee plantation and corn mill. We were hoping for some coffee after the tour, but there was no coffee to be found there. Luckily, at the nearby gas station we bought not only coffee, but also a plate of lechon asado (roast piglet) from a truck, one of the best meals we’ve had on the island. Our next planned stop was in the town of Yauco, the capital of the PR coffee industry, but the rain was so torrential that we decided it made no sense to even bother stopping. We were also planning to visit a dry forest in Guanica, but gave it up in favor of getting to our evening lodging in the village of Parguera. We checked into Parador Villa Parguera (still in the rain), a nice waterfront hotel in the so called Fluorescent Bay. In the evening we took a short boat ride to see the fluorescent phenomenon. According to the boat driver, it was not the best night to experience it because of the moon and all the rain, but we could still see some of it. When you agitate the water, it creates bright flashes of light that resemble shooting stars or fire flies, many, many of them at the same time. Quite impressive.
Day 4 –Tuesday Day four started with a breakfast on the rooftop that reminded us of Antigua, Guatemala. We went to a historic house that had an art bookstore in it and the person there was so happy to see visitors that he kept us for an hour telling us about all the wonders of Puerto Rico. One of the useful pieces of information he gave us was about fruits unique to Puerto Rico. Taking his advice we bought three strangest looking objects he touted as delicious fruit --- mispero, guanaguaba and corazon. Guanaguaba (see picture) was the ugliest, but tasted the best – a cross between a pineapple, banana and sweet lemon. Then we took a tour of the city. For $2 per person we had an almost private tour (in English) on an antique-looking red bus that took us all around the old Ponce. The low point on the tour was the sports museum, which consisted of photographs of minor sports figures from Ponce. Lunch turned out to be another adventure. The Chef’s Kitchen restaurant highly recommended by the guidebook was out of food when we got there at 2 pm. We braved the local cafeteria and survived. A quest for wine took us to the local grocery store, which had no decent wines so we settled for a sixpack of local Medalla beer instead (the only brewery in Puerto Rico only makes light beer!).
Across the street from our hotel is this bizzare looking red building of a firemen's museum (Parque de Bombas) with a lovely white cathedral right behind it.
This evening our quest was to have a drink in a local watering hole. We walked for miles trying to find a decent place to have a drink. We took advice from the hotel, the tourist office and several people in the street, to no avail. Finally, a young man selling tacos from a cart sent us to Bamboleo, which turned out to be a real find. We are now sitting in the city’s central square, plugged into an outlet in the bushes and using the free city-wide wifi posting this (see picture).
Day 1 – Saturday—San Juan airport After two uneventful flights, we arrived at the San Juan airport after 9 pm. Getting the checked-in bag took forever, but we were reminding ourselves that we were on island time. Eventually, we found our way to the airport Best Western and checked in. Since everything at the airport closed at 9 pm, we went outside in search of a beer. In vain. The only place we found within a walking distance had a “boxing night” and wouldn’t let us in without paying a steep entrance fee. Resigned, we went back to the hotel and had mint juleps imported from Orange County.
Day 2 – Sunday –North coast After “continental” (which continent it came from we don’t know) breakfast at the hotel, we picked up our rental car and set out to explore the island. First stop was a beach called “Pinones” very close to San Juan. It was early so the beach was still pretty empty. The color of the Atlantic ocean on the north side of the island is a perfect turquoise and in combination with the golden sand and the tall coconut palms, it looks like perfect tropical paradise. After a walk on the beach, we got in the car and drove to the Caribbean National Park, the Puerto Rican rainforest El Yunque. Distances here are really much shorter than they appear on the map so it took us only about an hour to get there. We first went into the visitors’ center – a beautifully designed open building that blends into the landscape, and then drove up towards the El Yungue mountain stopping at the El Coca waterfalls, on observatory tower and finally taking an hour hike to El Mono waterfalls where a lot of people gathered to cool down in the falls. Temperature here is actually quite nice --- very warm (over 80F), but not oppressively hot like in Asia. It’s quite humid, though. After El Yunque, we drove to Luquillo Beach, where (according to the guidebook and some Puerto Rican friends) you can taste a really authentic Puerto Rican food served in beach-side kioskos (booths). We had a taco with shrimp (Puerto Rican tacos don’t even resemble Mexican tacos) and a fried doughy something stuffed with crab and two local beers. We had to admit that the beer was better than the food… After this lunch, we decided to stay at the Luquillo Beach and dip in the Atlantic. The beach was picture perfect and the water warm and clear. Then, on to Fajardo, an unremarkable little town. We had to drive through it a few times to finally find the right road to the Conquistador resort, the best resort on the island. It was quite spectacular, a gorgeous place, up on a hill overlooking the ocean, with miles of grounds, including a golf course, 5 or 6 pools and a funicular that goes down to the marina below. Since we didn’t make any reservations for tonight, we decided to call a place recommended in our guidebook called “Ceiba Country Inn” up on hill side south of Fajardo. It turned out to be quite a charming place owned by an American couple fro Rhode Island who adopted 5 dogs and 4 cats and runs this 9-room B&B. It’s quite a remote place and when we got back there in the evening, we were surprised at the loud noise that we couldn’t identify. We couldn’t figure out if it was birds or insects so we asked. It turns out that it’s tree frogs that make this unbelievably loud noise. I hope we’ll be able to fall asleep… Day 3 –Monday --- East to South After breakfast, we got in the car and started driving towards Ponce> the first stop was Playa Naguabo, at least it was our intended first stop. Unfortunately, signage in PR leaves a lot to be desired so we had to circle the town of Naguabo three times until finally someone pointed us in the right direction of Playa Naguabo, a totally separate village. It’s quite confusing because even though it is called “playa”, it doesn’t have a beach. It is a picture perfect little town with a beautiful coastline, a hill and even some interesting-looking architecture, but NO people. It was totally empty. We were really looking for a beach so we drove south out of the village and about 10 minutes later we found a spectacular beach right off the road --- Playa Tropical. It was ideal for a swim. Since so many people warned us about theft, we were watching our belonging and the car all the time. There was a group of young people sitting by a parked car not too far away. At some point one of them, a young woman came up to us. She was wearing an official-looking badge so we thought that maybe she wants to tell us to get off the beach, but she only wanted to chat and offered to take our picture. Then we drove south on coastal PR-901 through spectacular scenery. We started looking for a place to eat or at least have coffee, but couldn’t find anything that looked half way appealing so we decided to stop on the first beach and consume a mango that we bought along the road and our trail mix, and that’s what we did… As we finished our meal, we noticed a group of people ahead sitting by plastic tables so we walked in their direction and found…. A café truck! After this refreshing stop --- and getting lost a few times along the way, we got to Ponce. It’s a really interesting historic town that somewhat resembles New Orleans, that is its architecture does, not the atmosphere. It came as a big surprise to us that the town is completely dead in the evening. We had a hard time finding one open restaurant to have dinner. Luckily, the place turned out to be very good. Walking back to the hotel through the main playa, we saw several young people sitting in the dark with their laptops. The city is completely WiFied and it even has power outlets in the planters so you can plug in your laptop!
