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| Puerto Rico is the jumping off point for many destinations in the Caribbean. The cruise ship port in Old San Juan is one of the busiest, and many travelers spend a day or two there en route to somewhere else. This is exactly what we did, this is an account of our experiences there. Hopefully, our travelogue will prove helpful to anyone asking the question "What is there to do in a day or two in Puerto Rico?" | |
 Gabriel looks over the Cemetery of Mary Magdalene. |
We took the redeye to Puerto Rico from New York, having flown to JFK International from our home airport of Washington Dulles. It was great to have my sister Jennifer along, and she had the great idea of connecting through New York so that we would have a longer overnight leg to San Juan, and thus be able to get more sleep. The decision had been made to take the redeye Thursday night so that we could spend Friday on the beach instead of in an airplane. We arrived at San Juan International (SJU) at about 5am. We hadn't managed to catch as much sleep as we had planned on the flight, so we were dragging a bit. We changed clothes and then checked most of our baggage with the skycap. |
| They have a little room where they will safely store your bags for about $2 a bag per day. "Big" bags cost extra, though I'm not sure what they mean by that since my Mongo-Ruck (a.k.a. "the Winnebago") qualified as a small bag. Since we had a lot of luggage for our trip to the Commonwealth of Dominica the following week, we didn't feel like hauling it all over Puerto Rico for the weekend. After checking our excess baggage, we ate a mediocre and very expensive breakfast in the airport ($17 - don't make that mistake!) Then we got a shuttle from Dollar rent-a-car, which has a desk at the airport, but you still have to shuttle to a place 10 minutes away to get a car. Once at the rental office, Our friendly (new) rental agent sped us through the rental process in just short of an hour. Our car was a Mitsubishi Mirage (Mitsubishi seems to have the market locked up in Puerto Rico) with only 2000 miles on it. As the rental supervisor put it, though, "In Puerto Rico, that's a lot of miles!" The roads here are almost as bad as those in Chicago, if you can imagine such a thing. I think this really bothers the Puerto Ricans, because it seemed like everyone I saw driving looked really annoyed. They honked their horns a lot, especially at me, since I was apparently the only one who heeded the traffic laws. | |
| We drove east from the airport for about 20 minutes, to the beach at Luquillo, reportedly one of the nicest in the Caribbean. It wasn't open yet, but we snuck in the construction entrance and parked in an empty lot, then walked out onto the beach itself. It was fantastic! We had the entire beach to ourselves. Soon forgetting our fatigue, we walked up and down the beach, exploring and taking pictures. The girls in their bikinis were distracting the construction workers. If you go to Luquillo, I would highly recommend that you rent a lounge chair and an umbrella. If you don't, the sand fleas will thank you, but your hide will not! Later, the many snack stands located along the beach began to open, so we sampled the local fare. Empanadillas were pastrys filled with various things. Mine was "pizza" flavored, Jenni's was full of chicken. They were $1 each. Water was $1/bottle. After our snack we treated ourselves to a "Coco Frio"; a chilled coconut with a hole freshly whacked into the top by a friendly man with a machete. Oh, and a straw. |  The beach at Luquillo |
 Enjoying a Coco Frio on the beach |
I found the milk to be very refreshing, though I don't usually like coconuts. Imbibe moderately, however, since coconut milk is a known laxative. (Doh!) The Coco Frio was $1, straws were complimentary. I took two. By noon, we had had enough sun and fun. Besides, people were starting to show up. We decided to head inland to the EL Yunque Rain forest. It didn't take long to get there. We stopped at the visitor center, there's not much there, just some exhibits and stuff. We paid $2 each to get in when we could have just kept driving up the mountain from there and bypassed the visitors' center altogether. Apparently you must only pay to get into the exhibits, which weren't that impressive. We drove up to the "Cascada la Mina", a short hike through the rain forest down to a small falls below which you can swim. It was extremely cold, but quite refreshing. The hike was not strenuous, and there were many beautiful lizards, and some flowers. |
 FREEZE YOUR..I mean, a refreshing dip. |
| After we completed our hike, we stopped at one of two large towers in the park, climbed the stairs in it, and enjoyed the view. You could clearly see Luquillo, east to Fajardo, and even glimpse the island of Vieques. We hurried down the spiral staircase, and when we had regained our balance, drove back down the mountain, stopping for a snack at a roadside stand. I had a doughy deep fried corn and cheese thing that we found to be very popular in PR, but not very tasty. They were selling lots of fruit juices that I wouldn't have touched with someone elses tongue, owing to the state of cleanliness of the place. Our culinary adventure complete, we headed for our hotel, which was in Fajardo. My keen sense of direction ensured that we got a good feel for the layout of the town before we stopped at our hotel. We stayed at the Anchor's Inn "Meson Gastronomico" which I think means literally "Stomach House". I'm not positive, though. Don't ask me how we found it, but it wasn't too difficult. We went to Ponderosa Steak house for dinner. Fajardo had lots of stray dogs skulking about. Not suprisingly, the Ponderosa was their community center. |
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The rooms were clean and had cable tv, which ensured that I would get absolutely no sleep, since I don't have cable at home. I've found that I must have U.C.F.S. (Uncontrollable Channel Flipping Syndrome) and am physically unable to watch any one thing. I simply MUST know what ELSE is on at all times. It would have been lots easier if there had been a remote, too. For the three of us, the night cost $71. If you are planning on staying in or near San Juan, reserve early and often, for by the time I started looking for a reservation, there weren't many reasonable places in San Juan with availability, due to all the cruise ship passengers and such that were in town for the weekend. |
