San Juan
We spent about 9 days in Puerto Rico, staying in an AirBnB in the heart of Viejo San Juan (old San Juan). Old San Juan is a tourist magnate, but with good reason. This is a fortified city with quaint streets and impressive fortresses and interesting history.
Old San Juan sits on the tip of the island of San Juan, guarding the entrance to the Bay of San Juan, the most important port on the Island of Puerto Rico (literally “Rich Port”), making Puerto Rico the gateway to the New World. Spanish ships resupplied here before continuing on to Central and South America for conquest and gathering of riches (i.e. looting). This made Spain rich, and tempted other colonial powers take Puerto Rico for themselves. Hence the need for fortifications to fend off attacks from the Dutch and others. Puerto Rico eventually became a US territory at the conclusion of the Spanish-American war.
We started (as usual) with a walking tour to learn the history of the area. That was followed by a lot of our own walking and touring. We got to know Old San Juan pretty well by the end of our stay. The streets are colorful and photogenic. The fortresses (Castillo San Felipe del Morro, and Castillo San Cristóbal are formidable structures reflecting the hundreds of years of improvements and expansion. I took way too many photos of the iconic and photogenic sentry boxes positioned along the walls and bastions.
We also found a nice walking path along the foot of the city wall adjacent to the bay called Paseo de Morro. This broad walkway gave us a water-level view of the ocean, the bay, imposing view of the fortress walls, and access to the Red Gate the main entrance to San Juan from the bay. Lots of cats live among the breakwater rocks along the bay.
La Perla
We also walked through the oceanside neighborhood of La Perla. It is located outside and below the walls and bastions of the forts, along the ocean side. There is a cemetery at one end of the city closest to San Felipe Fortress. Later we read that for personal safety reasons, we probably shouldn’t have done that, at least not without a local guide.
We discovered Marco’s Pizza in the Bahamas, and found it again in San Juan. Good pizza! I thought maybe it was a Caribbean chain, but on further research, I found it is large chain restaurant in the US. I just don’t remember every seeing it before…. We passed by the Plaza Colón several times. There is a statue there of some guy named Colon. I had to look that up to learn that Colón is the Spanish name for Columbus. Cristobal Colón = Christopher Columbus. Click here to learn more of why that is.
The Rainforest
We took a day trip to El Yunque, the only tropical rainforest in the US National Forest System. The rain forest lies on a mountain at the east end of the island, but less than an hour’s drive from San Juan. Appropriately, it was raining on and off while we were there.
The visitor’s center is beautiful, and the drive into and out of the main route provides ample places to hike, climb towers for great views (when there is a break in the weather), see waterfalls, rainforest flora and fauna, and swim in natural pools. Very cool to walk through the forest hearing the sounds of birds insects and reptiles, some unique to Puerto Rico like the little Coqui frogs. We didn’t see any Coqui but we heard them.
San Juan Temple
We also had an opportunity to visit the Puerto Rico temple, which just opened in January 2023. It’s a small temple with friendly staff.
This ends our Caribbean outing, as we are now heading back to the US to do some rounds to visit friends and family.
Next up in May: Morocco, a few weeks walking the Camino in Portugal and a visit to some islands in the Atlantic: Madeira, and maybe the Azores. Some more long walks in the UK, and then some more travel in Europe that we haven’t quited figured out yet. Stay tuned!
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