Where a pina colada trumps tea
Puerto Rico prides itself as the anti-all-inclusive, offering rich history with its beaches
SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO—“We are not a tea culture,” says the waiter at Café Puerto Rico, explaining why there is no English breakfast on the menu. Indeed, just over a kilometre away is the place where the Spanish sent the English packing centuries ago, firing a cannonball through Sir Francis Drake’s cabin.
So, you can’t get a cuppa everywhere in Puerto Rico, or rich port, as Christopher Columbus dubbed the place.
But you can have a pina colada . . . in the bar where they were invented in 1954.
Then you can wander over blue cobblestone streets to San Juan Cathedral, the second-oldest cathedral in the Western Hemisphere.
The cobblestones are made of iron scrap and ore the Spanish used to fill their ships for ballast on the way to the island. On the way back to Spain, the vessels were full of sugar cane, molasses and coffee.
To keep out other Europeans and pirates, the Spanish built forts and a wall around San Juan.
Today, the port is welcoming; 10 or so cruise ships arrive every week and collectively unload as many as 17,800 passengers a day, all eager to spend an afternoon soaking up the city’s history.
Those in the know check into the El Convento, across from the cathedral. Occupying what was a convent built in 1651, the hotel has heavy wooden doors and high ceilings and is quite charming.
History is part of any visit. The oldest remaining building on the island is Casa Blanca, built in 1521for governor Juan Ponce de Leon, who arrived with Columbus in 1493. You can enjoy a stroll through its rooms and quiet gardens. The governor never did; he sailed to Florida, which he named on his first visit there. On his last, he was shot with a poisoned arrow before fleeing to Cuba, where he died.
From the battlements of Fort San Felipe del Morro, the Spanish fired cannonballs at Drake and his fleet in 1595. Now locals fly kites and tourists take pictures on the big green field behind.
Squeezed in below the fort and the Atlantic Ocean lies a cemetery that dates to 1863. It contains prominent families and politicians who fought for independence from Spain, and actors and musicians.
Most tourists miss this; they stay up on the green looking down into the cemetery, unaware that a graffitifilled tunnel leads to a quiet walk among the weeping angels and stories of the dead.
Puerto Rico is the “anti-all-inclusive,” a tourist official says. People who visit want more than beautiful beaches, although it has these. They want history; or zip-lining in the mountains, or kayaking in the mangroves. The Germans like adventure. The Canadians like paddleboarding in the lagoon in San Juan in the morning and going on a coffee tour in the afternoon.
And the Americans? By far the biggest group of visitors, they like that they don’t need a passport.
Puerto Rico came under U.S. control in 1898, when Spain gave up fighting for its last two New World colonies: Puerto Rico and Cuba.
The islands are “the two wings of a bird,” wrote a Puerto Rican poet and independence activist in the late 1880s.
“We have different histories. But were tied together,” a lunch companion tells me, and shows me a picture on her phone of the islands’ flags, which feature the same design with opposite colours.
“We’re part of the U.S., but we don’t think in English,” she says. “We think in Spanish. We dream in Spanish.”
When the Spaniards arrived, they built churches. The Americans built hotels.
In 1919, Frederick William Vanderbilt built San Juan’s first luxury hotel, complete with a bowling alley, openair ballroom and majestic marble staircase. After a massive renovation, the Condado Vanderbilt has just reopened. The bowling alley is long gone (replaced with a martini bar), but the marble staircase still welcomes men in linen suits and expensive sunglasses.
Big American hotels could soon be going back to Cuba. Puerto Ricans are happy to see an end to the U.S. embargo of Cuba, but tourism officials admit it could be a “challenge,” if Americans start flocking to the island just off Florida.
They are hoping that not needing a passport in Puerto Rico will trump the proximity of Cuba for American travellers.
Meanwhile, the saints standing atop the San Juan Cathedral look out over the steep, narrow streets, watching to see what the next wave of geopolitics might bring ashore to Puerto Rico. Jennifer Allford was a guest of the Puerto Rico Tourism Company, which paid for flights, accommodations, activities and meals. Follow her on Twitter @jenniferallford and read more at JenniferAllford.com