| We got up early and drove back to the airport, where I dropped off the girls and then went and turned in the car. Once I found them again, we caught a city bus (B-40) from the airport to Isla Verde, then caught another bus (A-5) from there to Old San Juan. In all, it took about an hour, but only cost 50 cents apiece. Don't try to get on with your luggage, though. Anything more than a day pack is frowned upon. We just packed a change of clothes in our day packs and checked everything else with the skycap. Once the bus deposited us at the main bus terminal near the cruise ship dock, we set off looking for our lodging. I had made redundant reservations for the night, one with the Castro Guest house in downtown Old San Juan, ($40/night) (OSJ) and the other at the Hotel Miramar ($84/night) just across the Condado lagoon near the Isla Grande Airport - See Map I did this just in case the guest house was unacceptable, because it was half the cost of anywhere else that I had found. |  View of Old San Juan from El Castillo |
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If you are an infantryman, you'll feel positively pampered at the Castro Guesthouse. It turned out that the guest house was really not very nice, but because of the great location right in the heart of downtown Old San Juan, we decided it would do. (See Map) Let me just say that this place will NOT earn you any husband points, (unless, of course, your wife is in the infantry). There are seven rooms that share four bathrooms. The room we had was dirty, but I've had worse. There were no blankets on the beds, only a sheet. The room had a double bed, bunk beds, a closet and a large refrigerator. (this picture was taken standing atop it.) If you don't mind a bug or two, and want to be 2 blocks from the cruise ship docks, you certainly can't beat the price for this place. It's on calle Tanca above a jewelry shop. |
| Once we paid for our room, we went north from the guesthouse a few blocks to the El Castillo Fort. It was getting very hot and sunny as we toured the fort, which made the dungeons and tunnels much more interesting than they would have been otherwise. I was especially interested in the fortifications that were added most recently during WWII. Unfortunately, they were all off limits. After touring the fort, we headed west toward El Morro. We tried to get close to the water and ended up in the slum below the city wall. DON'T GO THERE! This is where drug deals take place in the open, and You probably don't want to be there to see them. We didn't know this, though, so we strode confidently through flocks of rough looking guys, trying to look like we knew where we were going. Then we ran into a dead end, and had to stride confidently BACK through the same guys until we found a street that led west to the Cemetery of Mary Magdalene. Now, this was an intriguing place. This cemetery probably has the best view of any I've ever seen, and is evidently very old, but still in use today. It is not very well kept, however. We found evidence of vandalism, and in some cases the headstone had fallen into the grave, exposing bones and all (yech!) | |
| We left the cemetery and headed to the larger of the two forts in OSJ, El Morro. This fort is MASSIVE, with tons of great photo ops. We toured the fort for a couple of hours until we were almost dead from heat exposure, then headed south toward the city gate (San Juan Portal). Our 90oz. Camelback water bladders came in very handy. We took some nice pictures of the harbor from atop the city wall, then headed back into the city for some vittles. A place called Maria's caught our eye, on Calle Cristo. They served decent tacos and enchiladas, and very good fruit drinks. At $32.00 for the three of us, it wasn't cheap, though. It just goes to prove Chuck's cruise ship proximity theory: the closer to the cruise ship you go, the more things cost. Cruise ship passengers must have lots of money. After lunch we shopped along the Calle Fortaleza until we made it back to the guesthouse, and decided to rest for a few minutes. Three hours later we woke up just in time to almost miss a beautiful sunset. |  |
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After watching the sunset, we just wandered around OSJ for the rest of the evening. There was an absolutely rocking wedding reception being held outside the walls on the bay side. One strange thing, San Juan seems to be the city full of stray cats. I guess Puerto Rico's policy is to take all the stray dogs to Fajardo, and leave all the cats in OSJ. I have to say, unfortunately, that the Puerto Ricans show an appalling lack of pride for their land, as we watched many, many people casually throw trash on the ground or in the water. Evidence of this practice detracted from the charm of the city. |
| We ate dinner at an exclusive restaurant called Wendy's (to go). We took our burgers down to the waterfront and relaxed as we listened to a romantic guitarist sing to his date. We also stopped outside the cathedral, which was in the middle of Saturday Evening Mass, and listened to a trio sing an absolutely beautiful song that I wish I could find on tape. We all got a good night's sleep in spite of the meager surroundings. By 0730 we were off to the bus station. A groggy bus driver showed up a half hour later. We shared the bus with an eccentric gambler/world traveler who had renounced his U.S. citizenship because of all the "regulations" it carried. He seemed prouder of his losses than of his gains at the Casino, though. We changed buses by the Cockfighting arena again and were shortly at the airport. We got our bags and then rushed Jenni to her flight. We then got prepared to catch our flight for Dominica | |
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Get a copy of Fodor's Pocket Puerto Rico" for your trip. $6.80 |
