Barranquitas, Where Beauty and History Come Together 

Saint Antho­ny of Pad­ua Parish
(click on image to see it larger)

This week my wife and I vis­it­ed the town of Bar­ran­quitas, Puer­to Rico. It’s a small town that sits almost at the geo­graph­i­cal cen­ter of the main Island of Puer­to Rico.

As you will recall from sev­er­al of my pre­vi­ous posts, Puer­to Rico is a group of islands but it’s not an arch­i­pel­ago. How can that be pos­si­ble? Aren’t they both the same thing? Well, actu­al­ly they’re not, because in this case the arch­i­pel­ago is the Caribbean and Puer­to Rico is a sub­set of islands with­in that larg­er group. Make sense?

In any case, Puer­to Rico is a group of islands com­prised of the larg­er island and sev­er­al small­er ones that include: Vieques, Cule­bra and Culebri­ta to the east, Mona, Moni­to and Desecheo to the west, Caja de Muer­to to the south and sev­er­al oth­er small­er islands and islets.

All this is to say that Bar­ran­quitas is almost at the geo­graph­i­cal cen­ter of that larg­er island that we reg­u­lar­ly refer to as Puer­to Rico.

Dri­ving to Bar­ran­quitas is easy and hard at the same time. Just punch in the coor­di­nates for the main square into any GPS (you can find them in the map below) and you’ll arrive there in a lit­tle over an hour. That’s the easy part. The hard part is all the curves and climb­ing that you’ll have to dri­ve through to get there. It’s straight uphill as soon as you leave the city of Bayamón.

Bar­ran­quitas was one of those towns that I had nev­er vis­it­ed in my life. There are sev­er­al oth­ers on the Island, even though I’ve lived here since 1963. It’s just that I nev­er had a rea­son to go there. In any case, my wife and I hopped in our SUV and took off ear­ly in the morn­ing of March 5th.

Click on image to watch the video

We arrived at the Bar­ran­quitas Bicen­ten­ni­al Square at 8:47am. Some of you have asked how I always know exact­ly the time at which we arrive at each des­ti­na­tion. And the answer is sim­ple. It’s the time­stamp that’s on the first video that I shoot in the morn­ing. That’s how I know.

The Bar­ran­quitas Bicen­ten­ni­al Square (or Plaza Bicen­te­nar­ia de Bar­ran­quitas) is sim­ply stun­ning. It’s looks like you’re some­where in France or Italy, with elab­o­rate iron­work, stat­ues, foun­tains, tiling, beau­ti­ful street lamps and a mar­velous gaze­bo in the cen­ter. Add to that the won­der­ful Saint Antho­ny of Pad­ua Parish in the back­ground and you have a pic­ture per­fect scene that’s unmatched any­where else in Puer­to Rico.

The Bar­ran­quitas Bicen­ten­ni­al Square actu­al­ly has two names. It’s also called the “Mon­sign­or Miguel A. Men­doza Square”, hon­or­ing the town’s beloved parish priest who died back in 2002.

Most squares in Puer­to Rico serve a prac­ti­cal pur­pose. They’re a place to sit, relax and do some peo­ple watch­ing. But not the Bar­ran­quitas Bicen­ten­ni­al Square. It’s much more than that. Of course, you have beau­ti­ful bench­es and trees to pro­tect you from the blis­ter­ing Puer­to Rican sun. But they’re not every-day bench­es. They’re works of art. And so it goes on with every lit­tle detail of this won­der­ful place.

There’s a time cap­sule under the compass
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Under­neath the gaze­bo there’s a time cap­sule, con­tain­ing doc­u­ments about the town’s first 200 years, that was buried there on the town’s 200th anniver­sary and will be dis­in­terred on its 250th birth­day. I didn’t learn this from any doc­u­ment on the Inter­net or oth­er­wise, I actu­al­ly learned it from a local police­man who was watch­ing over the plaza.

On the east side of the square you have the beau­ti­ful Saint Antho­ny of Pad­ua Parish (or Par­ro­quia San Anto­nio De Pad­ua) that looks old and mag­nif­i­cent but it’s actu­al­ly quite new. So why is it that it looks old but it’s actu­al­ly not? Well, as it it turns out, this tem­ple hasn’t had too much luck with the Island’s hurricanes.

The orig­i­nal struc­ture was built between 1804 and 1809. If the present build­ing were that one, it would be con­sid­ered old. But it’s not! The orig­i­nal struc­ture was destroyed by hur­ri­cane San­ta Ana in 1825. just four­teen years after it was fin­ished. The sec­ond and third ver­sions of the tem­ple were destroyed in 1876 and 1928 by hur­ri­canes San Felipe and San Felipe II respec­tive­ly. So the one that you see today is actu­al­ly the fourth attempt, inau­gu­rat­ed in 1933 and remod­eled in 1980.

And, as a side note, it seems like they final­ly got it right, because this one resist­ed hur­ri­cane María back in 2017, which has been the nas­ti­est storm to ever hit the Island.

Saint Antho­ny of Pad­ua Parish isn’t lav­ish at all, but it has that old world charm that’s both relax­ing and invit­ing. My favorite thing about it is that it’s bright, due to the won­der­ful stained glass win­dows that grace every wall. This is impor­tant because some tem­ples can seem musty, dark and uninvit­ing.

The wood­work on the temple’s vault­ed ceil­ings is prob­a­bly one of the things that most leads you to believe that the build­ing is cen­turies old. The altar is aus­tere and sim­ple and the floors are just perfect.

Anoth­er thing that was quite sur­pris­ing were the beau­ti­ful stained glass win­dows, that look like they’ve been hang­ing there for cen­turies and were actu­al­ly brought from Colum­bia back in the 1980’s. With­out them the tem­ple wouldn’t be quite as charm­ing. They’re the ones that lend that bright­ness that I love so much!

