Payless Auto Rentals set us up with a nice little silver Mitsubishi Mirage, and off we went to tour the island. The first thing we noticed was that nearly every other car in Puerto Rico is a Mitsubishi Mirage. We'd never even heard of them -- of course, we've been far from the reach of advertising for some time now. We unfolded the map we'd bought and picked a squiggly line to take us up to the "Panoramic Route" along the ridgeline of the mountain range which runs east to west across the island.
That squiggly line turned out to be an amazing road. We switchbacked up the slope like a snake squirming up a tree, each curve swinging past a tremendous drop-off. Houses dotted the hillside, their downhill sides set on huge concrete stilts. Nowhere was a horizontal surface that wasn't man-made. We wondered what would happen in an earthquake, or in the flooding from a hurricane or other big storm.
By the time we reached the ridge road, we were deep in the permanent cloud layer that hovers over the central mountains. The panoramic route would have lived up to its name had it been clear, but our view was mostly fog and the edges of lush jungle. After driving past several of the highest peaks in Puerto Rico, none of which we could see, we squiggled down the north side.
On
the north side of the central mountains, the terrain got truly weird.
Instead of the usual pattern of ridges and valleys, peaks separated
by watercourses, the land looked like a lumpy quilt, or maybe a piece
of a bubble-wrap packing sheet. The steep-sided hills were rounded on
top, and separated by shallow depressions. Everything was covered
with a thick coat of greenery.
The odd topography is the raison d'etre for the two places we visited in this area, Arecibo Observatory (which is not in the town of Arecibo) and the Camuy Caves (which are not in the town of Camuy). The huge radiotelescope dish of Arecibo is built into a natural sinkhole; if you saw the movies Contact or Goldeneye, you've seen it. We spent some time at the visitor's center learning about the construction and the science of this largest radiotelescope in the world. Not far away are the Camuy Caves, where the Rio Camuy goes underground for five miles or so before emerging closer to the coast. The funky hills-without-valleys are all limestone, and rainfall collects in the depressions between the hills and percolates down through the porous rock, turning into carbonic acid which then carves out caves below. Our guide, a nuevoriqueña (Puerto Rican New Yorker, whose rapid-fire Newyawkese was almost as difficult to understand as Spanish) told us that this type of terrain, called "karst", is only found in northwest Puerto Rico and in Yugoslavia.
Our
next destination was Old San Juan, the walled city which was founded
in 1521 and which forms the nucleus of the modern capital of Puerto
Rico. A fort sits at each end, San Cristóbal to the east and
El Morro to the west, both administered by the NPS. I'm not sure
exactly why we find old forts so appealing, but we can't resist the
chance to poke around in their dungeons and peer over their ramparts.
We haven't kept track, but we've probably visited two dozen between
here and Maine. Unlike many of the forts on the US east coast, built
to repel invaders that never came, these saw plenty of action, from
16th century defense against Sir Francis Drake to 20th century use as
WWII coastal observation and communication centers. Both forts had
lots of interesting corners to explore, with sentry boxes hanging out
over the crashing surf, and high walls providing excellent views of
the city.
Unfortunately many museums and public buildings were closed for the weekend, so we spent a lot of time just wandering around the streets of the city. This turned out to be an excellent pastime, as we found Old San Juan to be a most delightful city to wander. Many of the streets are cobblestone, paved with blue brick-shaped rocks which were originally used as ships' ballast. The narrow townhouses are painted in bright colors, red next to pink next to purple. We had the impression of a neighborhood in the middle of "gentrification" but not quite there yet; elegant and expensive restaurants are cheek by jowl with decrepit, boarded up hulks, and we almost tripped over a junkie shooting up heroin just outside one of the entrances to the governor's mansion. Semi-feral cats sun themselves in the parks and alleyways. Families fly kites just outside El Morro, on the broad lawn where the Dutch successfully took the city (although not the fortress) in 1625. Every turn around a corner led us to a new surprise or delight: a colonial-era building, a hidden garden, a sculpture, a view of the harbor.
We returned to Salinas via a four-lane toll highway, much faster than the twisty and narrow mountain road we'd taken north. The eastern mountains were just as mist-shrouded as their western relatives, though, and it rained hard in places, slowing us down. We got back to the anchorage and out to Windom just an hour or so before the heaviest rain we'd experienced in the Caribbean started hammering down on our decks. A low-pressure system north of the Bahamas had spit out a cold front that made it clear down to Puerto Rico, and the normally dry south coast was deluged all night. Later we heard that flooding had killed two people in Yabucoa, near the southeast corner of the island. There'd been six inches of rain in Salinas, a huge amount for a region that typically gets less than forty inches a year.
In 1998, we were told, Hurricane Georges dumped six feet of rain in the central mountains. The big cave sinkholes were swirling pools of muddy water. Twelve people were killed and nearly 30,000 at least temporarily homeless, with damages estimated around two billion dollars. Even this small storm, benign by comparison, reminds us that hurricane season, which officially begins June 1st, is just around the corner. Although many boaters stay in Salinas all summer, running to the mangrove creeks just east of the harbor when tropical storms threaten, we're committed to getting south and out of the "hurricane belt". We'd better be on our way soon.