Puerto Rico
“Puerto Rico” literally means “Rich Port” in Spanish. When the Spanish first landed here in the fifteenth century, they quickly realized the island’s importance as a “gateway” to the Carribean. Puerto Rico has since got rid of it’s Spanish imperial past, but the unique culture still remains.
Arriving on the Island
Before visiting Puerto Rico, I was not sure if it is part of the United States of America, or an independent country. A Google search reveals that it is a “ unincorporated” territory of the United States, whatever that means. For practical purposes, for travelers and tourists, it seemed safe to assume that Puerto Rico is part of the United States. When we landed at San Juan airport after a long hopping flight from San Francisco, via Dallas, no one asked for our passports. My Sprint mobile phone and BofA credit card worked with no problems. But once we stepped out of the airport, it was clear that Puerto Rico was very different from the mainland USA. As we drove in our rental and headed towards our hotel in Rio Grande (about 25 miles away), I found that people drove about 5 mph under the speed limit. This made me wonder if the 65 speed limit posted was in mph or kmph! The rental car itself was devoid of all those bells and whistles that a Hertz rental comes with these days — no auto headlamps (yes, we had to manually turn them on), no reverse camera etc. We soon learnt that the island’s drivers were slow and cautious for a reason — roads here do have the unexpected dip, bump and pothole. Nothing to cause alarm, but at some places, the roads do call for driving a bit under the posted speed.
As we entered our hotel area, we saw another major difference vis-a-vis the mainland. The hotel was in an enclave with a gate and manned security guard. This is quite normal in many countries, and every large hotel in India has such security checks before you can enter. However, this was the first time we saw this in a US territory.
Bio Luminescence in Fajardo
First on our agenda in Puerto Rico was to experience the Bio-Luminescene phenomenon that the island is famous for. Puerto Rico has three bio-luminescent bays, where tiny plankton light up the water at night. This phenomenon is visible best on new moon nights when it is completely dark. We had planned to spend the morning in the hotel’s beach, and in the evening, head out to Fajardo, which is a town about 30 minutes away, and the site of one of these bio-luminescent bays.
We had booked a kayak trip to trip with Glass Bottom PR tours, for the Fajardo bio-luminescent bay — Laguna Granda.
We were to start off at the pier, and then kayak around 1.5 miles through a meandering river to reach the bay. The tour was scheduled to start at 6PM, and lasted for three hours.
Our guides quickly explained to us that the phenomenon would be only visible after sunset. After getting everyone into the kayaks, we headed out. We crossed the pier, and soon started paddling through the mangrove forest, leading to the bay.
This was the second time we had kayaked, so we were pretty much beginners. However, the route was not too difficult. After about an hour of rowing down the river, we reached the bay, just in time to witness a awesome sunset!
Here, the guides explained to us that the bio luminescence is a defense mechanism for the plankton, and they light up when they feel threatened. Of course, in order to see this, the surroundings have to be dark. Since we had to wait for the sun to set before the plankton would show their lights, we spent some time idling around in the bay in our kayaks.
The bio-luminescence phenomenon did get visible once it got dark. Unfortunately, there are no pictures, since our mobile phone cameras are no good in pitch darkness. But we could see the plankton lit up like little fireflies under the water. The best way was to agitate the water with one’s hand, and the plankton would light up in response. Our guides reassured us that there were no sharks, crocs or piranhas to bite off our hands! It looked like clusters of tiny sparkles under the water.
Next up, our guides asked us to line up our kayaks side-by-side and handed out a large tarp to cover all of us. The tarp blocked out additional ambient moonlight and made it easier to see this phenomenon. Everyone having satisfied themselves that bio-luminescence does occur, we haded back through the mangroves. It was quite dark, but each kayak had a light, which helped guide us. A few people did run into the mangroves, but no serious incidents. It was around 9PM now, and we had not yet had dinner. We walked into a nice looking local restaurant called Kasavista. We had really good local food like shrimp mofongo and mamposteao rice here.
San Juan Old Town
The next morning was spent exploring San Juan old town, and the 16th century Spanish battery/fort called San Felipe Del Morro. This fort is sometimes just called “El Morro”, and is named after the rock on which it is buit. The battery looks small, but it extends across six levels, and even features a lighthouse on the highest level.
The reason why the Spanish built this fort here is because Puerto Rico happened to be the first land that ships sailing across the Atlantic from Spain would encounter. The country that controlled San Juan’s harbor, controlled access to the Caribbean. This fort, and another fort (El Cañuelo), built on an islet across the water, controlled access to the harbor by a deadly cross-fire of cannons.
The construction of this fortress was started in 1539, but it has been rebuilt and fortified well into the eighteenth century. The British tried to attack the fortress two times, and failed. After the Spanish-American war of 1898, Puerto Rico became an American territory, and the fort was used by US Army in World War II. Each level has different cannon batteries, armories, gun-powder rooms, barracks and kitchen.
After exploring the different levels of El Morro, we headed back towards the old town. The square across El Morro is known as Ballaja, and has several old buildings, the Puerto Rico ministry of culture being one of them. Walking towards to old town from here, we started our exploration.
San Juan old town has many little bars and cafes, some set in historic buildings. We stepped into one for fresh coconut water, and into another for some of the best mojitos that we had in a long time.
We finally headed back to the El Morro parking lot where our rental was parked. We headed back to our hotel and spent the rest of the day watching the sunset over the beach. The next day we did head back to San Juan once again, to explore the markets and harbor. The harbor area is the central shopping district, and has several stores, as well as the usual bars and cafes.
This ended our stay in the island, and we headed back towards San Francisco the next day. Puerto Rico was a great place for a vacation if you are already in the US. The place has good beaches, great food, and history. The weather (at least during our visit in May) was just perfect. Not too hot, not too humid, but nice and balmy.
