This travel opportunity came out-of-the-blue when I got a phone call at work one day from Kathy, “I have to go to Puerto Rico for a few days for my job.” “Cool!” I said, “I’ll come, too!”
A few weeks later, we were on our way. I had no time for my usual meticulous (OK, maybe overly meticulous) preparation and flew there with little background or knowledge about Puerto Rico. It was pretty much a matter of throwing a few warm weather clothes into a suitcase & going.
The Wednesday we flew out, the whole country was in the throes of several major storms. The day before, Atlanta experienced major snow and thousands of flights had been cancelled. Our layover, of course, was in Atlanta. Fortunately, other than a few small delays, we didn’t have any trouble with our flights. When I looked out the plane window as we landed in Atlanta, my first impression was that we hadn’t left Minnesota—piles of snow everywhere!
I have no real first impressions landing in Puerto Rico since it was dark when we flew in. The first person to speak to us in Puerto Rico was a hustler/potential mugger. He accosted us as we e headed for the taxi stand, “Hey, you need a taxi? Come with me!” Like sheep, we started to follow him. Onto an elevator! Finally, I had the presence of mind to ask, “Where are we going?” “Oh, I’m parked in the parking lot. It’s OK. How are you? Are you OK?” Sure, I’m OK until you get us into the parking lot & take all of our money. Kathy and I gave each other a look and I told him that we would prefer to take a real taxi at the taxi stand. We got off the elevator, proceeded to the taxi stand, and took a taxi to our hotel with no additional problems.
We stayed at the Courtyard Marriott in a section of San Juan called Isla Verde. The hotel is near the airport and right on the beach. The hotel has a couple of nice restaurants and all the usual amenities. It seems that in Puerto Rico the usual amenities include a casino and a live band playing Latin music.
My real first impression of Puerto Rico was the following morning when I got out of bed, stepped onto our balcony and took this picture.
Ah, heaven!
The following two days, while Kathy worked, I, along with the husband of Kathy's co-worker who was along on the trip, spent some time exploring the historic forts in Old San Juan and Old San Juan itself. On the weekend, Kathy and I booked a tour and went to the San Sebastian festival in Old San Juan, which was in full swing.
Here are a few things I learned about or experienced while in Puerto Rico:
Cockfighting:
The night we arrived, we drove by a cockfighting arena on the way to our hotel. We both said, “Wow, that’s legal here?” Turns out, that not only is it legal, many consider it to be the Puerto Rican “sport”. The fights start at noon on Saturday and Sunday and go continuously until midnight. A bird owner will bring his specially bred rooster to the arena where it will face off against another rooster and battle until one rooster stops fighting—usually because it is dead. The roosters’ spurs have been filed down and replaced by an artificial plastic spur, which is longer and sharper, thus making a spur strike more deadly. There are no betting windows like they have in mainland horse racing. Instead, you bet on an individual basis with those sitting around you. It is important to be careful what you say to whom and what hand gestures you use during the fight or you could end up making a bet you didn’t even know you were making. When the fight starts, the men watching (and they are mostly men) start to bet, cheer, and yell, and the beers flows freely. Ironically, chicken wings are also for sale.
I did not attend, nor would I have any interest in attending a cockfight. Most of my information came from a conversation I had with the tour guide who led the Saturday tour we took to Camuy and Aricibo. He, like many Puerto Ricans, raised fighting roosters when he was a teenager—pampered them, fed them special high protein diets, and ultimately sacrificed them to the pit.
Cockfighting has become illegal on the mainland U.S. on a state-by-state basis, with Louisiana being the last to outlaw it in 2008. It has a long history, however, in the U.S., Europe, and around the world. It obviously caters to the same emotions as violent movies and video games, only in this case the fighting, the blood, and the death are very real. Someone, I’m sure, has studied anthropologically why many of us find cockfighting to be morally repugnant, but have no problem with chickens being slaughtered for us to eat.
The birds, by the way, are referred to with the “c” word, and not as roosters. I’ve avoided that word here to prevent unwelcome hits from those Googling for a very different topic.
