Arroyo, Puerto Rico | What It Is And What It’s Not 

La Berbed­era Sug­ar Cane Mill, Arroyo, Puer­to Rico
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The oth­er day my wife and I vis­it­ed the town of Arroyo, Puer­to Rico. It’s a lit­tle town on the south­ern coast of the Island that was one of those that took the brunt of hur­ri­cane María six years ago.

Like many oth­er towns in Puer­to Rico the destruc­tion caused by hur­ri­cane María is there for all to see. The destroyed build­ings still haven’t been repaired, the destroyed water­front still has no peers and the town itself has an aire of inactivity.

Like always, we left San Juan around 6:30am to get to Arroyo ear­ly and catch the church open. When I was a young man Catholic church­es used to remain open 24 hours a day, but today it’s a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. Crime and van­dal­ism have forced them to remain closed when not in use. Hence, many of them cel­e­brate an ear­ly mass and then close for most of the day.

A CATHOLIC CHURCH WITH A TWIST

Our Lady Of Car­men Parish, Arroyo, Puer­to Rico
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When we arrived in Arroyo our first stop was at the Our Lady Of Car­men Parish. Con­struc­tion of this church start­ed back in 1855. The bell tow­er was added in 1888 and designed by Juan Fran­cis­co Bertoli, a nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry French archi­tect from Bas­tia, Cor­si­ca, and long-time res­i­dent of the neigh­bor­ing town of Ponce.

When we got there the tem­ple was closed, but there was a groundskeep­er that quick­ly approached us and asked if he could help us. I told him who we were, and why we were there, and he led us towards the back of the church were we entered the temple.

The Our Lady Of Car­men Parish is beau­ti­ful on the out­side and on the inside. It’s not as large as oth­er tem­ples that we’ve vis­it­ed in the past but it’s well kept and full of inter­est­ing details.

One detail that caught our eye is that the church altar doesn’t point east like in most of the oth­er Catholic church­es on the Island. I’ve nev­er under­stood why they have to point east (not being a catholic myself) but the fact is that they do.

Well, at the Our Lady Of Car­men Parish things are dif­fer­ent. And it all has to do with when the church was remod­elled. The orig­i­nal tem­ple was a lot small­er. The orig­i­nal altar was under­neath the dome point­ing east, as expect­ed, and the orig­i­nal door point­ed west. After the remod­el­ing the new tem­ple end­ed up with an altar point­ing north and the new door point­ing south.

But regard­less of the altar, and where it might point, the fact remains that this tem­ple is sim­ply beau­ti­ful. You can still see some of the effects of hur­ri­cane María but the groundskeep­er assured us that they’re being addressed.

As we left the tem­ple I saw a small niche with the Vir­gin Mary sur­round­ed by a beau­ti­ful garden.

Leav­ing the church grounds we walked towards Samuel B. Morse square. The square itself isn’t much to write home about, but it does raise addi­tion­al ques­tions about the town of Arroyo. Most towns in Puer­to Rico fol­low a design inher­it­ed from Spain. The church is gen­er­al­ly on the east side of the square and City Hall is at the oppo­site end.

Well, in Arroyo they didn’t fol­low that design. In fact, the church, the square and City Hall are in a diag­o­nal arrange­ment (watch our video for details). Now, Arroyo was found­ed on Decem­ber 25, 1855. That same year they start­ed build­ing the Our Lady Of Car­men Parish.

I couldn’t find when the square or City Hall were built, but it stands to rea­son that it must have been around the same time. So the ques­tion is: why did they fol­low that weird diag­o­nal con­fig­u­ra­tion when they must’ve had all the land they needed?

Well, I could find any­one to answer that ques­tion. And, as always, all I found on the Inter­net was frag­ment­ed and regur­gi­tat­ed con­tent. It’s amaz­ing how you find page after page with the exact same text in the exact same words. Haven’t these peo­ple heard of copyright?

Old Cus­toms House Muse­um, Arroyo, Puer­to Rico
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After a brief walk around Samuel B. Morse square we head­ed south along road 178. A few blocks down we entered the Old Cus­toms House muse­um on the right hand side. It’s a beau­ti­ful colo­nial build­ing, paint­ed in tan, that holds all sorts of infor­ma­tion about Arroyo and its residents.

As we entered the muse­um we saw a series of paint­ings by local Arroyo artists. There is also mem­o­ra­bil­ia, pho­tos of life in Arroyo, famous towns­peo­ple and a col­lec­tion of old colo­nial hous­es as they used to be before hur­ri­cane María. Today many of those hous­es are just a memory.

