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dating from the 1800s have been meticulously restored.
Our tour of Ponce included an open-air bus tour, a peek at the Parque de Bombas (an ornate, red-and-black, century-old wooden firehouse), and the Museo de Arte de Ponce. The art museum is world class and contains collections of paintings and sculptures from Europe, the Caribbean, and Latin America. No trip to Ponce is complete without dining at Pito’s Seafood Café & Restaurant. Boy, was there a lot of traditionally prepared seafood!! Don’t miss sitting on the veranda overlooking the Caribbean and don’t miss your turn at the grand piano, either. There are 20 designated forest reserves in Puerto Rico and an additional six proposed reserves. The most notable are the 28,000-acre Caribbean National Forest near San Juan, the only tropical rainforest in the US National Park Service; the Guajataca Forest Reserve with 25 miles of trails through karst reserves; and the Guanica State Forest, a dry forest with the largest number of bird species on the island and a lignum vitae tree that is over 1,000 years old. The Central Cordillera Mountains extend right through the middle of the island. The highest peak — elevation 4,398 feet — is Cerro de Punta, birthplace of Puerto Rico’s magnificent coffees. One of only three super-premium coffees in the world, Alto Grande is the brand that the Pope drinks (yep, it’s right on the label). My favorite excursion in Puerto Rico was to the Caribbean National Forest — known locally as El Yunque Rainforest— high in the Luquillo Mountain Range. This rainforest gets over 240 inches of rainfall per year and 100 billion gallons of water per year drain from its 28,000 acres. This is a great hiking area with 13 maintained trails and primitive trails. El Yunque is home to four types of forest, 240 species of native trees (23 are endemic to the Forest), 50 orchid species, 150 native ferns, and over 1,000 other plant species. The trails offer spectacular vistas and cascading waterfalls. At La Mina Falls, you can go swimming in the middle of a rainforest! Along the trails of El Yunque, there is the constant sound of the coquí (a singing tree frog about one-inch long) which calls out “ko-kee” in response to calls from the other frogs. There are 13 varieties of coquí in the Forest though only two types make the distinct call. The frogs sing the most near sundown and after any of the frequent rains. If you’re lucky, you can also find the endangered greenish-blue, red-fronted Puerto Rican parrot of which possibly 50 total remain. The Forest also is the habitat of 26 families of wildlife found nowhere else. In pre-Columbian times, El Yunque was the home of the legendary protector from hurricanes and other maladies — the god Yokahú (or Yuquiyú). The name “Luquillo” is derived from this god spirit’s Indian name. In 1876, the Spanish king decreed the protection of several forest reserves, including El Yunque, for the purpose of watersheds — making this area one of the oldest protected forests in the Americas. It was made a National Forest in 1917. Today, El Yunque is denoted as a World Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO. A major part of Puerto Rican culture is its cuisine. Well-respected for its wonderful traditional foods, there is also a thriving international dining scene. It all mixes together at times to find influences from Taínos, Cubans, Creoles, Africans, and Americans. Locals refer to the traditional foods as comida criolla — a combination of cuisine from mountain life and coastal life. There is a network of government-approved restaurants throughout the island called mesones gatronómicos (gastronomic inns) which specialize in native Puerto Rican cuisine at reasonable prices. The island is also the birthplace of the piña colada, seeing as how popular rum, coconuts, pineapples, and ice are there. San Juan restaurant stand-outs for me were Carli Café Concierto (with Carli, the owner, playing jazz piano for everyone), Miró Marisquería Catalana (decorated with Miró’s artwork), Ajili Mójili (where waiters wear the traditional Puerto Rican “cowboy” hat), and Amadeus Café (in the center of Old San Juan). |
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