La Isla del Encanto es Puerto Rico

My first nationally published article was a travel piece (The Christian Science Monitor, February 26, 2003). I love travel writing and nearly always write up something to share with friends and family upon our return from some far off or exotic local. I apologize for waiting to post this until July when Mark and I took the trip in February. My Puerto Rican friends loved reading this account of my impression with their home island.

Puerto Rico, February 16-22 – Every car’s license plate in Puerto Rico reads “Isla del Encanto.” This I noticed as Mark and I sat in barely-moving traffic our first afternoon after getting our rental car. The island was failing to enchant either one of us.

We deboarded our plane at 2:35 p.m., retrieved our luggage fairly quickly and caught the van to Thrifty Car Rental. Seemingly, the employees there work on what Mark termed “island time,” and not until about 4:30 did we finally leave the place with a car, by which time the worst rush-hour traffic either of us had ever experienced had begun. At 7:45 p.m. we arrived at Oceanfront Hotel in Isabela on the north-northwest shore, and luckily the first floor was a restaurant because we were famished. My husband got shrimp fancied up some way, and I got the island standard mofongo con mariscos (with seafood). I’d read in my guide book that different locales in Puerto Rico vary the recipe for mofongo but the base is plantains—a heartier banana-type fruit.

Mark loved his shrimp, and I enjoyed the mofongo, which arrived in a dough-bowl overflowing with shrimp, scallops, and fish pieces in a stew of onions and tomatoes. As I ate, I looked for the plantains but never discovered any. To end our meal, we shared a vanilla flan, a firm, pudding-like dessert. (To give you an idea if you’re not familiar, mousse is light, pudding is a little heavier, and flan is more dense, so much so that it sets and holds its shape.) Mark had never tasted flan and was a bit hesitant about trying it, but he liked it.

Our waitress didn’t speak English so I was glad I had brushed up on my Spanish before we came. I asked her how long it would take to get to Las Cavernas del Rio Camuy, where we had planned to go the next morning. She told me an hour to an hour and a half, depending on traffic. Mark and I slept well that night with plans to head inland in the morning.

Perhaps if one is familiar with the route to get from Isabela to Las Cavernas, the drive takes from one to one and a half hours, but since we were not familiar and because the street/route/highway signs are lacking on the island, we didn’t arrive until 10 a.m. though we left the hotel at 7:30 a.m.

But the cave, carved from an underground river that was still running, was worth the trip. Once enough English speaking folks had arrived for a complete tour, we watched a short film and took a trolley to the big cave, which was open to the outside in three places, and we saw three big crickets and a spider.

After our cave tour we drove a short distance to the world’s largest radio telescope and climbed the many stairs, from where we parked, to the museum, through which we walked to see the telescope. Big, yes, but neither my husband nor I am interested in astronomy so we didn’t spend much time there.

We drove on to the southwest coast where I bought a necklace made of bamboo for $5, and we walked out on the beach briefly. Then we turned east to Guanica and arrived at our Parador at 6:15 p.m. For dinner at the restaurant there, Mark ordered shrimp and rice with sausage, and I got snapper in garlic sauce with plantains. Both our meals were satisfying, nothing more.


On February 18 we slept in until after 7 a.m. then went to the dry forest and hiked. By our estimate, we hiked ~seven miles total—three hours and fourty-five minutes, anyway. We saw a few pretty birds but didn’t get any pictures; we saw a lot of epiphytes, the cactus-like things that grow on trees. We heard a loud parrot squawk but didn’t see it.

When we’d hiked for almost three hours and were walking back to the car to rest, we decided to take a trail we passed that lead to the ocean; it was only a mile or so. The trail ended at a road. We crossed to a fence with a sign that read “No entrada sin autorizado.” No entrance without authorization. Bummed, we sat on some boulders and ate tangerines trying to enjoy the ocean from a quarter mile away, before we headed back up the dry, hot steep trail to our car.

