Well, usually my trip logs start in New Jersey, but this one really starts in Orlando. We are finishing up the World Science Fiction Convention (report available on request) and going on to Puerto Rico in a sort of 'Roots' tour for me. My father was born in Ciales, Puerto Rico, but also lived in the Dominican Republic, and I have aunts and uncles in both places I've never met.
Our flight to Orlando was not without incident, however. We were scheduled to leave Newark at 7:41 AM and arrive in Raleigh, North Carolina, at 9:15 AM for our 10:10 AM connection. At 7:41 AM, however, we were sitting on the ground waiting for a line of thunderstorms to pass. In fact, we didn't take off until almost 9 AM. We were sure we would miss our connection and have to wait for the 2:10 PM one (and hope it wasn't full), but we managed to make up some time in the air and land in Raleigh by 10 AM. American Airlines held almost all the connecting flights, so by running from our plane to the connecting one two gates over, we made it. (And I can now say I've been North Carolina if you count a two-and-ahalf -minute sprint through the terminal.)
The flight from Orlando was less eventful. Dinner was cheese ravioli--not a typically Puerto Rican dish. (Mark had chicken, which did come with salsa.) According to the tour books, Puerto Rico is on Atlantic Time (one hour ahead of Eastern) and uses Daylight Savings Time, but we didn't have to change our watches and according to this we should have, so something's not right.
After landing in San Juan we picked up our Hertz car. (No customs to clear, no immigration, no changing money--yay!) We loaded our stuff in and started off, but the brake light wouldn't go out. The attendant decided the brake fluid was probably low, but they had no brake fluid. So we went inside to change cars.
This accomplished, we drove off and got lost. The map the guest house sent us implied they were on the main street between the airport and Old San Juan. They weren't, and there are several main streets. Streets are also not laid out in a rectilinear pattern, and there are a lot of one-way streets. Eventually, Mark figured out the Hertz map was the most complete and we found the street Tres Palmas was on (from its address)--a side street about two blocks long off another side street. Even so, finding it was difficult because many of the streets had no street signs.
So after an hour we found the guest house, which in its brochures claims to be ten minutes from the airport. Who knows? Maybe if you don't get lost, it is.
After the Peabody Hilton in Orlando, the rooms at Tres Palmas were a bit of a shock. They're less than half the size. Of course, they're also half the price and certainly sufficient for us. There's a television, a refrigerator, a small bathroom, lots of hangers (though they're wire rather than wooden), and a clock-radio. One wall is completely covered by a mirror. No, not for that reason, but to make the room seem larger. (At least I think so.)
It's hard to say much about San Juan so far, but in one respect it's just New York--guys come up to the cars at stop lights wanting to wash their windshields for tips.
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After breakfast, we drove into Old San Juan. Driving through San Juan, I can see why people come to the mainland--it all looks pretty run-down, except for the tourist areas, which are full of expensive hotels and mainland-based chain restaurants (Burger King, Pizza Hut, etc.). I'll have to see what the rest of the island looks like, of course, or it would be like judging all of New Jersey by a small section of Newark.
We started with the fort of San Cristobal, in part because it had a parking lot. It's not as famous as El Morro (which means 'The Headland' and should not be confused with 'El Moro': 'The Moor'), but it is much larger and in fact is the largest fort of its type in the Americas. It was used up through World War II, but is now a National Historic Site. There was a short guided tour covering the general history and the tunnel system under the fort. We also walked around on the battlements for a while, where we had some lovely views of the city.
Our plan was then to park the car and walk around Old San Juan (the historic section). One small problem--we couldn't find any place to park. There are apparently a couple of parking garages, but we never saw them. This is partly because of a second problem: one-way streets. San Juan is full of one-way streets. And it's not like most cities where the directions alternate. It's more like each street voted independently on what direction to go. After driving through all these very narrow streets (oh, yes, problem number three was that the roads near El Morro were all closed for repairs) for about a half hour, we revised our plan and decided to head for El Yunque (the rain forest) today and return to Old San Juan via public transportation. We figured the rain forest would have more parking.
But first we decided to eat lunch, get some juice at a supermarket, and go back to the guest house to change, as I was not suitably attired for hiking in a rain forest. We had hoped to find someplace serving Puerto Rican food, but saw only fast-food chains and Chinese restaurants. Not wanting to spend the day looking for lunch, we settled for a Church's Fried Chicken which was in the same shopping center as a small grocery. Not very exotic, but what the heck. In the grocery we stocked up on exotic juices: mango, papaya, guanabana, tamarind, guava, etc., as well as a couple of mangos and some cookies. (Oh, and a half-gallon of orange juice for Mark, who was feeling a cold coming on.)
