Puerto Rico
Sorry not to have done a blog entry for a few days--I was rather ill in Puerto Rico. Montezuma's Revenge. 'nuff said.
Following my flight from Santiago de Cuba via Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, I met up with my son Ken and his fiance Estelle and we stayed in the La Concha Hotel in the Condado area---which is the resort strip in San Juan just east of Old San Juan. http://laconcharesort.com/ .
Sorry not to have done a blog entry for a few days--I was rather ill in Puerto Rico. Montezuma's Revenge. 'nuff said.
Following my flight from Santiago de Cuba via Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, I met up with my son Ken and his fiance Estelle and we stayed in the La Concha Hotel in the Condado area---which is the resort strip in San Juan just east of Old San Juan. http://laconcharesort.com/ .
I was rather apprehensive, expecting some characterless place with lots of screaming kids, drunken and loud tourists, and slot machines. However it was very nice (although there were some of the aforementioned, they did not predominate--it is definitely an upmarket hotel). It gave me a chance, after Cuba, to indulge in some good food and to have accomodation where everything worked. It was also a great place to relax after my marathon drive through Cuba, particularly as I was unwell.
[Digression: In fact the LaConcha has some interesting history . It was actually built in 1958--yes over fifty years ago--at which time it was in the forefront of an architectural movement called Tropical Modernism. So it predates the brutalist concrete monstrosities of the 1970s and the soulless glass and and steel and the faux classical styles of the later decades. However it went out of fashion in the 1980s when Puerto Rico suffered severe economic recession. It was closed and derelict for 20 years and frequently slated for demolition. However with unusual intelligence and sensitivity for a big company, Marriott/Renaissance bought it and completely restored it, including its extraordinarily beautiful beachfront restaurant called La Perla, built as a giant clam shell. If anyone is interested in architecture the story it is well set out in the attached article from Architectural Digest. http://www.architecturaldigest.com/homes/hotels/2009/08/la_concha_article]
After Cuba, Puerto Rico is small. Very small. It is an almost perfect oblong shape and is only 111 miles east to west and 36 miles north to south. It is only 750 miles from Cuba but a world away. It enjoys all the disadvantages and all the benefits of being a US colony. (Oops! that should read "commonwealth". I forgot that Americans don't do colonialism.) Off the north coast is the Puerto Rican Trench which at 28,000 feet is the deepest place in the Atlantic Ocean.
The coastal regions are flat and form a wide border to the central mountains, the Cordillera Central.
The Cordillera mountains are not high, only about 4,500 feet high, and are covered in lush and beautiful tropical rainforest. The western part of the island is, like Cuba, karst (ie limestone) so there are many fantastical vine and tropical forest covered haystack-like mountains, with caves and sinkholes inside, like the Cuban mogotes (see earlier posts on Cuba). The eastern part of the Cordillera is Jurassic sedimentary rock, with mountain streams filled with huge smooth grey boulders brought down from the higher reaches, some with petroglyphs on them carved by the indigeous Taino Indians in about 1200 AD.
The road network in Puerto Rico is very extensive and good and so you can reach every part of the island, even though the going is slow on the hairpin curves of the mountain roads. In fact the extensive autopista system along the coast and across the Cordillera mean that you can zip around the whole place in a couple of days if you want to.That is if you survive the maniacal drivers--dangerous driving is the national sport.
There are two main cities --although North American-style urban sprawl is very evident particularly along the whole of the north coast. San Juan is the capital and is on the eastern end of the north coast, and is the only part of Puerto Rico that most visitors ever see. This is where the main airport is, bringing in US tourists looking for sun and a swimming pool and a casino under one roof.
Ponce is the second city, on the south coast. I found it a rather sad city, fallen on seriously hard times since its heyday in the 19th century when it was a major port and the hub of the coffee and sugar industry (the US put a stop to that after the Spanish-American war, and focused all export trade on San Juan). Ponce has some nice little 19th century houses, but many are derelict or secured behind bars (Ponce has a bad drug crime problem). But after what I had seen in Cuba I am afraid I was not terribly impressed with its "historic centre".
