Puerto Rico

Introduction to Puerto Rico

What is Puerto Rico? Is it part of the United States is it a country? Not many people really know. It is a bit confusing: technically Puerto Rico it is a territory of the USA, but it is not one of the states. The spirit of the Puerto Rico is very independent, however.

The travel hot spot of the island is the capital of San juan. It is a modern city with ancient roots and lots of sights that date back hunderds of years. Many people do not care to venture any further. This is too bad. The rest of the island offers many beautiful places, great hiking opportunities and old colonial plaza's.

The trail at the end of the road climbed several hundred yards up through the trees, toward a twilight eerily burnished by a nearly full moon. At last we stepped out into the open and found ourselves standing on a cliff 200 feet above the Caribbean. To our right, El Faro, a lighthouse, towered over a rugged promontory. Below us, the churning waters of the sea reflected the last rays of sunlight. The wind swept through us as if we were the ghosts of sailors past, far from the bikini bodies and casino nights of San Juan.

We were in Cabo Rojo at the southwest corner of Puerto Rico. Most visitors to the commonwealth gravitate to the San Juan region, on the island's north coast; many trek eastward to the resorts in Rio Grande and Fajardo or take a day trip to El Yunque rain forest. But Cabo Rojo remains relatively unvisited, and it feels beautifully remote. As Puerto Ricans themselves know, the southwest coast promises lesser-known delights like Cabo Rojo, Guánica and San Germán, where the dry climate and sometimes rural atmosphere make for a different kind of tropical paradise.

Guánica, about 15 miles east of Cabo Rojo, stands at the mouth of a bay that forms one of Puerto Rico's deepest and best protected harbors. Guánica's funky, run-down streets lead to a sleepy waterfront strip, or malecón, where a chiseled piece of rock commemorates the place where American troops landed in 1898; that was the seminal moment in the island's political history, and a bit of spray-painted graffiti offers faint protest.

But just around the curve of the bay, down the road from the hulking headquarters of the Ochoa Fertilizer Company, is the Bosque Seco, or Dry Forest, whose arid beauty is the island's counterpoint to El Yunque.

Guánica receives only 35 inches of rain a year, as opposed to the 15 feet that fall annually in the northern mountains. The Bosque Seco's trails can be reached by car via Route 334 through the Comunidad Luna neighborhood, or on foot just south of town along the coast on Route 333.

A trail called Vereda la Meseta runs parallel to the beach through the dry coastal forest. Just a few yards from oceanside limestone formations, the landscape turns desertlike, with cactuses intertwined with sebucán plants and purple milkweed alongside the pervasive sea-grape shrubs. A short walk away is the Ballena Trail, sloping upward into the mountainside and dotted with otherworldly melon cactuses, their caps of red flowers bursting out on top.

Past a sign that prohibits entry (a park ranger assured us it was O.K. to ignore the sign), stands a 700-year-old guayacán tree, a local landmark. Framed by a rock outcropping, its roots splay like smooth human legs; the bark where the limbs join the trunk is wrinkled like human skin.

Just a few miles offshore from the dry forest lies the mangrove-speckled Gilligan's Island. Carlos Torres, known in and around Guánica as Junior, pilots the small ferry ($6 round trip) to Gilligan's. The afternoon we went, he offered a lunch of fried pork chops, fried chicken or stewed chicken, along with rice and beans, for $5.95.

Junior has been doing the Gilligan's Island route for 20 years. "The island was originally named Cayo Caña Gorda," he said, "but now it's called Cayo Aurora. A bunch of fishermen called it Gilligan's back in the 70's."

The uninhabited island itself feels like a playground, with beaches and with trails leading to mangrove clearings that peek out onto shallow waters. We took a couple of beach chairs and set them into the sand so that the water came up to the chair legs. A rainbow of tropical fish swam around in the transparent waters.