As we were about to leave we met a man who was look­ing after the muse­um, but admit­ted­ly he didn’t know much about it. He did, how­ev­er, tell us a lit­tle bit about the town and the dif­fer­ent points of inter­est. He also added that the reg­u­lar muse­um atten­dant was at a sem­i­nar and that she’d be back in the afternoon.

As we left the muse­um we walked past City Hall on our way to the Samuel B. Morse mon­u­ment. The Samuel B. Morse mon­u­ment is an obelisk-shaped mark­er locat­ed at what used to be the Arroyo water­front. And I say “used to be” because the only thing that remains unharmed is the water. Every­thing else was messed up by hur­ri­cane María.

Samuel B. Morse Mon­u­ment, Arroyo, Puer­to Rico
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The obelisk itself is also in sad shape, with garbage in its water tank and an over­all look of aban­don­ment. The sur­round­ings aren’t much bet­ter, with destroyed build­ings, a port for small boats that is no more and graf­fi­ti rear­ing its ugly head.

One thing I must say is that the place is most­ly clean. We hard­ly saw any garbage on the streets and we did see sev­er­al garbage cans strate­gi­cal­ly placed. The one garbage can that was odd­ly placed was the one in front of the obelisk. I had to work espe­cial­ly hard to keep it out of my video and photographs.

By now you must have noticed that the name Samuel B. Morse keeps pop­ping up as I tell you about the town of Arroyo. He was the guy that invent­ed the tele­graph between 1832 and 1835. He also invent­ed Morse code with the aid of his friend Alfred Vail in 1838. But he didn’t invent it in Puer­to Rico like some peo­ple mis­tak­en­ly say. Nei­ther was he of Puer­to Rican descent.

So why is he such a promi­nent fig­ure in Arroyo, Puer­to Rico? Well, let’s just say that it’s because of a his­tor­i­cal acci­dent. A hap­py one for sure.

You see, Morse had a daugh­ter called Susan Walk­er Morse who was mar­ried to Edward Lind, a Dan­ish mer­chant that owned the Hacien­da Hen­ri­que­ta in Arroyo.

In 1858 Morse came to Puer­to Rico to vis­it his daugh­ter and grand­chil­dren and fell in love with the Island. He also noticed how long it took to get between the hacien­da and his son in law’s office near the peers. So he installed a two-mile long tele­graph line between the two locations.

This hap­py acci­dent made the town of Arroyo the first Latin Amer­i­can city to have a tele­graph line.

At this point we had struck a weird bal­ance of inter­est­ing places and sheer destruc­tion. The church and muse­um were great. The square was OK and the water­front was piti­ful. So we thought: “maybe we’d fair bet­ter if we hit the beach”. But boy, were we wrong!

We head­ed for the Pun­ta Fig­uras Light­house, which isn’t exact­ly the “the beach”, but by nature is next to the water. Like many land­scape pho­tog­ra­phers, I’m a suck­er for beau­ti­ful light­hous­es. My wife and I have shot dozens of them in the Unit­ed States alone. Even one in Okla­homa, which isn’t a coastal state (figu­ra that one out).

Pun­ta Fig­uras Light­house, Arroyo, Puer­to Rico
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The Pun­ta Fig­uras Light­house is a beau­ti­ful struc­ture that was first lit by the Span­ish gov­ern­ment back in 1893. How­ev­er, it was decom­mis­sioned by the U.S. gov­ern­ment in 1938. After that it was used as a look­out point dur­ing World War II and aban­doned by the U.S. Army in 1963. In 1969 the lens and lantern were destroyed and in 2017 Hur­ri­cane María dam­aged it even more.

Today the light­house is closed, board­ed up and rid­den with graf­fi­ti. Now, here’s my ques­tion: if the light­house is such a mess, why does the gov­ern­ment list it as a tourist attraction?

Puer­to Rico is blessed with a col­lec­tion of close to a dozen light­hous­es around the Island. Some of them are OK and oth­ers are a mess. Now, here’s an idea. How much would it cost to restore them all and offer a “light­house tour of Puer­to Rico” as a tourist package?

It could be com­bined with vis­its to the neigh­bor­ing towns, restau­rants, beach­es and oth­er attrac­tions. It’s not too hard boys. All it takes is a lit­tle imagination.

Port­land Head Light, Maine, USA
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And how do I know that this could work? Because I went up the entire New Eng­land seaboard doing just that: vis­it­ing light­hous­es and cov­ered bridges. In today’s world there’s a tourist for any­thing you can imagine.

