A Wasted Day In Cabo Rojo

Orlan­do Mer­gal and Zorai­da Moli­na at the Cabo Rojo Nation­al Wildlife Refuge

Puer­to Rico start­ed 2020 on the wrong foot. The earth­quake that hit the south­west­ern por­tion of the Island on Jan­u­ary 7, 2020 destroyed many struc­tures and pep­pered the region with refugee camps. Cabo Rojo wasn’t hit par­tic­u­lar­ly hard by the earth­quake, or the after­shocks that still occur to this day, but tourism in the area has cer­tain­ly felt the brunt of these nat­ur­al phenomena.

Oper­a­tors in the area are feel­ing the effects in the form of reduced vis­i­tors from here and abroad. Locals have cur­tailed their vis­its because of the exten­sive media cov­er­age empha­siz­ing dan­ger and destruc­tion. Snow­birds from the main­land don’t know the dif­fer­ence between Fajar­do, Rincón, Maun­abo or Cabo Rojo. They just know that it’s trem­bling in Puer­to Rico so they’re not com­ing here.

Entic­ing locals should be a lot eas­i­er than attract­ing con­ti­nen­tals. For us it’s a mat­ter of hop­ping on our cars and dri­ving for a cou­ple of hours. And there’s cer­tain­ly a spir­it of coop­er­a­tion and cama­raderie among islanders who would like to see the affect­ed areas come back to life. But then there are sit­u­a­tions that leave you scratch­ing your head.

Yes­ter­day I went for a dri­ve with Zorai­da. We’ve been going through a rough patch late­ly and I felt like a day out in nature would lift our spir­its. So we decid­ed to vis­it the town of Cabo Rojo. The idea was to pho­to­graph birds at the var­i­ous nature reserves and then post an entry on Puer­to Rico By GPS, thus incen­tiviz­ing oth­ers to vis­it the area.

We got up at 3:00am and by 4:30am we were on the road. Our objec­tive was to spend the day “bird­ing”, make some pret­ty pic­tures and be back by 7:00pm. Well, by 1:00pm it was all over. At 4:00pm we were back in San Juan, dis­ap­point­ed and “pic­ture­less”. Let me tell you what happened.

Our first stop was “Lagu­na Carta­ge­na”, locat­ed on the coun­ty line between the towns of Cabo Rojo and Lajas. We got there at 6:45am. The gate was closed. There was no sched­ule post­ed any­where and no one to ask. The YouTube videos that I con­sult­ed talked about a dri­vable trail around the lagoon, the many birds you could pho­to­graph, and how large the place was; over 1,043 acres.

Our first reac­tion was to try to go around the place. Maybe there was anoth­er entrance. Since there was no one to ask we could only imag­ine. So we drove a lit­tle fur­ther down the road and found a dirt trail that seemed to fol­low the facility’s bob wire fenc­ing. We start­ed down the trail only to find that it got nar­row­er and nar­row­er, mud­di­er and mud­di­er and rougher by the minute. After a mile or so of try­ing to deal with the wors­en­ing ter­rain we man­aged to turn around.

By the time we got back to the park entrance it was 7:30am, our best light was gone, the gate was still closed and our car had mud up to its anten­na. There was still no one to ask. Final­ly I stopped a cyclist that was rid­ing by. He told me that the place had been closed to traf­fic for months and that the only way to explore it was on foot. Yeah, right… all 1,043 acres of it. Need­less to say, we left frus­trat­ed and angry.

Our next stop was the Boquerón Wildlife Reserve. It was also closed to vehic­u­lar traf­fic. I could see through the fence that the entry­way alone was a cou­ple of miles long. Google Maps shows this reserve to be a much larg­er place than Lagu­na Cartage so walk­ing it was out of the question.

It seems like Cabo Rojo is pop­u­lar among cyclists because once again was able to ask a group of cyclists about the Boquerón Wildlife Reserve. They told us that the place had been closed for weeks but there was a way to go around back and reach the lagoon area where most of the migra­to­ry birds con­verged. Need­less to say, we tried sev­er­al dirt trails, drove by stolen vehi­cle car­cass­es and gave up frus­trat­ed once again. On the way out we drove by a cou­ple of indi­vid­u­als on a pick­up truck who didn’t seem too friend­ly. They were prob­a­bly on their way to dis­man­tle one of the stolen vehi­cles and wouldn’t take too kind­ly to us snoop­ing around.

By 9:00am we were enter­ing the Cabo Rojo Nation­al Wildlife Refuge. It’s a beau­ti­ful facil­i­ty run by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Ser­vice. By then the sun was up, most of the birds were gone and we had lit­tle hope of see­ing any­thing worthwhile.

Many years ago I learned from my friend John Har­gis that wildlife isn’t dumb. They pro­tect them­selves from the harsh sun­light the same way that we do. Birds come out ear­ly in the morn­ing, find a bite to eat and retreat into the veg­e­ta­tion, where its shadier and cool­er, until late after­noon. That means that if you’re going to have any hope of cap­tur­ing great images of birds it will be ear­ly in the morn­ing or late in the after­noon. Yet, there we were, all the way in Cabo Rojo, 100 miles from home, with­out a sin­gle “keep­er” image, and not want­i­ng to go home emp­ty handed.

