Sights in Puerto Rico
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Bahía Mosquito
Locals claim that Bahía Mosquito, a designated wildlife preserve, has the highest concentration of phosphorescent dynoflagellates not only in Puerto Rico, but in the world. Indeed, it's also known as Bioluminescent Bay - and it's magnificent. A trip through the lagoon is nothing short of psychedelic, with hundreds of fish whipping up bright-green sparkles below the surface as your kayak or electric boat passes by, but the best part is when you stop to swim: it's like bathing in the stars.
Don't ever accept a ride in a motorized boat - the engine pollution kills the organisms that create phosphorescence. You can just drive east on the rough Sun Bay road (you'd better…
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Las Cabezas de San Juan Reserva Natural ‘El Faro’
A 316-acre nodule of land on Puerto Rico’s extreme northeast tip, the Las Cabezas de San Juan Reserva Natural ‘El Faro’ protects an historic lighthouse, a bioluminescent bay, rare flora and fauna, lush rainforest, various trails and boardwalks, and an important scientific research center. Despite its diminutive size, the reserve shelters seven – yes seven – different ecological systems, including beaches, lagoons, dry forest, coral reefs and mangroves. Animal species that forage here include big iguanas, fiddler crabs, myriad insects and all kinds of birds. Such condensed biodiversity is typical of Puerto Rico’s compact island status and ‘Las Cabezas’ is…
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Playa Caña Gorda
Playa Caña Gorda is the balneario adjacent to the southern edge of the dry forest on Hwy 333 and where the locals come to grill fresh fish, play volleyball and lie around in the shade. The modern facilities are the most developed in the area, including a small shop with cold soda and sunblock.
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Parque de las Cavernas del Río Camuy
For centuries now, the Río Camuy has been imposing its will on the soft karstic underground limestone to create this incredible system of caves, the world's third-largest. This park spreads over an area of about 10 miles long and has 17 entrances in the area between the towns of Hatillo, Camuy and Lares.
Over the years, the caves have been important shelters for indigenous people, home to millions of bats that help keep the island's insect population under control, and a source of fertilizer. But no modern explorers went to the trouble of making a thorough investigation of the caves until 1958. This was when Russell and Jeanne Gurnee and Bob and Dorothy Rebille…
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Lagos Dos Bocas & Caonillas
These two lakes - each more than 2 miles long - fill a deeply cleft valley at a point where karst country gives way to the actual mountains of the Central Mountains, east of Hwy 10 and north of Utuado. The lakes are the principal reservoirs for the north-central part of the island, and for years they caused anxiety to communities downstream, who worried that the lakes could not absorb a torrential rainfall without overflowing or bursting a dam.
As it turned out, drought was the first plague to hit the lakes. At one point, the water dropped so low at Lago Caonillas that the bell tower of a 1930s-era chapel was exposed. The chapel had been built in the valley before the…
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Bosque Estatal de Río Abajo
This 5000-acre forest has a visitors center just off Hwy 621, halfway between Utuado and Arecibo, and some of the most rugged terrain on the island. Situated in the heart of karst country, the forest's altitude jumps between 700ft and 1400ft above sea level. The steep sides of the mogotes are overrun with vines, and the forest is a jungle of tropical hardwoods, including Honduran mahogany and Asian teaks, and huge clumps of bamboo.
A century ago this land was logged almost bare. In the mid-1930s, the US government and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) stepped in with their plan to reforest Puerto Rico. The remains of the lumber roads cut by the loggers and the CCC…
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Cañón de San Cristóbal
The canyon is so unexpected in both its location and appearance that it may take your breath away. The deep green chasm with its rocky crags and veil of falling water lies less than 5 miles north of Aibonito. The canyon is a fissure that cuts more than 500ft down through the Central Mountains. But you probably will not see it even as you approach its edge, because the rift is so deep and narrow that the fields and hills of the surrounding high-mountain plateau disguise it.
The highest waterfall on the island is here, where the Río Usabón plummets at least 500ft down a sheer cliff into a gorge that is deeper, in many places, than it is wide. For fit mountaineering…
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Observatorio de Arecibo
The Puerto Ricans reverently refer to it as 'El Radar.' To everyone else it is simply the largest radio telescope in the world. Resembling an extraterrestrial spaceship grounded in the middle of karst country, the Arecibo Observatory looks like something out of a James Bond movie - probably because it is (007 aficionados will recognize the saucer-shaped dish and craning antennae from the 1995 film Goldeneye).
The 20-acre dish, set in a sinkhole among clusters of haystack-shaped mogotes, is planet Earth's ear into outer space. The telescope, which is supported by 50-story cables weighing more than 600 tons, is involved in the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence)…
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Ramey Base
Vieques, Culebra, Desecheo and Roosevelt Rds; sometimes it's hard to avoid bumping into erstwhile US military anachronisms when you're traveling through Puerto Rico. And, just when you thought you'd had your fill, here comes Ramey, near Aguadilla, a Cold War strategic command base created by the US Air Force in 1939 to serve as its Caribbean HQ.
