A Drive Through Southeastern Puerto Rico

Las Tetas De Cayey

Many read­ers have com­ment­ed that Puer­to Rico By GPS hard­ly has any cov­er­age of the south­east­ern region of the Island.  Well, there’s a rea­son for that.  The are three major attrac­tions that all tourists ask about when they arrive in Puer­to Rico: the old city, the rain­for­est and the beaches.

The old city —of course— is Old San Juan, a Span­ish colo­nial city estab­lished in 1521 that is the sec­ond old­est con­tin­u­ous­ly inhab­it­ed town in the West­ern Hemi­sphere and a UNESCO World Her­itage Site as well.  This is the one place in Puer­to Rico that almost 100% of our vis­i­tors get to see because the Island’s main air­port is only a few miles away and all the cruise ships dock at San Juan Bay.

El Yunque Nation­al Rain­for­est is only about 25 miles to the east of the San Juan Metro­plex and most tourists buy a day excur­sion to vis­it this one-of-a-kind area.

Then there’s the beach­es.  What can I say about the beach­es?  Well let’s just say that I wrote a book about Puer­to Rico’s beach­es that cov­ers 20 of the most gor­geous places in the world.  And I only scratched the surface!!!

So why is it that Puer­to Rico By GPS does­n’t have much infor­ma­tion about the south­east­ern coast of the Island?  Sim­ple!  The south­east has stun­ning vis­tas and great restau­rants, but great beach­es is the one thing that it does­n’t have.  Most shore­lines are rocky and full of rip­tides, all of which makes them down­right dangerous.

This does­n’t mean that you should­n’t explore the south­east.  It just means that if beach­es are your thing then you’ll find bet­ter options else­where on the Island.

But what hap­pens if you are a pho­tog­ra­ph­er like me, or if you absolute­ly, pos­i­tive­ly love seafood?  Then you’re in for a treat because the south­east is pep­pered with some of the great­est seafood restau­rants on the Island and the pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ties are stunning.

Last Tues­day I decid­ed to put an end to the lack of cov­er­age about the south­east in Puer­to Rico By GPS.  So I hopped on my SUV and hit the road with my wife Zoraida.

The best way to explore the south­east is to take road PR-52 in San Juan, dri­ve all the way to Ponce on the south coast and then dri­ve east on PR‑3 along the coast­line until you reach the town of Humacao.  From there you can con­nect with PR-30, dri­ve to the town of Caguas and take PR-52 back to San Juan.

This trip was going to be a long one, so we left at around 8:00am and we were back home at around 8:00pm.

Mon­u­men­to al Jíbaro. Click on image to see it larger.

Our first stop was at kilo­me­ter mark­er “49.0” at the “Mon­u­men­to Al Jíbaro Puer­tor­riqueño” (Mon­u­ment to the Puer­to Rican Coun­try Work­er) (18.07106,-66.218312).  This mon­u­ment was sculpt­ed by Tomás Batista and unveiled in 1976. It’s also an excel­lent van­tage point to see “Las Tetas de Cayey”, a cou­ple of gran­ite moun­tain peaks that are actu­al­ly in the munic­i­pal­i­ty of Sali­nas.  These peaks have an ele­va­tion of 2,762 feet above sea lev­el and there name comes from the Span­ish col­lo­qui­al term for “breasts”.  I guess you could say that they are the most pho­tographed breasts in Puer­to Rico.

From there it would have been road, road and more road until we reached the town of Ponce, but since that was the very first place that I vis­it­ed when we kicked off Puer­to Rico By GPS, and the expe­ri­ence was rather bit­ter­sweet (read the arti­cle here), we decid­ed to take exit 65 towards Cam­pa­men­to San­ti­a­go and take road PR‑1 south towards the munic­i­pal­i­ty of Sali­nas.  From there we took road PR‑3 east­bound along the entire south­east­ern coast until we reached the town of Humacao.

Click on image to see it larger.

The town of Sali­nas is famous among the locals for its seafood cui­sine.  If you are into urban pho­tog­ra­phy (which I am not) you can make excel­lent images around the town’s main square.  In my case I was on a mis­sion to cap­ture seascape images for a project that I am present­ly involved in for the fed­er­al government.

Oh, and if drag rac­ing is your thing, the Sali­nas Speed­way is an excel­lent place to spend a cou­ple of hours watch­ing the local “gear­heads” burn some rub­ber under the hot Caribbean sun.

From Sali­nas we con­tin­ued along PR‑3 to the neigh­bor­ing town of Guaya­ma.  It was almost lunchtime so we stopped at a place called “La Casa de Los Pastelil­los” (the house of the turnovers) (17.936356,-66.183156) where —as the name would sug­gest— you can get huge turnovers filled with almost any­thing you can imag­ine, includ­ing —of course— all kinds of seafood.

A stretch of coast­line in Guaya­ma right behind “La Casa De Los Pastelil­los”. Click on image to see it larger.

