A Friday Morning in Aguas Buenas 

Luis A. Fer­ré Square (click on image to see it larger)

Twen­ty twen­ty-three has been a busy year at Puer­to Rico By GPS. We start­ed with an ambi­tious goal: “to vis­it all 78 munic­i­pal­i­ties in Puer­to Rico to pro­duce a video and how­ev­er many blog posts were war­rant­ed for each town­ship”. The idea was —and still is— to end up with the most com­pre­hen­sive col­lec­tion of pho­tographs, video and arti­cles about Puer­to Rico any­where on the Inter­net. That’s a mouth­ful. I know!

In some cas­es it has been easy and in oth­ers it has been hard. In some cas­es the local gov­ern­ment has received us with open arms and in oth­ers they haven’t moved a finger.

So far we’ve been bat­ting a 50% aver­age.  That’s not bad!  Car­oli­na and Gurabo received us with open arms and we pro­duced exten­sive videos and arti­cles about both towns. Nei­ther of them was per­fect, but both of them were great.

Then you have Tru­jil­lo Alto and Caguas. The for­mer recent­ly had its may­or removed on cor­rup­tion charges, so I decid­ed to go it alone. I fig­ured that they had enough on their plate to draw more atten­tion. As for Caguas, I tried con­tact­ing them twice and received no answer at all. So I vis­it­ed like any oth­er tourist would and did what any oth­er tourist would do. In fact, I did more, because I men­tioned the good and the bad. Most tourists just slam you on Yelp.

That brings us to Aguas Bue­nas, the fifth town on our sched­ule. We tried con­tact­ing them by email, but we nev­er received an answer. So, on the morn­ing of Feb­ru­ary 24 my wife and I jumped in our car and head­ed out to the town of the “good waters”.

Aguas Bue­nas is a small town that sits on the east­ern part of Puer­to Rico’s moun­tain­ous region called “la Sier­ra de Cayey”. Geo­graph­i­cal­ly it’s south of Guayn­abo and north­west of Caguas.  Aguas Bue­nas was found­ed on May 25, 1838 when it was offi­cial­ly sep­a­rat­ed from the near­by town of Caguas. It is believed that the name “Aguas Bue­nas” arose from the old “Aguabue­na” neigh­bor­hood of Caguas, and in hon­or of the pure and crys­talline waters of its springs, espe­cial­ly a large spring of crys­talline waters that used to run along “El Des­ti­no” street, today “Mon­ser­rate” street.

There are many ways to get to Aguas Bue­nas. There are roads from Bayamón, from Guayn­abo, from Caguas and from Cayey. And then there’s road 173, which con­nects with road #1 (known among Puer­to Ricans as “la car­retera vie­ja de Río Piedras a Caguas”) “the old road between Río Piedras and Caguas”.

Río Piedras was a town that was merged with San Juan back in 1951. That’s a sto­ry that I might write about on a future post, but for now let’s just say that road 173 was the one that we took. The entire trip was about 45 min­utes long, count­ing the fact that there was road work being done on 173.

We got to Aguas Bue­nas around 10:00am and by 1:00pm we were gone. After run­ning around town for what seemed like for­ev­er, look­ing for a park­ing spot, we final­ly parked on one of the back­streets and walked to the Luis A. Fer­ré square. Luis A Fer­ré was Puer­to Rico’s third demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed gov­er­nor and ran for the Island’s pro-state­hood party.

Luis A. Fer­ré Square (click on image to see it larger)

When we got there there was a crew pow­er wash­ing the con­crete and prun­ing the plants. It’s always a pos­i­tive sign when you see gov­ern­ment work­ers tak­ing good care of the town’s pub­lic areas, even if that meant that we couldn’t shoot cer­tain areas because the were “all wet”. And now that I men­tion it, our gen­er­al impres­sion of Aguas Bue­nas was that the gov­ern­ment keeps the town clean and the streets (albeit quite nar­row) are in pret­ty good conditions.

Oh, and by the way, there’s a tree at the Luis A. Fer­ré square that’s over 100 years old. Of course, we learned about it after the fact. How­ev­er, you can see it on our video, or “in per­son” if you decide to visit.

Holy Spir­it Parish (click on image to see it larger)

Leav­ing the Luis A. Fer­ré square our next stop was at the Holy Spir­it Parish, locat­ed on the east­ern cor­ner of the square. Our first sur­prise was to actu­al­ly find it open. When I was a child most church­es were open all the time, but now the gen­er­al rule seems to be the oppo­site. I sup­pose that it has to do with ris­ing crime rate and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of vandalism.

In any case, the church is nice, well kept and quite large. Accord­ing to my find­ings online it was found­ed in 1844, but the design and archi­tec­ture say oth­er­wise. It would’ve been nice to have some­one to ask, but there was no one there.

Holy Spir­it Parish (clcik on image to see it larger)

Anoth­er thing that I liked about this tem­ple was the illu­mi­na­tion lev­el. And this is just a per­son­al pref­er­ence. Some­times church­es tend to be rather dark and gloomy. This doesn’t play well with my astig­ma­tism. I pre­fer bright hap­py places. To me they are more invit­ing. So in that sense this church scored an A.