Guánica is also the site of the elegant and subdued Copamarina resort, nestled behind a row of pink and violet bougainvilleas on Route 333. The Copamarina, with its airy, large rooms with patios facing the pool and waterfront, is an escape from the supermarket feel of the San Juan hotel strips. Also nearby is the Guánica Parador 1929, which offers clean, adequate rooms and a large swimming pool.

On weekend evenings, the nearby fishing village of La Parguera bustles with revelers. The village offers several kinds of restaurants, like La Empanadilla for cuchifritos (sundry fried snacks) and the family-style La Casita. At the high-end La Pared (named after a coral reef that is a lure to divers), situated in the Parador Porlamar, we ordered lobster in guanábana sauce ($49.95) and whole red snapper à la Pared ($35.95), presented with swirling flourishes. In La Parguera you can also take tours of the phosphorescent bay, best seen on a cloudy night, when reflections of moon and stars won't interfere.

But the real attraction in and around Guánica is the beach. We picked up a Styrofoam cooler (called a neverita, or small refrigerator), loaded it with ensalada de pulpo (octopus salad), pernil (pork) sandwiches and Medalla beer and headed for the area's beaches.

El Combate, with its white sand, long dock and smattering of fishing boats, is tranquil in midweek, though that can change on the weekend when concerts and partygoers descend on the area. About five miles up the coast is the celebrated Balneario Boquerón, a semicircle on a glistening bay, hugged by rows of palm trees. Boquerón is beautiful and is usually ranked among Puerto Rico's top beaches, but it lacks Combate's intimacy.

The town of Boquerón offers a little more night life than La Parguera, especially when the latest island hip-hop duo, Calle 13, are vibrating on the jukebox. Their smart-alecky rhymes echoed through the town's strip of bars along the bay: "It doesn't matter if you like Green Day — it doesn't matter if you like Coldplay!" sang the lead rapper Residente, browbeating an "intellectual girl" to dance reggaetón.

Six miles north of La Parguera, San Germán is perched in mountains that look over the Lajas Valley. With its colonial architecture, red-brick sidewalks, cobblestone streets and a haunting afternoon light that draws painters to sketch its plazas, San Germán has the look of the next Oaxaca.

The town is most famous for its two churches, the Porta Coeli, which was built in 1607 and is one of the oldest in the Western Hemisphere, and San Germán de Auxerre. The Porta Coeli, sitting at the end of a long plaza as if on a heavenly throne, has been a museum of religious objects since the mid-1970's. It has a strong collection of wooden santos — carved figures of saints — and a statue of Señora de la Monserrate (the Black Madonna).

Just across the street, on the patio of a huge white house built in 1913 (known locally as Casa Morales) with multiple balustrades and verandas, an older man hunched over, painstakingly restoring a religious object. His name was Waldemar Morales-Lugo, cousin of Jacobo Morales, an island filmmaker who had a bit part in Woody Allen's "Bananas."

Mr. Morales had been working for a month on restoring a 19th-century piece, "La Virgen Con el Divino Niño" ("Virgin and Child"). "There are some people around here who do this kind of work, but theirs are stiff as ghosts," he said. "I like to give them a sense of movement."

As he spoke, the colors of San Germán shifted with the changing light. The bells of the Church of San Germán de Auxerre rang as old women holding fans filed in.

We walked to La Casa Vieja, a local restaurant run by the proprietors of a huge adjoining antique shop, where Victor Jara's "Te Recuerdo Amanda" played. Just then, the coquíes, those singsongy tree frogs native to Puerto Rico, began to chirp, signaling nightfall in this slow-moving corner of Puerto Rico, where the noisy streets of San Juan are very far away.

Weather Overview
Puerto Rico is balmy year round, with daily highs averaging between 27-30°C (80-86°F). Hurricane season is between May and November, especially intense in the months of August, September and October. Otherwise rain is fairly regular throughout the year, with February and March being slightly drier than other months.

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