That afternoon, hot and dirty from our morning hike, we arrived in Ponce at Hotel Melia, just off the main square of the city. We showered before walking out in search of dinner. Unbelievably, there were no restaurants on the square or close at all. After investigating all nearby nooks for possibilities of food, we encountered a police officer. I asked him for a recommendation, and he asked what type of food we were looking to have. “Comida criolle,” or typical Puerto Rican fair, I answered. He directed us to a place a couple blocks away--right next to the police station--called Don Juan.

For the third night in a row, Mark got shrimp in garlic sauce, and, like the first night, he loved it. The best he’d ever had, in fact. I got an array of appetizers: green salad, onion soup, shrimp cocktail, and sweet plantains. It was all good and the TV played a college basketball game on ESPN for Mark to watch. We were the only patrons.

When we walked back to the square, the firehouse museum was lit up with pink neon lights, and the fountain was also lit. A young couple in wedding attire stood on the corner and waved as cars drove around the square flashing lights and sounding sirens.

Because we had reservations for the next night on Vieques, an island off the southeast coast, we needed to drive from Ponce to Fajardo, almost half an island away, to catch the ferry. Hotel Melia is in the center of the city, and getting out, which proved to be an exercise in patience, took us an hour. The map showed that following Rt. 1 east would take us to 52, the main hwy. We found Rt. 1 and the sign said “este.” “Alright,” I said, “just keep following this east and it’ll take us right where we need to be.” A block or two later the sign read “1 este,” and we were on our way. Three blocks later, as we followed the same route in the same direction, the sign read “1 oest.”

“One WEST?!” I thought back to our first morning here, when, due to insufficient highway signs, our drive to Las Cavernas del Rio Camuy took us twice as long as it would have taken a local. “This %*^@ island! Can’t get their #!@* signs right!” I was frustrated, and as usual, Mark was the picture of calm.

We turned around several times and took different roads and came upon another sign that read “1 sur.” Now, who has ever heard of a route that runs east/west and south? But I checked the map, and sure enough, in Ponce, Puerto Rico, Rt. 1 runs east, west, and south. Ugh.

Eventually, we stopped at a gas station to ask how to get to 52, and of one guy filling up, who was driving a vehicle painted with the Ponce airport’s logo, two employees, and one patron, none could tell me how to get to 52, which runs right by the airport. As I stepped out of the station back to Mark in the car, I noticed a street sign pointing drivers to 52. We were less than a mile away.

The drive to the docks in Fajardo was uneventful. The tale lies in the parking.

The neighborhood by the docks was run-down, a little ghettoish, and street parking was hard to find. The guide book said that a fenced lot was available, but we saw that it was gated and pad locked. We drove down this block and that block and found a spot relatively close to the docks on a corner outside a packed Pentecostal church with its doors open to the air. The preacher was feeling the spirit, we could tell, but he spoke so fast (in his native tongue? in tongues?), I couldn’t understand a word. I was a bit reluctant to leave the car overnight in an ungated lot, let alone on the street, yet we had no choice.

Mark was at the trunk selecting only the essentials to take while I sat in the front gathering my backpack and such. I heard him say, “What?” a couple times and then he said, “Hon, what’s he saying?”

I got out and saw a boy about 15 on a bike. He told me that we could park at his house for $5. He said it was safe when I asked. I thought it was a better idea than parking there on the corner, but Mark said, “Nooo. It’ll be OK.” So I told the boy, “No gracias,” and opened my bag and put my swim suit, shorts and a T-shirt into my husband’s bag, and we set off towards the dock.

It would be a couple hours before the ferry departure, and as we sat in the waiting area, my apprehension about our parking situation grew. After 20 minutes or so, I told my husband I was going to go check on the car. It was two blocks over and two up.

Everything looked OK. Doors were secure, locks seemed un-tampered with.

On my way back to the docks I saw a man open the gate to the parking lot and let a car in. I asked him in English if I could park there. He said I could but that I’d need to hurry.

I did a 180 and ran the two blocks back to the car, but I couldn’t get the key to work in either door. I was panicking. Even the 15-year-old on the bike, still riding around looking for people desperate enough to pay $5 to park at his house, tried to get the key to fit, but it wouldn’t work.