San Juan itself is a bit of a curate's egg--some good, some bad. Old San Juan is charming and the three forts which guard it, two of which you can tour, are well preserved with good signage under the excellent care of the US National Parks system. I saw a lot of similarities with the forts in the Cuban strategic port cities of Havana and Santiago de Cuba--not surprising since both countries were Spanish colonies and Spain built the forts to protect its new-world wealth from marauding English and Dutch pirates.
US tourist money and influence means there has been a careful restoration of Old San Juan, but on the other hand the area is small (all that is left after commercial development has consumed the rest of San Juan) and rather touristy (although not at all Disney-fied) . And the suburbs, shopping malls, light industrial business, and coastal resort strips of San Juan sprawl for miles and miles.
The US has always been very good at the preservation and upkeep of their National Parks and those in PuertoRico are no exception. About half an hour's drive to the east of San Juan is the El Yunque National Forest, a mountainous tract of virgin tropical rainforest---apparently the slopes were too steep for the Spanish to clear-cut the trees for timber and farming. It has some lovely, well marked hiking trails.
For my money El Yunque , and the Cordillera Central, are the best parts of a visit to Puerto Rico and this is where I took most of my pictures. Here is where Puerto Rico benefits particularly from being part of the US. Cuba has beautiful sierras as well, but you can't access them easily unless you have a heavy duty four wheel drive vehicle or are prepared to undertake a major hiking expedition. In Puerto Rico the average sedentary tourist like me in a small car can get into these areas and see the beauty of them.
The Cordillera Central is beautiful and very much off the tourist trail---I was only able to positively identify one other tourist car in the day and night I spent in the upper reaches of the Cordillera. There are lots of rushing mountain streams and waterfalls, forest-covered mountains and vistas --at one point you can see both the Atlantic Ocean in the north and the Caribbean Sea to the south. The highest mountains have their heads in the clouds and frequent rain results in beautiful flowers and lush tropical greenery. The population is fairly sparse but what there is hugs the roads closely. Homes are relatively simple concrete block single story bungalows, but certainly more luxurious than those in Cuba.
There are very few vestiges of the coffee plantations which used to thrive on these mountains, although I did stay the night in one, Hacienda Gripinas, dating from 1858, which has been turned into a simple, rustic hotel. (Did you know that good coffee does not grow below 1800 feet?) As mentioned earlier, the roads are well-surfaced but only a lane and a three quarters wide and there are almost no straight stretches--a left hand curve leads into a right hand curve leads into a left hand curve and on and on. So although the distances are not great it is very slow going, particularly if you are unlucky enough to get behind a truck.
The people? Two things really struck me, after Cuba. First the people are not nearly so healthy looking--lots of obesity and even those who are not fat do not look fit. Second the contrast between rich and poor is very stark. As I have mentioned in my Cuba posts, everyone seems to live more or less on the same (low!) economic level in Cuba. Not so in Puerto Rico. Different levels of prosperity are very obvious even around the ritzy resort hotels in Condado. There are lots of derelict properties, dishevelled beggars and poor people just getting by. However step a few feet further into one of the hotels or the (shudder!!) "gated communities" and success and gloss is all around you. I guess that is the American way--everyone is equal and notionally you are free to rise as high or sink as low as you can with little or no ceiling or safety net. It seems wrong to those of use from countries with an entrenched social welfare system, but hey! it has served the US well over the past 150 years.
By the way, I am now in Buenos Aires, which is a whole new experience! I'll do a blog post with my initial impressions, in a couple of days . In the meantime here are some photos of Puerto Rico.
