Things to do in Puerto Rico
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St Germain Bistro & Café
Kudos to the chef for transforming the main course salads – so often the dullest dish on the menu – into something fresh, tasty and filling. Then there’s the aromatic Puerto Rican coffee, the delicious paninis and the homemade cakes which can only be described as melt-in-your-mouth heavenly. Nestled on the corner of Sol and Cruz, the St Germain is a bright neighborhood place with down-to-earth service, interesting clientele and a distinct European feel. Perfect for breakfast, lunch or a light dinner.
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Dinghy Dock
If you can brave the gauntlet of cigarette-smoking expats that requisition the steps nightly, you’ll find the DD to be something of a culinary revelation. Unusually for Puerto Rico, there’s an all-you-can-eat salad bar to quell your early hunger pangs, and you can chomp on your lettuce and cucumber while watching the kitchen staff throw morsels of food to the giant tarpon that swim right up to the deck. Fish is the obvious specialty here – fresh catches such as swordfish and snapper done in creole sauces. The busy bar is a frenzy of expats nursing Medalla beers and acts as the unofficial island grapevine. If you haven’t heard it here first, it’s not worth…
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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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La Casa del Mar Dive Center
Set inside the grounds of El Conquistador resort, the PADI-certified La Casa del Mar Dive Center is great for all levels. The ‘Bubblemakers for Kids’ appeals to the younger crowd (8 to 15 years; $49); more experienced divers can take the trips to local reefs (one/two tanks $69/99). A two-tank dive over in Culebra is $125.
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Captain Frank López
Captain Frank López offers fishing or snorkeling trips and sea excursions to Cayo Santiago. Prices are negotiable: start your bidding at about $30. Look for La Paseadora boat at Playa Naguabo.
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Island Adventures
Island Adventures offers 90-minute tours ($30) in an electric boat just about every night, except when there’s a full moon (take the trip to learn why!).
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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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La Bombonera
The old-fashioned coffee machine hisses like a steam engine, career waiters in black trousers appear like royal footmen at your table, and a long line of seen-it-all sanjuaneros populate the lengthy row of bar stools, catching up on the local breakfast gossip. It shouldn’t take you long to work out that La Bombonera is a city institution: it’s been around since 1902 and still sells some of the best cakes in town. Come here for breakfast, lunch or an early evening snack attack and soak up the unique Latin ambience over a copy of the San Juan Star.
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Tantra
For purists, eating Masala Dosa in Puerto Rico is probably about as incongruous as chomping on mofongo in Madras, but for those willing to drop the cultural blinkers, Tantra’s adventurous ‘Indo-Latin fusion’ cuisine is actually rather authentic. It helps that the chef’s from South India. It also helps that the restaurant’s Asian-inspired decor, which places exotic lampshades among carved Buddhas, sets your taste buds traveling inexorably east. The pièce de résistance is the belly dancing that kicks off nightly at nine-ish.
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Ajili-Mójili
The waiters wear hats and the reception displays aromatic cigars from the Dominican Republic, so leave your sandals and singlet in your room and venture out to this classy Condado classic. Housed in one of the neighborhood’s few remaining eclectic mansions, the menu is high-end comida criolla – such as island-style pork loin with mofongo – while the atmosphere is refined and romantic. Expect discreet service and sky-high prices.
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Sea Ventures Pro Dive Center
Sea Ventures Pro Dive Center has three outlets in Fajardo, Palmas del Mar and Guánica. They’re staffed by very experienced professionals offering one-week PADI certification courses. For those who just want the basics or already know how to dive, there are multiple trips to Palominos and Icacos Cays daily (one/two tanks $65/99), and on Sunday there are trips to Vieques and Culebra.
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Duffy’s
Esperanza’s newest bar is a sleeker and slightly more refined version of Banana’s next door. It fills a gap in the market with fresh salads and creative seafood, but still nurtures an undone Caribbean flavor. Opening out onto Esperanza’s main strip, the laid-back street atmosphere infiltrates the shady interior where expats and locals mingle over beer and scallops.
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Caribbean Fly-fishing Company
Fishing is sublime in Vieques. Imagine Florida Keys with about one-tenth of the fishermen and enough bonefish, tarpon and permit to stock a mini ocean. Fishing boats can also allow you access to isolated stretches of coastline in the former naval zone. Caribbean Fly-fishing Company has received a favorable New York Times review.
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Ecotour of Laguna de Piñones & Laguna la Torrecilla
To see a patch of the rarely viewed coastal wilderness, you can join up with a kayak flotilla on a three-hour guided Ecotour of Laguna de Piñones & Laguna la Torrecilla. The lagoon features fish, birds and the occasional manatee. Copladet Nature & Adventure Tours in San Juan can hook you up.
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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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Caribbean Walk
Tiny, but full of local art, this creative shop in Isabel Segunda harbors intricate jewelry and plenty of other dexterously sculpted crafts.
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La Tienda Verde
For groceries, La Tienda Verde near the baseball field in the center of town is your best bet in Esperanza.
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Morales Supermercado
If you’re looking to stock up on provisions, try Morales Supermercado.
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El Pulpo Loco
El Pulpo Loco is a criollo place that also rents out bikes.
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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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