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| Our snowy front yard on the day we left for Puerto Rico |
The Pokies (that’s the Pocono Mountains for all you
non-locals) bid us a snowy farewell when we left home. Luckily, once we made it
down “Supsic Mountain” there was very little snow. This is awfully early for snow
– even for us!
We will be spending the next week in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the
oldest walled city in the Americas. Kind of funny that we just got back from
another walled city in Quebec a month ago. It is quite a bit warmer here
although the rain seems to have followed us. No problem – it’s so warm, a
little rain feels good.
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| Decanter Hotel logo |
We are staying at The Decanter Hotel right in the center of
Old Town. The “Decanter” Hotel uses a colorful wine decanter as its logo, and
since Frank makes wine in his spare time, we felt right at home – like staying for
a week in a winery! We have one of our
largest hotel rooms ever with two balconies, a large sitting area, and a
kitchenette. Definitely a comfortable stay!
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| Colorful buildings in Old San Juan |
Our first impression of San Juan is how colorful it is. The
houses are a palette of pastels: pink, blue, yellow, mint green, and purple. Plus
plenty of flowering plants and constant views of the surrounding ocean. Just
walking around this town makes you feel “goody goody.”
We found out later that these pastel colors used to paint the
houses are regulated by city ordinance.
There are only a handful of pastel colors that you can use to paint your
house, and there are no deviations. And
no two adjoining houses can be painted the same color. So if your neighbor’s
house is painted the legal blue pastel, you MUST paint your house a different
color, something other than blue.
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| Looking like Puerto Rican country folk |
The Puerto Rican people are definitely friendly and lots of
fun: our taxi cab driver who wants to see snow and learn to ski, our waitress
Lacy who put goofy straw hats on our heads and took a picture of us looking
like Puerto Rican country folk, and the wonderful young attendants here at our
hotel who go out of their way to make sure we are well-cared for.
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| Old city walls along the ocean promenade |
We spent our first day wandering the streets of Viejo San
Juan (Old San Juan) getting our bearings in this new “old” city. Lots of
restaurants and shops for us to explore later. We ended up on a promenade by
the ocean where we had excellent views of the old city walls. The oldest parts
of the walls date back to the 1500’s, and the rounded guard turrets located at
intervals along the walls are a shutterbug’s delight. These atmospheric turrets
have become a symbol of San Juan.
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| Tangled root system of giant banyan tree |
We were also impressed with a giant banyan trees
that had so many hanging roots it looked like some ragged sea monster had
climbed out of the ocean.
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| On the town with our foodie group |
Flavors of San Juan Food
Walk
As you know, we love
these foodie walking tours that allow us to take in the local cuisine, and this
event was another winner. Our guide Keila guided us through the old streets to
a wide variety of culinary delights. She also stopped intermittently in various
alcoves and parks along the way, giving us little historical tid-bits about her
country.
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| Working with the crew in the "Rum Library" |
We got a tutorial on rum in a gazebo-like structure that
stood in the middle of a popular restaurant.
The inside of the gazebo was lined with shelves containing hundreds of
bottles of rum. The bartender referred to his world inside the gazebo bar as
his “rum library.” He even had a tall, mobile, rolling-ladder (just like in an
old library) within the gazebo that he used to reach his backup liquor supplies
located on the out-of-reach upper shelves. He taught us that Puerto Rico is the
biggest producer of rum in the world, and that the brand “Don Q” is a very good
rum (and also very expensive). He told
us that the best prices for a bottle of this high-quality stuff were in the duty-free
shops at the airport.
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| Mashin' the mofongo with wooden mortar and pestle |
One of our favorite stops was a traditional café where we
got to make our own mofongo, a famous Puerto Rican dish that came from Africa
originally and was modified slightly for Spanish tastes. Puerto Rican people are a mixture of indigenous
Indian, African, and Spanish. We were issued a deep wooden mortar and pestle to
mash the sliced toasted plantains that are the main ingredient of mofongo.
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| Makin' mofongo (check out the serious masher behind Anne) |
The
flavors are enhanced with a mixture of butter and garlic. We created a little dugout
within the mashed plantains inside our mortars and filled it with spicy Creole
chicken stew. What a great meal, and a fun experience learning the ingredients
and preparation technique for mofongo!
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| Arecibo log |
Day Trip to Arecibo
Frank was especially captivated by our visit to Arecibo, located
about 50 miles west of Old San Juan along the northern shore. About 10 miles south of the town of Arecibo,
thru narrow backwoods roads and verdant jungle was a hidden engineering marvel
known as the Arecibo Radar-Radio Telescope.