So, against our bet­ter judge­ment, we went down one of the trails hop­ing to find birds dumb enough to perch out in the blaz­ing sun. The Cabo Rojo Nation­al Wildlife Refuge is nice, very nice. The trails are clean (no garbage), well marked and there’s plen­ty of trees where you can rest in the shade and catch your breath. Even so, you should bring plen­ty of water, maybe an ener­gy bar or two, and wear ade­quate sun­block. And if you do bring those ener­gy bars remem­ber to take the wrap­pers with you.

By 12:00n we had com­plet­ed the first trail, were back to main build­ing and decid­ed to take a break and have lunch under a huge Tamarindo tree.

At 1:00pm we had a deci­sion to make. We could go down a sec­ond trail, know­ing that our chances of spot­ting any birds were nil, or we could start our jour­ney back to San Juan. We chose the lat­er. By 4:00pm we were back to the hus­tle and bus­tle of the San Juan Metro­plex hav­ing wast­ed an entire day, a tank­ful of gas and what­ev­er we were charged for the Easy­Pass. We were angry and disappointed.

Lis­ten­ing to local radio you con­stant­ly hear how tourism on the Island has dwin­dled dur­ing what should’ve been our peak sea­son. Oper­a­tors con­stant­ly urge local res­i­dents to come to the south­west, to spon­sor local busi­ness­es and to vis­it local attrac­tions. But then, when you try, you run into sit­u­a­tions like ours.

Of course, I rec­og­nize that maybe I’m not the type of tourist that they’re seek­ing. Most of the time I don’t stay at local hotels. Many times I don’t even eat at local places. My wife and I get up ear­ly, bring a cou­ple of sand­wich­es and arrive at sun­rise to cov­er local attrac­tions. Then I write about them, post pic­tures, audio, video and GPS maps so that oth­er “reg­u­lar tourists” will be inter­est­ed, find the places with ease and vis­it the areas. And I do it all for free, with­out spon­sor­ship of any kind from pri­vate or gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies. It’s a non-prof­it thank­less operation.

So here’s my ques­tion. Why does it have to be so hard? Don’t the pow­ers at be under­stand that every time some­one vis­its Cabo Rojo (or any oth­er town for that mat­ter), and feels dis­ap­point­ed, he/she is going to tell the world about it? Don’t they under­stand that the best kind of pro­mo­tion is word of mouth? And that it’s free!!! Of course, the oppo­site is also true.

Grant­ed, most peo­ple aren’t as vocal as I am, or own a forum where they can vent their feel­ings at will. And most peo­ple won’t go to the trou­ble of writ­ing a detailed sequence of events either. But they do go on Trip Advi­sor, on YELP and on so many oth­er social media sites and write short pas­sages to vent their frustrations.

Bring­ing tourism to Puer­to Rico shouldn’t be so hard. After all it’s one of the most beau­ti­ful places in the world, with or with­out earth­quakes. Beside, oth­er places have earth­quakes: Colum­bia, Mex­i­co and Cal­i­for­nia; to name a few. What they don’t have is errat­ic offer­ings and incom­pe­tent peo­ple in charge of vital sec­tors of their economy.

Puer­to Rico is hurt­ing. I get it. But we can’t sit around mop­ing and hop­ing while neigh­bor­ing com­peti­tors eat our lunch. They feel our pain, of course they do, but they’re also going to use it to their advantage.

Our dis­as­ters (both nat­ur­al and man­made) are com­pet­i­tive advan­tages for oth­er des­ti­na­tions and their going to milk them to the last drop unless we get up and pick up. We need to put our best foot for­ward. We need to show the world our best face. And what’s even more impor­tant is that we have every­thing we need. We just have to want to. We just have to do it!!! No excuses!!!

Writ­ing a post like this one hurts. It hurts because I’d like the mes­sage to be: “come on over”, “everything’s great”. But it’s not.  Besides, on Puer­to Rico By GPS we’ve always told it like is from day one.

The earth­quakes shat­tered build­ings, streets, schools and all sorts of facil­i­ties. But most impor­tant­ly they seem to have shat­tered our spir­its. So we need yet anoth­er shake. We need to shake free of neg­a­tive mind­sets, free of pes­simism and free of half-assed atti­tudes. We need to get back to being what we are best: pos­i­tive, fun-lov­ing, friend­ly and wel­com­ing people.

I could go on, but what’s the use? No one cares any­way. In fact, I’d be sur­prised if any­one reads this at all. I’m just a lone guy with a cam­era, a com­put­er and the Inter­net. Right?

By the way, I did­n’t post any pic­tures because I did­n’t make any.  Any­thing else would have been misleading.

©2020,Orlando Mer­gal, MA
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Bilin­gual Con­tent Cre­ator, Blog­ger, Podcaster,
Author, Pho­tog­ra­ph­er and New Media Expert
Tel. 787–750-0000, Mobile 787–306-1590

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