A few steps from the parish there’s a large gray build­ing, on the north side of the square, that is shared by a cred­it union and City Hall. The struc­ture was boxy and total­ly devoid of any per­son­al­i­ty, so I hard­ly think that it dates back to the 1830’s. Once again, that’s just my opinion.

City Hall (click on image to see it larger)

We did stop at City Hall (like we often do) to ask ques­tions and have them point us in the right direc­tion, but the atten­dant couldn’t answer any of them. And let me stop right here, because I don’t want this post to sound like a rant, or that I’m doing a hatch­et job on the town of Aguas Bue­nas. There’s no crime in igno­rance. The real crime is the lack of train­ing, and that’s a man­age­r­i­al prob­lem. If you assign some­one to the lob­by desk at city hall, isn’t it rea­son­able to assume that she’ll be field­ing ques­tions all day long?

‘Fran­cis­co “Paquito” Díaz’ House of Art and Culture

Giv­en her inabil­i­ty to answer any of our ques­tions, the young lady did the next best thing. She sent us across the square to the ‘Fran­cis­co “Paquito” Díaz’ House of Art and Cul­ture, a small muse­um estab­lished in a beau­ti­ful­ly restored wood­en build­ing, typ­i­cal of begin­ning of the 20th cen­tu­ry Puer­to Rican archi­tec­ture. The dou­ble hung doors and high vault­ed ceil­ings were sim­ply gorgeous.

The muse­um atten­dant was a lit­tle more knowl­edge­able and very friend­ly so we spent a while there rem­i­nisc­ing with their small col­lec­tion of old artifacts.

After leav­ing the muse­um we walked down the side street to a small con­crete build­ing, paint­ed in bright pink, that had a sign over the door that reads: “Sala de Emer­gen­cia, Mar­zo 20, 1926”.  In case your Span­ish is kind’a rusty, that means: “Emer­gency Room, March 20, 1926”. Accord­ing to our friend at the muse­um, this was the first emer­gency room in Aguas Bue­nas. It was also the house, at one time, of Puer­to Rican nation­al­ist leader Pedro Albizu Campos.

Emer­gency Room

Today it’s sort of a “good will” where peo­ple bring all sorts of belong­ings to help the needy. There are also dozens of pic­tures on the wall of the Puer­to Rican nation­al­ist hero.

Final­ly we walked sev­er­al blocks to what used to be the “Max­i­m­il­iano Merced Fire Sta­tion“. Grant­ed, it’s a his­toric site, built in 1955, and includ­ed in the “Nation­al Archive of His­toric Places”. But now it’s sim­ply a dilap­i­dat­ed build­ing which you’d nev­er guess was a fire sta­tion if it weren’t for the “fireman’s hel­met” above the entrance.

“Max­i­m­il­iano Merced” Fire Station

And yet, some­how, most of the online infor­ma­tion about Aguas Bue­nas men­tions this struc­ture as a tourist attrac­tion. Really?

One of the rea­sons —and prob­a­bly the main rea­son— why I estab­lished this blog back in 2013 was to tell eng­lish-speak­ing vis­i­tors about inter­est­ing places out­side of San Juan. I’m talk­ing about peo­ple like me, who like to trav­el on their own, with­out a sched­ule or def­i­nite route and yes, guid­ed by their GPS. And believe me, there are plen­ty of peo­ple like me and plen­ty of places in Puer­to Rico that are worth a vis­it. But what I can’t do is lie to them. That’s why our slo­gan since day one has been: “we tell it like it is”.

It’s not a hatch­et job, it’s just what we found.

Fur­ther­more, when we con­tact a “tourism man­ag­er” or a mayor’s office, ask­ing for guid­ance, it’s not to embar­rass them. It’s an oppor­tu­ni­ty to put their best foot for­ward. But when we get no answer, guess what? We become reg­u­lar tourists. And guess what reg­u­lar tourists do? They wan­der around, devoid of “offi­cial” knowl­edge and sim­ply voice their opin­ions. Why? Because that’s what peo­ple do these days. We live in the era of cit­i­zen jour­nal­ism, where every­one car­ries a cam­era and every­one has an opin­ion. And they voice it!!!

So here’s our opin­ion of Aguas Bue­nas. It’s a good place to stop on your way to some­where else. It could be a lot bet­ter, but it needs work. Or maybe I’m just wrong. Maybe they’re not inter­est­ed in attract­ing tourists.  In that case they’re doing a great job.

It’s no acci­dent that their neigh­bors south­east get lots of vis­i­tors. They’ve done the work, so they’re reap­ing the rewards. And in case you’re won­der­ing, they didn’t answer our call either. But hey, “we tell it like it is”. Caguas is a great place to visit.

After leav­ing Aguas Bue­nas we still had most of the day left so we thought “why not jump over to Guayn­abo —the next town on our sched­ule— and explore one of their muse­ums”? But guess what?  The one that we chose had its web­site hacked, no one was answer­ing the phones and when we final­ly got there we were told that it was closed with­out a sched­uled reopen­ing date. I guess Fri­day just wasn’t our day.

We final­ly decid­ed to head back to the office and start edit­ing our footage. You can watch the video on the right hand col­umn or watch sev­er­al of our pro­grams on our video page.

Until next time,

©2023,Orlando Mer­gal, MA
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Bilin­gual Con­tent Cre­ator, Blog­ger, Pod­cast­er,
Author, Pho­tog­ra­ph­er and New Media Expert
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