Right next to the light­house there’s anoth­er eye­sore that’s weird­ly list­ed among Arroyo’s tourist attrac­tions. It’s the “Pun­ta Guilarte Beach and Vaca­tion Cen­ter”. This used to be a beau­ti­ful area with a very nice beach, but ris­ing sea lev­els and hur­ri­cane María turned it into a mess.

The rea­son: stub­born­ness and stu­pid­i­ty. They built it too close to the water.

This caus­es sev­er­al prob­lems. First it obscures the view for peo­ple not stay­ing at the com­plex. Sec­ond, it clos­es off access to the beach, which is sup­posed to be ille­gal because beach­es in Puer­to Rico are in the pub­lic domain. And third, it assures the even­tu­al destruc­tion of the build­ings as ris­ing sea lev­els cor­rode the foundations.

Pun­ta Guilarte Beach and Vaca­tion Cen­ter, Arroyo, Puer­to Rico
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Today what you have is a closed com­plex with a bunch of build­ings falling into the sea. Iron­i­cal­ly, the main entrance road is still open, rid­den with pot­holes, uncon­trolled veg­e­ta­tion and a closed gate at the end of a very long drive.

Now, here are a cou­ple of ques­tions. Why not close the entrance road where it meets with State Road 3? Why not save peo­ple the has­sle of dri­ving down a destroyed road just to end up at a closed gate? Bet­ter yet, why not stop pro­mot­ing the “Pun­ta Guilarte Beach and Vaca­tion Cen­ter” as a tourist attrac­tion when it’s actu­al­ly closed?

My wife and I walked around the place, took some pic­tures and returned to our car. Dur­ing the brief time that we were there two cars approached the facil­i­ties ask­ing questions.

WHY HARP ON ARROYO?

By now you must be won­der­ing: “why would some­one dri­ve all the way across Puer­to Rico just to show the neg­a­tive aspects of a place”? Well, that has nev­er been our inten­tion in the first place. But, as I always say, at Puer­to Rico By GPS “we tell it like it is”.

I would love to sing the prais­es for every place that we vis­it. But if it’s no good, then that’s what I have to say. Take a look at the fol­low­ing images of Pun­ta Guilarte Beach and Vaca­tion cen­ter and you’ll see what I mean.

And I’m sure that our read­ers and view­ers appre­ci­ate us. After all, wouldn’t it be worse if they hopped on a plane, drove all the way here and wast­ed their hard-earned green­backs? What do you think they’d write on social media?

And the sad part is that many of the towns that we’ve been hard on could actu­al­ly become trav­el gold mines with a lit­tle work and a lit­tle imag­i­na­tion. What they can’t do is to keep sit­ting on their hands wait­ing for the cen­tral or fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, to solve their problems.

In the case of Arroyo the peo­ple are nice… very nice. The groundskeep­er at the Our Lady Of Car­men Parish answered all of our ques­tions and showed us every cor­ner of the tem­ple. At the Old Cus­toms House muse­um it was the same thing. Even though the atten­dant didn’t work at the muse­um, he did his best to answer our questions.

As for the town itself, I detect­ed inac­tiv­i­ty. We were there on a Wednes­day and the place was desert­ed. You could hard­ly see peo­ple on the streets. Come to think of it, I hard­ly saw any stores either.

Like many oth­er small towns on the Island, Arroyo feels like it’s on its way to becom­ing a ghost town. And I say this with great sad­ness because I tru­ly believe that this town has a lot of things going for it.

And here’s one last thing. And this applies to var­i­ous small­er munic­i­pal­i­ties through­out the Island. They’ve been hung out to dry by the cen­tral gov­ern­ment. Maybe it’s time for them to join forces and start doing their own thing.

I mean… it should be obvi­ous by now that who­ev­er sits in the governor’s seat —regard­less of polit­i­cal per­sua­sion— is only going to look out for Num­ber One.

To get to back to San Juan your best bet is to retrace the steps that you took in the morn­ing to get to Arroyo. Bet­ter yet, make sure to copy the GPS coor­di­nates for your hotel before leav­ing in the morn­ing. That way all you’ll have to do is punch them into your GPS and it’ll do the rest.

And talk­ing about San Juan, if you’re plan­ning to vis­it the Old City, save your­self the has­sle of tra­di­tion­al city tours. They’re expen­sive and you’ll be herd­ed along with peo­ple that won’t nec­es­sar­i­ly share your interests.

Instead, order The Old San Juan Walk­ing Tour. It’s packed with use­ful infor­ma­tion about all the main attrac­tions, as well as every GPS coor­di­nate and two hours of exclu­sive online video. That way you’ll be able to —vis­it before you vis­it— and hit the ground run­ning when you arrive in the Old City.

See you next time!

©2023,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