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| Arecibo Telescope with inground dish and antenna overhead |
Built in 1963, the Arecibo Observatory is one of the world’s most
powerful instruments, with an inground parabolic reflector that spans 1000 feet
in diameter and moveable antennae structures that hang 500 feet above the
reflector; these antennae capture radio waves from outer space, and allow scientists
to track celestial objects in the sky.
Since the antennae are totally moveable by way of a series of heavy-duty
guy wires, the fixed dish can concentrate the signals from any quadrant in the
sky to the appropriate antenna needed for reception.
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| What a remarkable feat of engineering! |
This is one impressive sight tucked away in the forests of
Puerto Rico. With sky-high pylons to secure the cables and the massive antenna
suspended over the reflector dish, it looks like something from a Sci-Fi movie.
And speaking of movies, this site was used in the making of “Golden Eye” (1995)
and “Contact” (1997).
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| Hiking on the picturesque coral cliffs |
Our tour guide for this day (Carlos) made several stops
along the rural roads to and from Arecibo.
Near the town of Barceloneta, we hiked into the jungle and took a wet,
rainy walk to the seaside, where we watched the crashing waves below us as we
stood safely on cliffs formed from defunct coral. Sinkholes were everywhere,
and one false move would send you plummeting 30 feet down (or more) onto some deadly,
razor sharp, rock-lined coral chambers. No room for error here.
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| Crashing waves against coral cliffs |
We watched a
group of daredevil kids exploring the same cliff area, climbing down onto some
dangerous ledges just to impress their friends. Carlos told us the local kids
actually jump off the coral into the churning ocean below. The stupidity of
youth, we thought. Although we were well-aware, as we hiked along and silently
recalled our own youth, that we too pulled some careless, dumb-assed stunts at
that age too!
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| Enjoying delicious pastalillos at a roadside stand |
Carlos treated us to Camarones Pastalillos at a roadside
stand. The tasty fried treat was made from half-moon shaped piece of dough stuffed
with shrimp. Yummy! He said that these sandwiches are called
“pastalillos” on the north side of the island of Puerto Rico and “empanillas”
on the south side.
Puerto Rico is an earthquake island. Earthquakes happen every day, all day long. They are of a magnitude mostly of 2.0 or lower so you don't notice them. But there are Richter Scales all over Puerto Rico, and they record these small quakes and quakes of much larger magnitudes. Quakes are always present!
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| Twin smokestacks identify former sugar processing plant |
One last interesting thing.
Carlos told us that all the sugar cane factories have been gone since
1986. The minimum wage destroyed the
sugar industry by making it too expensive to process sugar on the island. It became cheaper to buy it from other nearby
islands. Consequently, the remnants of
those defunct sugar processing plants are still seen all over Puerto Rico.
Carlos pointed out two smokestacks in the distance, side by side, that were
part of a former sugar processing operation.
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| Guavate lechon! |
Thanksgiving Puerto
Rico Style on the Guavate Pork Highway
Thanksgiving day is celebrated in a similarly conventional fashion
here in Puerto Rico with people eating turkey, visiting grandma, and relaxing
with family. But unconventional
travelers that we are, we did an unconventional Thanksgiving this year. We
booked a tour out to the Guavate, a remote section of the countryside, to visit
and eat at a “lechonera.” Are you scratching your head yet? Good!
“Lechon” is the word for roasted pork in Spanish, but more accurately,
it is a ‘suckling pig that is roasted.’ Young
tender pigs!
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| Cook prepares pork with his handy machete |
Anyway, there is a main road thru Guavate that is lined with over
a dozen lechoneras (open-air restaurants for roasting pork). And it’s not just
about pork. You also have a choice of side dishes: sweet plantains, rice with
pigeon peas, breadfruit, yucca cooked with garlic and onions, blood sausage,
cassava, and of course beer, both local and international. Plus a fiesta atmosphere with live salsa
music, dancing, souvenir sellers, and if you search hard enough, and really want
to eat turkey instead of the delicious “lechon” specialty, you can even do
that! This is a daytime activity, and people come and leave before sundown.
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| Pig cooking in the roasting pit |
Our tour guide and driver Debbie Ramos drove our tour group
of 7 an hour out of San Juan to arrive just in time for lunch at a popular lechonera
called “El Ranchero Original,” a larger- than- most restaurant with the
ubiquitous browned pig on a 3-inch diameter metal spit behind a glass window
for all to see and drool! The food and
roasting smells were making everyone anxious to chow down!
