Puerto
Rico was one of our favourite places in the Caribbean.
It has all the conveniences of the US with the energy and feel
of Latin America. We found the people to be extremely
friendly and hard working and they always seemed to go out of
their way to help out. We were lucky enough to have an
apartment overlooking a beautiful beach in San Juan, where we
stayed for around two months. During our time there we
visited many parts of the island and saw a lot of interesting
things. Incidentally, I have many more fantastic
pictures of Puerto Rico, but there are all back in Canada so I
will update this page with those when we are back next
time....
Things to Know
Probably the most
obvious thing to know is that Puerto Rico is part of the
United States. Therefore, in general, the laws of the US
apply including drinking and driving. Whereas in many
other Caribbean destination there are either few or poorly
enforced laws for drunken driving, in Puerto Rico they are
enforced and there are cops everywhere. And for some
reason the police cars normally drive with their red lights
flashing so if one pulls up behind you it doesn't necessarily
mean he wants you to pull over.
We were told that on
this little island there are something like 1.2 million
automobiles and judging by the traffic it is surely
true. When my friend Earl came for a visit we decided to
take a little trip from San Juan to a forest area east of the
city which was about 40 or 50 km. We left after lunch on
a Saturday afternoon and it took about 3 hours to get
there. Bumper to bumper traffic the whole way was not a
pleasant experience. So if you plan on driving anywhere
leave early.
Places to Visit
Our friend Tico
Castaner wrote us a superb guide for a 3 day trip in around
Puerto Rico which contains all sorts of useful information and
tips for traveling around Puerto Rico. Click here to see
(THANKS TICO!!).
San Juan
San Juan is the capital city of Puerto Rico
and is a wonderful place indeed. The area of Old San
Juan is full of beautiful colonial buildings and lots of bars
and restaurants. There is also a tourist bus you can
take for free which takes you by all the sights. One of
the more interesting is the old fort called El Morro which is
worth a visit. The geography of the city is very
interesting as it is built on a mixture of islands and
mainland linked together by bridges that sometimes make it
very difficult to keep your bearings. There are also a
number of beautiful beaches within the city which are just as
good as the beaches you find out in the country. We
lived in an area called Isla Verde overlooking a gorgeous
beach. There were also a lot of restaurants in the area
including a superb Oyster bar, an Outback steakhouse, a couple
Japanese restaurants and many more. We didn't get a
chance to try out most of them due to the large number of
places. Between Isla Verde and Old San Juan is another
beach area called Condado with many restaurants, bars beaches.
One of the main
attractions in San Juan is the shopping. There are many
big American style shopping malls, the biggest being Plaza Las
Americas. People from all over the Caribbean go to
Puerto Rico just for the shopping as the selection is
fantastic and the prices are reasonable - in our opinion not
too different from what you would pay in Miami. Ana
loved it, especially after living in Dominican Republic where
the selection was poor and prices were ridiculous.
Rincon
This was
probably our favourite place on the island. We went on
two trips there and really enjoyed it. There are
fantastic surfing locations and nice beaches. We stayed
at a place called the Lazy Parrot which had a great restaurant
and a delightful outdoor hot tub! One weekend we were
joined by my dad, his wife Loretta, and our friend Toddy and
we celebrated Ana's 30th birthday there!
Arecibo
Observatory
This is
the location of the largest satellite dish in the world.
It is an amazing crater in the middle of the forest that has
been filled with a giant dish and these enormous towers.
It is quite an impressive spectacle. There is also a
cheesy science centre on site which is pretty much a waste of
time but just seeing the dish is definitely worthwhile.
Camuy
Cave Park
The cave
park is about an hour
and a half drive west of San Juan. It would be a pretty
good day trip except that due to the large number of tourists
you need to queue for a couple hours to get it which is not
too fun. If you've never seen a cave before I suppose I
would recommend it but I definitely wouldn't go back a second
time. Ponce
This is
the second largest city on the island and is meant to have
some marvelous architecture. We stopped there on a
Sunday afternoon and drove around the whole city trying to
find a nice restaurant but everything seemed to be closed so
we ended up dining at McDonalds...disgusting. I'm sure
there's some nice things to see there but we must have missed
them. Hope you have better luck!
Vieques
and Culebra
When you
are only in a place for a short time it's difficult to see
everything you would like to. There are two islands off
the east coast of Puerto Rico which we did not get to but are
meant to be extremely beautiful and surely worth checking out.
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