[Digression: In fact the LaConcha has some interesting history . It was actually built in 1958--yes over fifty years ago--at which time it was in the forefront of an architectural movement called Tropical Modernism. So it predates the brutalist concrete monstrosities of the 1970s and the soulless glass and and steel and the faux classical styles of the later decades. However it went out of fashion in the 1980s when Puerto Rico suffered severe economic recession. It was closed and derelict for 20 years and frequently slated for demolition. However with unusual intelligence and sensitivity for a big company, Marriott/Renaissance bought it and completely restored it, including its extraordinarily beautiful beachfront restaurant called La Perla, built as a giant clam shell. If anyone is interested in architecture the story it is well set out in the attached article from Architectural Digest. http://www.architecturaldigest.com/homes/hotels/2009/08/la_concha_article]
After Cuba, Puerto Rico is small. Very small. It is an almost perfect oblong shape and is only 111 miles east to west and 36 miles north to south. It is only 750 miles from Cuba but a world away. It enjoys all the disadvantages and all the benefits of being a US colony. (Oops! that should read "commonwealth". I forgot that Americans don't do colonialism.) Off the north coast is the Puerto Rican Trench which at 28,000 feet is the deepest place in the Atlantic Ocean.
The coastal regions are flat and form a wide border to the central mountains, the Cordillera Central.
The Cordillera mountains are not high, only about 4,500 feet high, and are covered in lush and beautiful tropical rainforest. The western part of the island is, like Cuba, karst (ie limestone) so there are many fantastical vine and tropical forest covered haystack-like mountains, with caves and sinkholes inside, like the Cuban mogotes (see earlier posts on Cuba). The eastern part of the Cordillera is Jurassic sedimentary rock, with mountain streams filled with huge smooth grey boulders brought down from the higher reaches, some with petroglyphs on them carved by the indigeous Taino Indians in about 1200 AD.
The road network in Puerto Rico is very extensive and good and so you can reach every part of the island, even though the going is slow on the hairpin curves of the mountain roads. In fact the extensive autopista system along the coast and across the Cordillera mean that you can zip around the whole place in a couple of days if you want to.That is if you survive the maniacal drivers--dangerous driving is the national sport.
There are two main cities --although North American-style urban sprawl is very evident particularly along the whole of the north coast. San Juan is the capital and is on the eastern end of the north coast, and is the only part of Puerto Rico that most visitors ever see. This is where the main airport is, bringing in US tourists looking for sun and a swimming pool and a casino under one roof.
Ponce is the second city, on the south coast. I found it a rather sad city, fallen on seriously hard times since its heyday in the 19th century when it was a major port and the hub of the coffee and sugar industry (the US put a stop to that after the Spanish-American war, and focused all export trade on San Juan). Ponce has some nice little 19th century houses, but many are derelict or secured behind bars (Ponce has a bad drug crime problem). But after what I had seen in Cuba I am afraid I was not terribly impressed with its "historic centre".
San Juan itself is a bit of a curate's egg--some good, some bad. Old San Juan is charming and the three forts which guard it, two of which you can tour, are well preserved with good signage under the excellent care of the US National Parks system. I saw a lot of similarities with the forts in the Cuban strategic port cities of Havana and Santiago de Cuba--not surprising since both countries were Spanish colonies and Spain built the forts to protect its new-world wealth from marauding English and Dutch pirates.
US tourist money and influence means there has been a careful restoration of Old San Juan, but on the other hand the area is small (all that is left after commercial development has consumed the rest of San Juan) and rather touristy (although not at all Disney-fied) . And the suburbs, shopping malls, light industrial business, and coastal resort strips of San Juan sprawl for miles and miles.
The US has always been very good at the preservation and upkeep of their National Parks and those in PuertoRico are no exception. About half an hour's drive to the east of San Juan is the El Yunque National Forest, a mountainous tract of virgin tropical rainforest---apparently the slopes were too steep for the Spanish to clear-cut the trees for timber and farming. It has some lovely, well marked hiking trails.
For my money El Yunque , and the Cordillera Central, are the best parts of a visit to Puerto Rico and this is where I took most of my pictures. Here is where Puerto Rico benefits particularly from being part of the US. Cuba has beautiful sierras as well, but you can't access them easily unless you have a heavy duty four wheel drive vehicle or are prepared to undertake a major hiking expedition. In Puerto Rico the average sedentary tourist like me in a small car can get into these areas and see the beauty of them.