Right behind the din­ing area there’s a stretch of coast that I would­n’t be caught dead in.  But it makes for stun­ning pho­tographs.  The shore is rocky, which almost always means lots and lots of sea urchins, and the tide is furi­ous to say the least.

We returned to PR‑3 and went a lit­tle fur­ther to the east until we reached road PR-7710.  This led us to the old Aguirre Sug­ar Mill. The sug­ar indus­try in Puer­to Rico all but dis­ap­peared dur­ing the 60’s and 70’s but you can still see the many build­ings that com­prised an entire town known as the Aguirre Com­pa­ny Town dur­ing the 30’s and 40’s.

Aguirre had its own hos­pi­tal, com­mis­sary, swim­ming pool, the­ater, hotel, golf club and post office.  But today most of its build­ings are closed and have become liv­ing exam­ples of urban decay.  In my hum­ble opin­ion this is very short­sight­ed on behalf of the local gov­ern­ment, as the entire area could be con­vert­ed into a very inter­est­ing tourist attraction.

From there we returned to PR‑3 and head­ed east towards the town of Patil­las.  We stopped sev­er­al times along the way to make images of the shore­line, but —once again— none of these areas were suit­able for swimming.

Pun­ta Tuna Light­house. Click on image to see it larger.

Even­tu­al­ly we reached the town of Maun­abo where we vis­it­ed, or rather pho­tographed, the “Pun­ta Tuna” Light­house (17.988256 ‑65.885203).  I had been mean­ing to add this image to my col­lec­tion of the Island’s light­hous­es.  How­ev­er, when we got there the place was closed.  There was a sign on the gate that said that the light­house is open to the pub­lic Wednes­days thru Sun­days.  And, of course, I went there on a Tuesday.

I was almost about to leave when I saw a cou­ple men talk­ing by the edge of the road.  I asked them if there was a van­tage point near­by where I could make some images of the light­house.  They told me about a small trail to the left of the main gate that leads down to the shore.  So we returned to the light­house, parked our vehi­cle and walked down to the shore.

The view was OK but I had the sun in front and to my right; not the ide­al posi­tion to make a good image.  How­ev­er, I man­aged to hide behind the veg­e­ta­tion, used it as a frame, and came up with a pret­ty good image.

On my way out I had an idea: why not find anoth­er van­tage point west of the light­house from which I could shoot the light­house from the oth­er side?  After try­ing sev­er­al of the adja­cent streets we end­ed up at the local fish­ing vil­lage (17.991227,-65.888781).  From there I could see a coast­line in the dis­tance that seemed to be the per­fect place from which to take my shot. There was a group of locals talk­ing by the pier and I asked them how to get there.  To my sur­prise, one of them was a retired gen­tle­man from New Jer­sey who hap­pened to make the small town of Maun­abo his retire­ment par­adise.  And, of course, every­one called him “el gringo”.

Pun­ta Tuna Light­house. Click on image to see it larger.

This man not only told me where to take my shot from, but he actu­al­ly got in his car, told me to fol­low him, and took me straight to the spot (17.99099,-65.894553).  And, of course, the gor­geous shot that you see below was the one that I took from there.

From Maun­abo we took PR-901, con­nect­ed to PR-53 and even­tu­al­ly PR-191 to get to the south side of El Yunque Nation­al Rain­for­est.  I had heard that the oth­er side of “El Yunque” was beau­ti­ful, but the fact is that the whole thing was dis­ap­point­ing.  The road is closed off at the very entrance (18.265204,-65.801089) and the only thing to see is a small aque­duct that no longer seems to be work­ing.  Besides, I met a local man who told me that the area is rid­den with thieves who watch as you walk away from your vehi­cle and steal your valu­ables, your radio or maybe even your whole car.

So my advise is to save your­self the trou­ble and pass on the south side of “El Yunque”.

South side of El Yunque Rain­for­est. Click on image to see it larger.

When we left the for­est it was almost 4:30pm so we head­ed back to the San Juan Metro­plex.  If you are going to be stay­ing in San Juan, and you decide to vis­it the south side of “El Yunque” your best bet will be to make a right at PR-31 on your way out (there’s an old met­al bridge there), fol­low it until you reach PR-30 and head west until you con­nect with PR-52.  From there go north until you reach the San Juan Metroplex.

All in all the trip was enter­tain­ing, there was plen­ty of stun­ning scenery to shoot, and if I had been look­ing for places to eat I would have had more than enough vari­ety.  But now I under­stand why this area is not as pop­u­lar as the rest of the Island: it has no beach­es.  Of course, it has plen­ty of poten­tial in oth­er areas but local munic­i­pal­i­ties don’t seem to have the mon­ey, or the imag­i­na­tion, to devel­op that poten­tial.  And it’s a sad thing because the area is just as beau­ti­ful as the rest of the Island.

Enjoy Puer­to Rico,

©2015,Orlando Mer­gal, MA
____________________

Bilin­gual Con­tent Cre­ator, Blog­ger, Pod­cast­er,
Author, Pho­tog­ra­ph­er and New Media Expert
Tel. 787–750-0000, Mobile 787–306-1590

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