Forts of Old San Juan:
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In 1493, Christopher Columbus claimed the island of Puerto Rico for Spain, much to the surprise of native Tainos who thought the island was theirs. Within fifty years, the Tainos were nearly extinct due to the hardship of slavery imposed on them by the Spanish and by European diseases, thus Puerto Rico truly became a Spanish island. Since it was the first land ships would encounter when sailing with the prevailing currents and trade winds from Europe, it was strategically important. Thus, in 1539 the Spanish began to build a fort, Castillo San Felipe del Morro, which occupied a promontory at the entrance to the harbor. The fort was occupied continuously as a fort until after World War 2, was modified on a regular basis, and is massive. Its impregnability allowed Spain to control Puerto Rico until it succumbed to a new generation of weapons and lost to the U.S. during the Spanish American war.
It is a masterpiece of military engineering—20-foot thick walls, six levels that go from sea level to 145 feet, and an open esplanade on the land side that would turn any land attack into a slaughter. After the U.S. took control, it continued as an active fort during both world wars, to protect American interests in the Caribbean, including the Panama Canal, and has the distinction of being the location of the first American shots fired during WWI, when American naval forces fired on a German supply ship. Since 1961, it has been a national park.
In 1598, the British managed to capture Castillo del Morro by attacking from the land side. They controlled the fort for a short time, but ultimately succumbed to dysentery and the Spanish regained control. This event did inspire the Spanish to build a second fort, Castillo San Cristobal, to protect San Juan and Castillo del Morro from attack by land. It was built over a period of 150 years and ultimately wrapped around the old city of San Juan. The fort itself covers 27 acres, making it the largest Spanish fort in the Americas. When the fort was built, walls were also built around the entire city, and stayed in place until 1897 when about one third of the walls were demolished to make way for the expanding city.
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| Fort San Cristobal |
Old San Juan:
Old San Juan is composed of quaint, historic architecture dating back to the 16th century, charming public squares, fun shops, cathedrals, museums, restaurants featuring every type of cuisine, and miles of narrow, hilly streets paved with bluish bricks, all surrounded by the historic city walls, the harbor, and the old forts.
It is the original part of San Juan. It began as the town that served the fort and is located on a small island connected to the main island by two bridges and a causeway. Most of the central government buildings are here.
It is also home to a large population of feral cats. When the central government decided to destroy the cats, there was such a public outcry that they modified their plan to a catch, neuter, and release program.
Our time spent here consisted of visiting the forts, admiring the old buildings, getting up-close and personal with the cats, poking through the shops, sitting at outdoor cafes and quaffing cold beverages while people-watching, and attending the festival.
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| Old San Juan |
Festival of St. Sebastian:
In early January each year, a large part of the entire population of the island crams itself into Old San Juan for the four-day Fiestas de la Calle San Sebastian, which marks the end of the Christmas season. During the day, the streets are jammed with people, stalls selling fried food, artists displaying their art, trinket vendors, and wandering musicians. In the evening the craziness gets cranked up to the next level with hundreds of stages featuring live music, parades of singing, dancing (and drinking) people, including cabezudos--people wearing giant peppier mache heads, and more people than you would think possible all crammed together in a marde gras sort of atmosphere.
If one is smart, one walks to this event, since it is virtually impossible to get there by car when it is in full swing. And forget parking. If one is almost 60, like this writer, it is advisable to go only during daylight hours and then interpolate regarding how much crazier it would be after dark.
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| Fiestas de la Calle San Sebastian |
Camuy Caves:
Imagine this huge cave system under the rain forest that has collapsed in places forming giant sinkholes. Imagine descending by trolley into one of these holes on a path built corkscrew fashion around the edge to the bottom. As you descend, the rain forest surrounds you—above, below, and on all sides. Eventually you reach the bottom and the stalagmite and stalactite festooned entrance looms before you.
This was our experience when we visited Parque de las Cavernas del Río Camuy (Camuy River Cave Park). It was incredible to experience this natural wonder. It was so impressive that it is only proper that every fact I quote about the Camuy caves be followed by an exclamation point:
• The river Rio Camuy runs through the cave is the third-longest underground river in the world!
• Cueva Clara, the chamber we visited, is so high that a 20-story building would fit inside!
• A half-million bats live in the caves—13 different species!
• The cave provide habitat for a species of fish that is totally blind!
• The sinkhole Tres Pueblos is so large that the entire Fort San Felipe del Morro would fit inside!