The cafeteria-style food area was very crowded and busy,
making it complicated to order our meals, but Debbie made sure everyone got
what they wanted. Then we all sauntered to the garden behind the restaurant,
and found an open-air but covered pavilion next to a narrow picturesque creek with
enough seating for our small group. Good
thing the pavilion had a roof, as it rained a bit on-and-off.
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| Pigs on spits in the frozen pig locker ready to be cooked |
Nobody was disappointed with the food. The roast pork was
juicy and perfectly seasoned. In fact, each lechonera has their own closely
guarded secret seasoning recipes. After dinner, we got a “backstage” tour to
see the frozen pigs in the big freezer locker, the golden-brown pigs cooking on
spits in the cement roasting pits, and the final product being chopped (with
alarming speed!) by a guy wielding a nasty-looking machete! We even had time to
walk along the street, drop by a few different lechoneras, and show off our
best salsa moves on the dancefloor. It was a wonderful way to celebrate the
holiday.
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| Happy Thanksgiving from El Ranchero in Guavate! |
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| At Fort San Cristobal in Old San Juan |
Viejo San Juan and
San Cristobal Fort
Old Town Juan is very walkable with loads of shops, art
galleries, and atmospheric restaurants all situated in the colorful old
buildings. A great place to wander! We got our history fix at the San Cristobal
Fort, a 16th c. Spanish fort that guards one end of the city. Quite
an impressive fortification and a reminder that Spain occupied Puerto Rico for
400 years. In fact, Spain dominated this whole part of the world occupying most
of the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. However, by the end of
the 1700’s, only Cuba and Puerto Rico remained under Spanish control. Finally, Spain lost Puerto Rico to the United
States during the Spanish American War of 1897.
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| Tropical flower just loving the rain! |
It rained a lot while we were here in Puerto Rico; in fact,
every day! Not continuously, but just
enough that it constituted a surprise when it occurred, and a bit of an
annoyance. We’d be walking along the streets of San Juan, and the sun would be
shining. We would wrongly assume that the rain was done, and the sun was here
to stay.
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| Distinctive blue brick street construction in San Juan |
For half an hour or so, we would be lulled into false complacency,
presupposing from the strong rays of the sun and the brilliant blue sky that
the rain was done. And then, like clockwork, the drizzling would start again. Never
heavy rain tho, just enough that you needed some form of protection, like a
small umbrella or a large hat. We used both and just kept moving. This pattern persisted throughout the day,
every day that we were here. I guess
this is life in the tropics!
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| Pelican roosts atop turret in city wall |
Puerto Rico Politics
Ask a local what the most popular sport is in Puerto Rico,
and they will probably say politics. Puerto Rico’s weird status with the United
States leads to endless discussions. Puerto Rico is a commonwealth of the U.S.,
an Estado Libre Asociado (ELA) or free associated state. No one really seems know
what that means. One person told us they came up with the name to avoid calling
Puerto Rico a colony of the U.S. The people here are U.S. citizens from birth
and are eligible for U.S. passports. They also serve in the U.S. military. They
use the U.S. dollar, but they do not pay federal income taxes, although they do
pay social security and FICA. And they have a whopping 11% tax on EVERYTHING,
including food. In public schools, Spanish is the primary language and English
is secondary. In private schools, it is just the opposite with English as
primary. English is also the language used exclusively in universities (giving
private school kids an obvious advantage!).
That is, unless you are majoring in the Spanish Language!
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| Tropical paradise on northern shore of the island |
Puerto Rico has three main political parties. One that wants
to remain a commonwealth, one that wants to become a U.S. state, and one that
wants independence. Puerto Rico sends a representative to the U.S. House of
Representative, but they have no vote. Strangely, Puerto Ricans can vote in the
presidential primaries but not in the general election (does that make any
sense?).
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| Wave eruption at Bishop's Pond |
The economy of Puerto Rico has been in free fall since the
global economic downturn. One drawback of being associated with the U.S. is
that they must pay minimum wage which makes everything here very expensive,
especially compared with other low wage Caribbean islands such as the Dominican
Republic. Sadly, many people here are becoming desperate as jobs and tourism
continue to disappear. On top of the economic woes, the Zika Virus has hurt
them badly too (even though Zika has been here for over 20 years).
