the seasoned traveler with george bauer

Program 211:

Puerto Rico

It's part of the United States yet it goes its own way. It's a place of history, yet a place to play. The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is my next stop on The Seasoned Traveler.


The beach life in Puerto Rico ...

Puerto Rico is 100 miles long and 35 miles wide, about three times bigger than the state of Rhode Island. It is a modern, progressive and industrialized island. Tourism is a key industry. There are three smaller islands, off the coasts: Mona, to the west, is a wildlife preserve while Culebra and Vieques are east. They have become new tourist destinations too. All three are accessible by ferry from the main island.

Four million people live in Puerto Rico, two million others have left the island for the United States. It's said there are more Puerto Ricans in New York City than in San Juan. Puerto Rico is a crowded island, one of the most-densely-populated places on earth.

The north of the island gets more rain and is more humid, especially in Summer. Parts of Southern and Southwestern Puerto Rico resemble desert. Winter is high season here, when prices are steepest and from June through November, the island is on hurricane-watch.


It is easy to find your own quiet spot...

In any season, one of its leading assets is the beach. Some of the best are private or owned by major hotels and resorts. There are hotels in and near major cities and towns across the island and many are right on the beach. But there are many public beaches, some with quiet coves, picnic spots, even rocks to climb. The water is warm most of the year.

Most travelers, seasoned or first-timers, take time to explore San Juan, the center of island government and business. On the western tip of a peninsula jutting out into the bay, Old San Juan preserves the heritage of the island, with several square blocks of narrow streets and some charming old buildings. In 1983 this neighborhood was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Puerto Rico had been populated for centuries by native peoples, called the Taino, but the Spanish took absolute control of the island. It began with Christopher Columbus, who landed on the island during his second voyage to the New World in 1493. Historians think he came ashore on the island's Northwestern coast. Fifteen years later, in 1508, Juan Ponce de León founded the first settlement and in 1521 moved it to the site of the present Old City. He called it Puerto Rico which means rich port and the entire island eventually became known as Puerto Rico. The capital city was called San Juan in honor of Juan Ponce de Leon.

In 1898, after 400 years of colonial rule, the indigenous people had been exterminated and African slave labor was introduced. The island was ceded to the United States after the Spanish-American War. Residents were granted U.S. citizenship in 1917. On July 25th, 1952, a constitution was enacted providing self-government. Voters have chosen to retain Commonwealth status in three plebesites: in 1967, 1993, and 1998..but a small, vocal minority supports complete independence. Still others want the island to become America's 51st state.


The walls of Old San Juan are still standing...

San Juan is known as the walled city, two-thirds of the wall around old San Juan is still intact. Two forts protect San Juan, one from an ocean attack, the other from land invasion. The larger is El Morro, officially known as el Fuerte San Felipe del Morro, which sits atop a high promontory overlooking the entrance to San Juan Bay. At the other end of Old San Juan, el Fuerte de San Cristobal, at one time the largest fort the Spaniards ever built in the New World. The U.S. National Park Service maintains both fortifications.

The streets here are not exactly paved with gold, but they are paved with cobbles of adoquine, a blue stone cast from furnace slag on Spanish ships. Time and moisture have given them their characteristic color. I find them much more attractive than the gray cobblestones in Europe.

Old San Juan has more than 400 restored 16 th and 17 th Century Spanish Colonial buildings and has several plazas, the most popular is Plaza de San Jose. At the center stands the bronze statue of Ponce de Leon, made from a British cannon captured during a British attack in 1797. And there's a tribute nearby to a more-modern celebrity, cellist Pablo Casals.

Abutting Plaza San Jose is the Plaza del Quinto Centenario, dedicated in October, 1992. This park was the cornerstone of the new world. At its center there's a sculpture that rises 40 feet. The monumental totemic sculpture in black granite and ceramic symbolizes five centuries of American history. Not far from here is Casa Blanca, the home of Ponce de Leon.


San Juan Cathedral

A few blocks away, and built in the 1520s, San Juan Cathedral originally had wooden walls and a thatched roof. It was destroyed by a hurricane in 1526, rebuilt in 1540, looted in 1598, and damaged by another hurricane in 1615. The Cathedral as seen today is the result of work done in 1917, when major restorations were completed.

From the old to the new, within old San Juan, there's plenty of upscale shopping along Calle del Cristo and on San Francisco and Fortaleza Streets. The place to meet-and-greet in Old San Juan is Plaza de Armas, the old main square. It's not only popular with people, pigeons congregate here in great numbers. If you lose your way, there's help on many street corners. Representatives of the Puerto Rican Tourism Company can provide directions, maps, advice, and travel tips.

To get around Old San Juan, take a leisurely foot tour. But take your time amid the narrow, steep streets, and watch out for very heavy traffic. If you don't have to drive in Old San Juan, leave the rental car behind. Remember too: it can be hot and humid here in Summer. Still, there's an unmistakable charm about this Old-World city on a New-World island.

Puerto Rico can be a baffling place for Americans, even seasoned travelers. It 'is' part of the U.S. and the dollar is the currency. Flying to and from the States means no customs and immigration stops, no passports needed. Spanish and English are meant to be the languages in use here and most hotel-workers or shopkeepers speak both. But once you get away from the cities, you'll hear less-and less English.

Leaving the capital behind, I stopped in Dorado at the former Hyatt Dorado Beach Resort (which closed in 2006). This lush, oceanfront property was purchased in 1905 by Dr. Alfred Livingston, a physician from Jamestown, New York. He developed a huge grapefruit and coconut plantation.