I ran back to the lot and searched for the worker but couldn’t find him. I thought I’d blown my chance to park there, but I figured I’d keep trying. I ran the two blocks back to the waiting area and yelled for Mark. I told him that I could park in the lot but I couldn’t get the %#*& keys to work, and I held up the key to him. He said, “That’s the key to your car.”

“Oh.”

Sure enough, there was another, skinnier key on the ring. The key I was trying was the one to our Alero sitting back in the airport lot in Cincinnati.

So Mark accompanied me back to the lot, I searched until I found the worker, I told him that I’d leave my husband until I brought the car, and then I ran to get the car. Whew! I’m exhausted just recalling it all. But it all worked out in the end.

Just after 5 p.m. we got into our room in Esperanza on Vieques, an island that until 2003 had been occupied by the US Navy so it’s relatively undeveloped. We ate at a place called Bananas, and Mark got a cubano: a sandwich of pork, ham, and cheese. I got jerk chicken and fries. After dinner we went on a bioluminescent bay tour. Everyone had his or her own kayak to go out about a quarter mile in the bay where we secured our boats to the guide’s and we got out. Well, Mark didn’t. He doesn’t swim. He was pretty scared even though the water was only about 5 feet deep and he’s 6’ 4”.

Points of light slid down my fingers and arms as I lifted them out of the water. I swam to Mark, and he said it was neat when I kicked my legs real big. It seemed like I had a neon green aura. He said I looked like a ghost.

Even though Mark didn’t get in, he said that in the water in his kayak were dinoflagellates lighting up. As we rowed in, we saw fish zip along lit up by the dinoflagellates. Pretty awesome.

Early the next morning, Monday February 20, the proprietor of our lodging drove us several miles along dirt roads to a beach where I snorkeled and Mark sat on the sand watching crabs. Then we walked back along the coast, taking our time. We lunched at Bananas and walked back to Casa Alta Vista for our luggage and a taxi transfer to the dock.

Monday afternoon we arrived at the mainland, made a quick exit from the ferry, and got to our car before the traffic got too bad. With relative ease, we made it to our lodging place for the next two nights by 6:30 p.m.

La Paloma Guest House is set on a hill on the edge of the rainforest. Nilda, the proprietor, greeted us and pointed through a clearing to the sea and an island. She told us it was Vieques, from where we’d just come. The place was just beautiful, and the coquis (tree frogs) were already chirping.

I thought La Paloma had a restaurant, but it looked like just a house. I asked Nilda. She said no, there was no restaurant, but she would serve us leftovers from what she had just served her family. We went to our room and within minutes she brought down three plates of food, gratis: lettuce & tomato salad, catfish, eggplant & puffed pastry, and rice and beans with chicken plus a full carton of O.J. The eggplant/puffed pastry concoction was something we didn’t care for too much, but everything else was excellent.

Tuesday morning we left La Paloma ~8 a.m. for El Yunque rainforest. We stopped at the visitor center, saw the overview film, and then hiked for several hours, stopping for lunch at La Mina Falls. After lunch we hiked to the lookout tower, which provided views of the northeast coast and Luquillo. El Yunque is the fourth rainforest I’ve been to, and it’s the greenest. Lush, healthy, thick, verdant.

We stopped at a grocery on the way back to La Paloma and bought frozen meals for dinner. Our room had a microwave. At La Paloma we sat out on lawn furniture listening to the coqui, appreciating and luxuriating in the Puerto Rican rainforest environment.

The next morning we drove in to San Juan. Our flight was at 1:45, but we dropped our car off at Thrifty to beat the rush. The van took us to the airport, we got our tickets and checked our luggage. Then we took a taxi into Old San Juan. We toured El Morro, a US National Monument. It’s a fort on the coast. We bought cigars for friends and a T-shirt for Mark. For lunch we found a restaurant called Mofongo where I ordered mofongo relleno y camarones (with shrimp and peppers). Mark got a cubano. My mofongo came in a doughy bowl again, again with no plantains. About halfway done with my dish, I realized: the doughy bowl is of mashed plantains.

We caught a cab back to the airport. On our flight home, we agreed that, despite the traffic, Puerto Rico is the Isla del Encanto after all.