Back in the room I changed from my dress into shorts and a Tshirt and hiking shoes and we headed for El Yunque. Luckily the roads to there are fairly well marked (certainly in comparison to everywhere else) and we didn't get lost. But traffic was very heavy and there were a lot of traffic lights, even in the less built-up areas. It took us an hour and a half to get to El Yunque. (El Yunque is actually the mountain, but it's what everyone calls the Caribbean National Rain Forest as well.)
Even without hiking you can see a fair amount. All along the road you have the variety of plants, both flowers and trees. You drive right by a small waterfall and further along is a tower from which one can get a panoramic view. It was overcast the whole time we were there, which made the view a little less spectacular, but the temperature a little more bearable. (It rained quite a bit on the drive there, but not during our actual visit.)
A newspaper article described the trail to La Mina Falls as being accessible to anyone who could negotiate around a mall. This is true only if the mall is built on a steep hill and climatecontrolled to 85 degrees Fahrenheit and humid. The hike is also listed as 0.7 miles, but it seemed longer. To the falls was downhill on a well-maintained (in fact, paved) path with a profusion of flora, but limited fauna. We saw many lizards, and heard birds and even the coqui (tree frog), but never actually saw the frogs. This waterfall was more impressive than the one by the road, though not on an absolute scale, and we rested there a while before commencing the hike back (uphill). I am definitely getting out of shape--coming back was a real effort. It did take less time than going there, though, maybe because we were worried about how long it would take and didn't dawdle.
Back at the car we drank some juice we had and some water from the water fountain, and then returned to the guest house. This took considerably longer since I made a wrong turn (a car was blocking my approach to the correct exit ramp) and we ended up going way west of where we wanted to be. One problem in finding your way from the map is that whatever road you want is one-way in the wrong direction, and there is no such thing as 'drive around the block.' Nothing is rectilinear here, so going around the block invariably takes you off in some unpredictable direction.
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I realize this log isn't up to the excitement of some of our previous ones (at least not yet), but that's partly due to the nature of the trip. As I said earlier, this trip was mostly to see where my father came from. Sightseeing, etc., was added on, but there just isn't that much major sight-seeing to do in Puerto Rico. (Of course, Mark has already filled half a log book with the first half day--about three times as much as I've written.)
After breakfast we drove to Ponce, after only one wrong turn. This was an example of how signs are mostly for the Puerto Ricans themselves rather than for the tourists: the turnoff for the autopista for Ponce is labeled 'Caguas,' which is the first big city, rather than 'Ponce,' the major tourist destination. Both names on the sign would have been nice.
The autopista is a super-highway across the mountains from San Juan in the north to Ponce in the south. This doesn't sound so important until you see what the alternative is, which we did on the way back. This road did give us a chance to see something more of Puerto Rico--first, some nicer suburbs of San Juan (you could tell they were nicer because there were satellite dishes on the roofs of the houses) and, later, the mountainous interior of the island. The rock formations visible where the road cut through reminded me of New England--in particular, the Massachusetts Turnpike.
Halfway through we stopped at the Monument to the Puerto Rican Peasant (Jibaro). This had a vaguely socialist feel, no doubt because of all the monuments to peasants and workers one finds in China, Eastern Europe, and the CIS. (Statues of Lenin et al have been torn down, but those of ordinary people tend to remain.) This also gave us a chance to take some pictures of the scenery, hard to do from a moving car (especially for the driver!)
We arrived in Ponce about 11:15 AM, having left San Juan about 9:30 AM. (I should note that the autopista is a toll road, with tools at the same level as the mainland.) Ponce has several things in common with San Juan: unpredictable one-way streets, streets closed by construction, difficulty in finding parking, .... Puerto Rico apparently has a very high ratio of cars to people, but seems to have a low ratio of parking spaces to cars. The result is massive traffic snarls as 10% of the cars are looking for spaces at any one time. :-)
But since Ponce is smaller than San Juan, we actually did find a space about five blocks from the main plaza. In Mexico, this plaza would be called the zocalo, but that word is not used in Puerto Rico. People think of Spanish as being a single language, but there are as many variations as there are countries that speak it. (For that matter, British English and American English have their differences as well.)
We walked around the plaza, which includes a Victorian firehouse painted in horizontal red and black stripes. (Why is a building from a Spanish colony/American territory described in British terms?) This is supposedly the most photographed building in Puerto Rico (how do they know?), so we photographed it as well. |
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