Days in San Juan

Spending just over 48 hours in San Juan surely isn't enough time to get to know a city, but there is a sort of emptiness that I have seen among the streets here. There are telephone poles in the streets still, abandoned buildings, blown out/boarded up windows and all of this within the first few blocks of the touristy areas in the capital city. I'm sure some sustained damage from the hurricane and therefore ceased to exist, but I wonder how much ceased to exist as a knock on effect. My driver from the airport told me he used to work for the Marriott as a concierge, but they cut back on staff as tourism drastically fell and so he started driving as a new career. How much had the city tightened it's belt? I'll forever wonder what it might have looked like a year or two before I arrived.

Tomorrow as I head inland, I don't know what to expect. There must be damage, or why would I be going? Yet, I am told that the campsite we are based at has a cross fit gym attached to it that is used and open everyday and if we want to attend we have to buy a membership. Here too in San Juan, there are bars packed with people and bumping with music just one block from what appears to be an abandoned medical center. It seems a strange paradox and I am curious to find out what the answer is.

Other parts of the city, Old San Juan, seem to be just as they might have been yesterday, last year, or even ten years ago. Many of the old buildings seem well intact. On the way into town my taxi driver joked that the fort of El Morro was the first place to re-open after hurricane Maria as the Spanish knew how to build it sturdy. Of course, I had to visit these forts to see just how sturdy they are and I can agree, they are solid as a rock (heyo!). I went to El Morro and San Cristobol forts and trying to be adventurous, I entered San Cristobol first, trying to speak Spanish. Success! I bought my ticket, asking how much, asking where to go, I even asked where the bathroom was! Feeling clever, I had a walk about and then went to El Morro. Arriving there, I paid to enter and, in English, was told I could visit both forts with the receipt as they were both national parks. Bloody hell. I paid twice! But, being too embarrassed and without the former receipt, I swallowed the 7 dollar loss. Not so clever after all.

EL MORRO

Carnival Cruise is attacking, quick, man the guns!

Uh, yeah, never mind. 

Shell chunk in the wall, thanks America!

Long story short, the Spanish were the colonizers of the Caribbean, South and Central America for most of the age of exploration. There were other powers around vying for the geography up for conquering, France and England, but also Denmark and Portugal to name a couple. So, to make the story short, over hundreds of years and many attacks on the port city, the forts expanded higher and thicker. Then, in 1898, the Americans won the Spanish-American war and Puerto Rico had a new conqueror. Since 1899 it has remained under American control. (pictured below, a chunk of American shell stuck in the fort wall from 1898!) That whole thing, by the by, caught me even a couple times. I said, "In America... err.. I mean... on the mainland".


SAN CRISTOBAL

SAN JUAN BATISTA

Old San Juan was a trip. The old streets were pretty cool. It seems a lot of cruise ships come in to the port for a day and I can see how the old streets would be a great gateway for something like that. The old part of the city is very compact. You could walk just about every foot of the streets in a day. I went to the old cemetery and the San Juan Batista cathedral where Juan Ponce De Leon was buried (yes, that Ponce!). It was pretty cool.

I wish I could have spent another day or two at least in San Juan, not least to go take the Bacardi Rum factory tour, ha, but there seems to a lot I missed beyond the beaches and old city. Puerto Rico, San Juan, may be a place worth revisiting in the future.