For 30 years the Americans poured money into Ramey and watched as the surrounding area burgeoned into a populous municipality of 64,000 people. And then in 1973 the base closed leaving behind a weirdly homogeneous stretch of track housing and the usual American fast-food restaurants.
Today, the former base hosts the international…
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Teatro Yagüez
The beautiful Teatro Yagüez would be an architectural icon in any European capital, let alone quiescent Mayagüez, a city that sometimes struggles to assert its understated cultural identity. Dubbed the ‘Cathedral of Sonorous Art’ by enamored locals, the building was the brainchild of Francisco Maymón, the son of Italian immigrants who was an early pioneer of silent movies in Puerto Rico at the beginning of the 20th century. Maymón inaugurated his first theater in 1909, an opulent neobaroque structure that was filled with Italian ceilings and tiles imported from Spain. Hosting opera, orchestral concerts, silent movies and plays, it rapidly became the font of polite…
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Bosque Estatal de Cambalache
Cambalache covers an area of just 1000 acres, making it smaller than a lot of Puerto Rican resort hotels. The entrance to this compact but little-visited forest reserve lies west of Barceloneta, in front of - wait for it - a Job Corps facility. Despite this rather inauspicious introduction, the forest is ecologically varied and characterized by distinctive karstic formations; countless mogotes pop straight up from the landscape to heights of 160ft.
Its many caves provide homes for fruit bats, which often swarm like bees into the evening sky. The forest has a picnic area, eight miles of hiking trails, two designated trails for mountain bikes (though they're often washed…
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Museo de Arte de Ponce (Map)
With an expertly presented collection, this commanding art museum is the vibrant heart of the city’s artistic community, easily among the best fine-arts centers in the Caribbean and itself worth the trip from San Juan. Set across from Universidad Católica, about 10 blocks to the south of Plaza Las Delicias, the museum’s expertly curated collection – some 850 paintings, 800 sculptures and 500 prints – represents five centuries of Western art that was donated in large part by former governor Luis Ferré. While typical museum etiquette applies, the intimate spaces are loaded with works presented in a fully bilingual manner, and visitors can get up close and personal to take…
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Bosque Estatal de Guánica (Guánica Biosphere Reserve)
Make sure you stop by the ranger station to pick up some maps before exploring this marvellous park. You can take a half-hour hike to a beach through three different kinds of forests, tramping the coast until you find a secluded cove for sunning yourself, before hiking back to your car by a different trail.
And all of this takes place in an area where birds, bullfrogs, the pale blue Caribbean and the sunshine make music together. The forest's uneven rainfall and drainage patterns have created an unusual variety of habitats for more than 700 varieties of plants (48 in danger of extinction), which attract a large number of birds. Some studies claim that at least 40 of the…
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Lagoon
This lagoon - Lagoon Tortuguero, is the only natural lake in Puerto Rico, making its protection extra precious. It is also one of the most ecologically diverse spots on the island, listing 717 species of plant and 23 different types of fish. Hiking around this pretty spot yields ocean views, and you can also fish and kayak in the lake – though you’ll have to bring your own equipment. Ask the rangers on duty about the trails, though they’re pretty obvious. Some locals use them for jogging. One of the lake’s stranger problems is its caiman infestation. In the 1990s there was an odd craze to buy striped South American caimans. Locals bought them in their droves, only to…
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Area Arqueológica Hombre de Puerto Ferro
You will find this site marked by a sign on Hwy 997, east of Esperanza. About a quarter mile east of the entrance to Sun Bay (Sombé), take the dirt road on your left (it heads inland). Drive for about two minutes until you find the burial site of the Indian known as the 'Hombre de Puerto Ferro', which is surrounded by a fence. Big boulders identify a grave where a 4000-year-old skeleton (now on exhibit at the Fortín) was exhumed.
Little is known about the skeleton, but archaeologists speculate that it is most likely the body of one of Los Arcaicos (the Archaics), Puerto Rico's earliest known inhabitants; this racial group made a sustained migration as well as seasonal…
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Plaza Las Delicias
The soul of Ponce is its idyllic Spanish colonial plaza, Plaza Las Delicias, within which stands two of the city's landmark buildings, Parque de Bombas and Catedral Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe.
At any hour of the day a brief stroll around its border will get you well acquainted with Ponce - the smell of panderias (bakeries) follows churchgoers across the square each morning, children squeal around the majestic Fuente de Leones (Fountain of Lions) under the heat of midday, and lovers stroll under its lights at night.
Even as the kiosks selling lottery tickets and trinkets, the commercial banks and the fast-food joints encroach at the edges (a Burger King and a Church's mar…
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Bosque Estatal de Maricao
This forest of more than 10,000 acres lies along the Ruta Panorámica south of Maricao, and the drive is spectacular, with sharp curves snaking over ridges as the mountainsides fall away into steep valleys. As you make this drive, you will see places to pull your car off the road at trailheads that lead into the woods or traverse down steep inclines.