The Big House, Su Casa...

The big-house, now called Su Casa, was built in 1928 by Livingston's daughter Clara after Hurricane San Felipe destroyed the original wooden home. This one was made of concrete, with thick walls, long wooden eaves, and Spanish clay tiles to ensure it would stand forever.

In 1937 the hacienda welcomed a famous visitor. Clara Livingston was the 11th woman pilot in the world and a friend of Amelia Earhart, who came here on the first stopover of her fateful last journey, to fly around the world.

In 1958, Laurence Rockefeller opened the plantation as a hotel and it attracted President Dwight Eisenhower, Elizabeth Taylor, and Ava Gardner among its guests. Rockefeller converted the hacienda to a restaurant, calling it Su Casa--your house.

On Puerto Rico's western edge, there are two must-see spots, one is a work of nature, the other created by mortals.


If you are really quiet, you can hear in the distance ...

Dubbed "an ear to heaven," Observatorio de Arecibo contains the world's largest and most sensitive radar/radio-telescope. It features a 20-acre dish, or radio mirror, set in an ancient sinkhole. It's 1,000 feet in diameter and 167 feet deep, and it allows scientists to monitor natural radio emissions from distant galaxies. Used by scientists as part of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence or SETI, this may look familiar to non-astronomers. It's the site featured in the movie "Contact" with Jodie Foster and it was the setting for the finale of Pierce Brosnan's first James Bond flick "Golden Eye" . This research effort speculates that advanced civilizations elsewhere in the universe might communicate via radio waves. The 10-year, $100 million search for life in space was launched October 12, 1992, the 500th anniversary of Columbus' arrival in the New World. Lush vegetation flourishes under the giant dish, including ferns, wild orchids, and begonias in addition to assorted creatures like mongooses, lizards, snakes, and dragonflies which have also taken refuge there. Suspended above the dish is a 600-ton platform that resembles a space station. This is not a site where you'll be launched into a Star Wars journey through the universe, but you are allowed to walk around, taking in views of this gigantic dish. In the visitor center, you are treated to interactive exhibitions on the various planetary systems and introduced to the mystery of meteors and educated about intriguing weather phenomena. And there's a Nobel Prize on display because the work here in effect confirmed Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity.


The Rio Camuy caves are HUGE ...

Parque de las Cavernas del Río Camuy or the Río Camuy Caves contain the third-largest underground river in the world. There are actually several caves in and under Puerto Rico but this is the only one open for public inspection. A network of caves, canyons, and sinkholes has been cut through the island's limestone base over the course of millions of years. Known to the pre-Columbian Taíno peoples, the caves came to the attention of speleologists in the 1950s; they were led to the site by local boys already familiar with some of the entrances to the system. The caves at Camuy are actually 45 million years old, because it took millions of years for nature to adorn their towering ceilings with crystalline stalactites, their walls with flowing stone tapestries, and their floors with mushroom mounds of stalagmites.

Few cave systems in the world are as massive or dramatic as the Rio Camuy Cave Park and the thundering tropical river is a definite bonus. Sinkholes are everywhere. Tres Pueblas is large enough to fit the fort at el Morro inside it. And Rio Camuy has special powers: there's a waterfall that slides down one rock face within the cavern. By drinking the water, legend says, one will never grow old. My drink does not appear to have worked, at least not yet!

On the east end of Puerto Rico, the Caribbean National Forest, approximately 28,000 acres in size, is located in the rugged Sierra de Luquillo, 25 miles Southeast of San Juan. This rain forest is called El Yunque, unique throughout the U.S. Forest Service system. Edwin Velazguez is a ranger with the U.S. Forest Service. He made one thing clear about El Yunque: "It rains almost every day up here." That can mean up to 240 inches per year. Hundreds of billions of gallons of rainwater fall on the Forest per year and that has an impact on the streams within the Forest. There are several plant species and the Forest contains rare wildlife including the Puerto Rican parrot, which is largely green in coloration and displays brilliant blue wings in flight. I never did see one but I did see a picture of one. It's like that old t-shirt..I went to see the parrot .. but all I saw was this rotten poster.

Hiking is probably the best way to enjoy the forest in its many different forms and trails provide access, from the lowest valleys to the highest peaks. Some trails are rough and dangerous.

During my visit here, people kept saying, "You have to visit the Bacardi plant and take the tour. Everybody does it".

OK, so I took the tour. The factory's in Catano, just west of San Juan.


The Bacardi Distillery...

There are six major areas to visit and you conduct a self-guided tour, with a headset to explain everything you'll need to know. Bacardi began in 1862 at Santiago, Cuba. Don Facundo Bacardi Masso was the first to make rum through distillation and aging. The actual pronunciation of the family name is Ba-car-deeee. And the bat became the company's symbol when the founder's wife, Amalia Moreau, discovered some fruit-bats in the rafters of the warehouse the company had just bought. She decided it should become the symbol. After all, the bat is the sign of good health, good fortune, and family. It branched out from Cuba, to Mexico and Puerto Rico in the 1930s. The first plant here was in Old San Juan. After Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba, the Bacardi plant was expropriated on October 14, 1960. The company lost $76 million in assets and relocated here. Now Bacardi has its headquarters on Bermuda, a corporate tax-haven.

After the tour, free rum drinks are available at the pavilion, then you can stop at the gift shop to take home the good stuff. U.S. residents can buy as much as they can carry because there are no Customs duties.

One last tip: if you are 18 or older, you can gamble in Puerto Rico. And gamblers told me the casinos on the island provide more chances for folks like us to win.