• Ten miles of cave have been mapped so far—probably a fraction of the total!
• We stopped along the road for lunch after visiting the cave and had fantastic food!
Puerto Rican Food:
After visiting the caves, we pulled off the road at one of the little roadside restaurants that pepper rural Puerto Rico. The restaurants are called lechons. While a variety of food is served, it all centers on pigs roast on a spit. Traditionally the pig was a suckling pig (leche = Spanish for milk), but now more often the pig will be a medium sized adult pig. At our stop, the pig was cooking on a spit in front of the restaurant, and the food was served cafeteria-style inside. After filling our plates, we grabbed a soda, pulled a chair up to a plank table, and commenced to enjoy. Succulent, savory, and satisfying!
One night at the hotel, we had a scrumptious paella on the beach along with a couple of Medallas—the local beer. Medalla is a beer for the tropics; light, cold, and available everywhere!
At the San Sebastian Festival, there were millions of stands selling all sorts of fried snacks. Some of the ones we sampled:
Mofongo: A mixture of fried plantain (or yuca, or breadfruit), mixed with garlic, and pork fat, and formed around a filling of vegetables, seafood, or beef.
Pinchos: Roasted tostones (fried mashed plantain) and chicken or pork on a skewer.
Alcapurria: A sort of turnover made from yucca, calabaza (a type of pumpkin), potato, or plantain filled with crab, chicken or picadillo.
Bacalaitos: A fish fritter.
One evening we ate at Metropol, a family style restaurant right next to the cockfighting arena. The clientele seemed to be a mixture of tourists and locals. I ate a nice piece of beef complimented with congri (rice and black beans), tostones, and a tamale. All very delicious.
And then there are Mojitos—perhaps the main fuel of the San Sebastian festival. And why not! It is a great way to deal with the heat and humidity—the mint and lime are so refreshing and yeah, there’s rum, too! Wikipedia declares this to be the proper way to prepare a mojito: “Lime juice is added to sugar and mint leaves. The mixture is then gently mashed with a muddler. The mint leaves should only be bruised to release the essential oils and should not be shredded. Then rum is added and the mixture is briefly stirred to dissolve the sugar and to lift the mint sprigs up from the bottom for better presentation. Finally, the drink is topped with ice cubes and sparkling water. Mint leaves and lime wedges are used to garnish the glass”. I don’t think that the mojitos I consumed at the festival were made with this degree of finesse. But they were fine. Damn fine!
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Imagine if somebody were to construct a giant radio telescope dish in one of the giant Camuy sinkholes so large that it filled the entire hole and then suspend from giant cables above the dish, a huge sci-fi looking collecting device. If you were to imagine that, you would be imagining the Aricibo telescope.
This installation is run by Cornell University and the National Science Foundation and has been used to among other things:
• Determine the exact rotation of Mercury
• Discover the periodicity of the Crab Pulsar
• Discover the first binary pulsar
• Image an asteroid, for the first time in history
• Look for signals from extraterrestrial intelligent beings
• Send signals into space as a message to extraterrestrial intelligent beings
It is jolting to see this huge complex in the midst of the Puerto Rican rain forest. And because of this, it has been used as a backdrop for two movies, Contact (the extraterrestrial angle) and GoldenEye (I think it was the source of a death ray the bad guy was going to use—Bond destroyed it).
The visitor’s center was great. One feature was designed to help us understand the relative distance of the planets to the sun. The “sun” was located in the parking lot. On the long climb up the path to the visitor’s center, which was on the brink of the sinkhole, we passed Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and Jupiter. Pluto beyond the sinkhole and the Proxima Centauri, the nearest star, was on a mountaintop on the horizon.
Statehood vs. Independence vs. Status Quo:
After our Camuy/Aricibo tour, the tour guide and I had a long discussion about this very interesting and complex issue. In the end, we arrived at our hotel, and sat in the car talking about this for another half-hour.
Puerto Rico has been under the control of the U.S. since we took it from Spain in the Spanish American war. Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens since 1917. There are strong opinions about what the future of Puerto Rico should be within the U.S. and Puerto Rican governments. Right now the pro-statehood forces are in control in Puerto Rico. But due to the complex process needed for statehood, it is unlikely to happen soon, if ever. It will be interesting to see what the future holds for this unique, beautiful island.