Curiously, few of the trails are maintained or mapped by the DRNA. In fact, guides to Bosque Estatal de Maricao are difficult to come by, both at the department's office in San Juan and in Maricao. So if you are coming here to hike, get yourself a topo map of the area from a map supplier in the USA, or ask an island bookstore…
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El Yunque
Tourist authorities are fond of promoting this reserve as the only tropical forest in the US national park system. The Taínos believed the god of happiness hung out on El Yunque, and you'll understand why when you hike through this magnificent rainforest. On a clear day you can even bag an eyeful of the Virgin Islands.
Covering 11,200 ha (28,000 acres) in the Luquillo mountains, this bountiful lush rainforest is home to more than 400 tree and fern species, most of which thrive in the hothouse conditions. There are 13 well-maintained hiking trails in the reserve, ranging from leisurely 15-minute wanders along sealed paths to a heart-pounding trek to the peak of El Yunque.…
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Aguirre
Crumbling monuments to the sugar industry are evident everywhere on the south east part of the island, but there's no more heartbreaking reminder of departed 'King Sugar' than sleepy little Aguirre, which borders the Bahía de Jobos and is so far off the beaten path that it doesn't appear on many tourist maps. The now-moldering sugar town was booming in the early-20th-century.
In it's day it was complete with a mill, company stores, hospital, theater, hotel, bowling alley, social club, golf course, marina, executive homes and narrow-gauge railroad. This was the planned private community of the Central Aguirre sugar company, and at its height (around 1960) it processed…
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Mirador La Piedra Degetau
This nest of boulders lies on a hilltop and was once the 'thinking place' of Ponce-born writer Federico Degetau y González, who became the island's first resident commissioner in Washington DC, from 1900 to 1904. This must have been a truly sublime place in its day, with views of the mountains, the Atlantic and the Caribbean. On a clear evening, you can actually see cruise ships leaving San Juan more than 20 miles to the north and the lights of Ponce beginning to glow to the south.
Sadly, the natural beauty of the site has been marred by an architecturally horrific park and lookout tower that dwarf the actual rocks, which huddle like small pebbles to the side. Myriad…
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Culebra National Wildlife Refuge
More than 1500 acres of Culebra's 7000 acres constitute the Culebra National Wildlife Refuge, which US President Theodore Roosevelt signed into law almost 100 years ago, and which is protected by the Departamento de Recursos Naturales y Ambientales (DRNA; Department of Natural Resources & Environment). Most of this land lies along the Península Flamenco, and from Monte Resaca east to the sea, and includes all of the coastline as well as more than 20 offshore cays, with the exception of Cayo Norte. The US Fish & Wildlife Service administers these lands.
Monte Resaca, Isla Culebrita and Cayo Luis Peña are open to the public from sunrise to sunset daily, and all have some…
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Plaza de San José
Adjacent to the uppermost terrace of the Plaza del Quinto Centenario, where it meets Calle San Sebastián, is the Plaza de San José. This relatively small cobblestone plaza is dominated by a statue of Juan Ponce de León, cast from an English cannon captured in the raid of 1797. The plaza is probably the highest point in this city and serves as a threshold to four cultural sites on its perimeter. The neighborhood around the plaza, on San Sebastián and the intersecting Calle del Cristo, is the original home of the restaurant, bar and café scene that began in Old San Juan more than a decade ago.
There are still plenty of places to grab a bite to eat in a shady building…
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Refugio de Boquerón
The western part of Bosque Estatal de Boquerón carries the name Refugio de Boquerón. It is made up of more than 400 acres of mangrove wetlands, about 2 miles south of town between the coast and Hwy 301. This is an excellent area for bird-watching; more than 60 species are commonly sighted. A number of duck species migrate here in the winter, as well as osprey and mangrove canary. An excellent way to see this sanctuary is to rent a kayak and paddle south across Bahía de Boquerón (Boquerón Bay).
The main office can provide more information and has a 700ft walkway leading into the mangroves. Or stop at Km 1.1 just off Rte 101 and start walking along the trail you see…
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La Fortaleza
A steep climb along Recinto Oeste takes you to the top of the city wall and the guarded iron gates of La Fortaleza. Also known as El Palacio de Santa Catalina, this imposing building is the oldest executive mansion in continuous use in the western hemisphere, dating from 1533. Once the original fortress for the young colony, La Fortaleza eventually yielded its military pre-eminence to the city’s newer and larger forts, and was remodeled and expanded to domicile island governors for more than three centuries. You can join a guided tour that includes the mansion’s Moorish gardens, the dungeon and the chapel. Free guided tours generally run on weekdays except holidays; tours…
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Mercado de Río Piedras
If you like the smell of fish and oranges, the bustle of people, and trading jests in Spanish as you bargain for a bunch of bananas, the Mercado de Río Piedras is for you. As much a scene as a place to shop, the market continues the colonial tradition of an indoor market that spills into the streets.
The four long blocks of shops and inexpensive restaurants lining Paseo de Diego, and facing the market, have been closed to auto traffic, turning the whole area into an outdoor mall. You can shop or just watch as the local citizens negotiate for everything from chuletas (pork chops) and camisas (shirts) to cassettes featuring Puerto Rican pop-music wonders like Menudo.…
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