The Cordillera Central is beautiful and very much off the tourist trail---I was only able to positively identify one other tourist car in the day and night I spent in the upper reaches of the Cordillera. There are lots of rushing mountain streams and waterfalls, forest-covered mountains and vistas --at one point you can see both the Atlantic Ocean in the north and the Caribbean Sea to the south. The highest mountains have their heads in the clouds and frequent rain results in beautiful flowers and lush tropical greenery. The population is fairly sparse but what there is hugs the roads closely. Homes are relatively simple concrete block single story bungalows, but certainly more luxurious than those in Cuba.
There are very few vestiges of the coffee plantations which used to thrive on these mountains, although I did stay the night in one, Hacienda Gripinas, dating from 1858, which has been turned into a simple, rustic hotel. (Did you know that good coffee does not grow below 1800 feet?) As mentioned earlier, the roads are well-surfaced but only a lane and a three quarters wide and there are almost no straight stretches--a left hand curve leads into a right hand curve leads into a left hand curve and on and on. So although the distances are not great it is very slow going, particularly if you are unlucky enough to get behind a truck.
The people? Two things really struck me, after Cuba. First the people are not nearly so healthy looking--lots of obesity and even those who are not fat do not look fit. Second the contrast between rich and poor is very stark. As I have mentioned in my Cuba posts, everyone seems to live more or less on the same (low!) economic level in Cuba. Not so in Puerto Rico. Different levels of prosperity are very obvious even around the ritzy resort hotels in Condado. There are lots of derelict properties, dishevelled beggars and poor people just getting by. However step a few feet further into one of the hotels or the (shudder!!) "gated communities" and success and gloss is all around you. I guess that is the American way--everyone is equal and notionally you are free to rise as high or sink as low as you can with little or no ceiling or safety net. It seems wrong to those of use from countries with an entrenched social welfare system, but hey! it has served the US well over the past 150 years.
By the way, I am now in Buenos Aires, which is a whole new experience! I'll do a blog post with my initial impressions, in a couple of days . In the meantime here are some photos of Puerto Rico.
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| Ken and Estelle at the approach to the El Morro fort, Old San Juan |
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| View from the ramparts of the El Morro fort, down the coast eastwards |
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| cobbled street in Old San Juan |
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| The La Perla restaurant at the La Concha resort (see blog) |
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| I caught one of these as well but haven't got a picture--it is called a Rainbow Runner |
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| Lunch at a simple seafood restaurant on a cliff overlooking the Atlantic |
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| A waterfall in El Yunque Forest |
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| Cloud-capped peaks in El Yunque |
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| Dense green tropical rainforest vegetation in El Yunque |
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| The tropical rainforest canopy--photo taken from the top of a fire tower |
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| Lush green moss on a tree trunk |
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| Aerial roots in the tropical rainforest |
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| another waterfall in El Yunque Forest |
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| A 19th century house in Ponce which has been restored--note the security grilles |
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| A restored Ponce house (left) and an unrestored one (right). Unfortunately there are more of the latter, or worse still debris-ridden vacant lots where they have fallen down or been demolished. |
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| A nice restoration job---a law office!! |
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| Vista over the Cordillera Central |
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| Boulder-strewn mountain stream in the Cordillera Central |
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| View to the highest peaks in the Cordillera Central |
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| Hacienda Gripinas, a 1850s coffee plantation, now a hotel, in the Cordillera Central near Jayuya |
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| View from the wide front porch of the Hacienda Gripinas |
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| Waterfall and pool in the Cordillera Central |
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| Boulder in a mountain stream, carved with Taino Indian petroglyphs |
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| View south to the Caribbean Sea from the panoramic road across the Cordillera |
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| Taken from the same spot,looking north to the Atlantic Ocean |
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| Another fine vista |
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| exiting one of the limestone caves in western Puerto Rico |