City Hall
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As we left Saint Antho­ny of Pad­ua Parish we walked across Bar­ran­quitas Bicen­ten­ni­al Square to City Hall, which sits at the south­west cor­ner of the plaza. Our hope was to obtain infor­ma­tion about the town that we could lat­er use to write our video script as well as this arti­cle. From City Hall we were direct­ed to the town’s Tourism office across the square at the north­west corner.

When we got to the Tourism office we met with a lady who was both nice and unable to help us. I mean, her heart was in the right place and she did every­thing that she could to help us. But she had noth­ing to hand out to us. She even promised to look for infor­ma­tion that she could for­ward to us if we would only leave her our busi­ness card. But the fact remains that she nev­er did.

Luis Muñoz Rivera bust
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As we left the Tourism office we walked up Padre Rivera street and turned west on road 162 towards the Luis Muñoz Rivera House Muse­um. There’s a bust of Muñoz Rivera at the cor­ner of Road 162 and Padre Rivera street. It’s a small plaza that sits on the west side of City Hall.

Luis Muñoz Rivera was born in Bar­ran­quitas on July 27, 1859 dur­ing the last cen­tu­ry of Puer­to Rico’s Span­ish colo­nial era. He was a poet, jour­nal­ist and politi­cian who was instru­men­tal in Puer­to Rico’s strug­gle for auton­o­my from Spain.

He was also Puer­to Rico’s sec­ond res­i­dent com­mis­sion­er between 1911 and 1916, after Fed­eri­co Dege­tau, who we cov­ered dur­ing our vis­it to the neigh­bor­ing town of Aiboni­to. Dur­ing his tenure he strug­gled to obtain an autonomous sta­tus for the Island under Amer­i­can rule as the one he strived for under Span­ish rule.

Luis Muñoz Rivera House Museum
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That sta­tus was grant­ed a year after his death, under the Jones–Shafroth Act of 1917 (grant­i­ng Puer­to Ricans Amer­i­can cit­i­zen­ship). The Law was signed on March 2,1917 —a month before the US declared war on Ger­many on April 1917. Two months lat­er, The US Con­gress enact­ed the Selec­tive Ser­vice Act of 1917 (a com­pul­so­ry enlist­ment) that even­tu­al­ly make all Puer­to Rican men between the 18 to 45 eleg­i­ble for the draft. Approx­i­mate 20,000 Puer­to Ricans served in World War I. Coin­ci­dence? You tell me.

But our home town hero’s sto­ry doesn’t end there. He was also father to Luis Muñoz Marín, who was actu­al­ly born of For­t­aleza Street in Old San Juan and became the first island-born Puer­to Rican to be elect­ed gov­er­nor of Puer­to Rico in 1948.

Muñoz Marín and his new­ly formed Pop­u­lar Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty gov­erned Puer­to Rico dur­ing 28 con­sec­u­tive years and trans­formed the Island from “the poor house of the Caribbean” into an indus­tri­al pow­er­house. We cov­ered Muñoz Marín in the sec­ond arti­cle of this series ded­i­cat­ed to the town of Tru­jil­lo Alto.

The Muñoz Rivera House Muse­um must be full to the brim with doc­u­ments and mem­o­ra­bil­ia hon­or­ing the life of tis illus­tri­ous Puer­to Rican. But sad­ly, we couldn’t see them, because the muse­um was closed.

Now remem­ber, we vis­it­ed Bar­ran­quitas on the morn­ing of March 5th. That was a Tuesday.

There was a sign next to the door say­ing that muse­um hours were Tues­days thru Sun­days, from 8:30am to 4:30pm. Yet there we were, at 9:54, and the place was closed.

So what did we do? Well, our first thought was “maybe the lady at the tourism office knows when it will be open”. So we returned to the tourism office, only to learn that the lady had no idea who was sup­posed to be at the muse­um or if we could expect him/her at all.

So off we went, once again, up Padre Rivera street, turned west at road 162, passed in front of the Muñoz Rivera House Muse­um and turned left at the cor­ner of road 162 and road 756. There we turned south, passed sev­er­al hous­es and reached the Muñoz Rivera Mau­soleum on the right hand side.

Luis Muñoz Rivera Mausoleum
(click on image to see it larger)

The Muñoz Rivera Mau­soleum is a pub­lic mon­u­ment were you’ll find the tombs of Luis Muñoz Rivera, his wife Amalia Marín Castil­la, his son Luis Muñoz Marín and his daugh­ter-in-law Inés María Men­doza. Sad­ly, that too was closed. So we shot some footage for our video and head­ed for our car.

Iron­work
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Along the way I couldn’t help notic­ing the elab­o­rate iron­work that seems to be every­where in Bar­ran­quitas. And I’m not talk­ing only about the Bar­ran­quitas Bicen­ten­ni­al Square. I’m talk­ing about reg­u­lar every­day hous­es. Not expen­sive hous­es, but just plain Jane hous­es. Beau­ti­ful orna­men­tal iron­work sim­ply seems to be “a thing” in this lit­tle town.

As we approached our SUV we noticed a small muse­um across the street. It’s actu­al­ly on the north­east cor­ner of the Saint Antho­ny Of Pad­ua build­ing, which is actu­al­ly the rear of the build­ing. There’s a small gift shop there, with church-relat­ed mer­chan­dize, and a small muse­um at the end ded­i­cat­ed to the world of movies.

So what’s the con­nec­tion. Well, as it turns out, many years ago that cor­ner of the Saint Antho­ny Of Pad­ua build­ing used to be a movie the­ater. You’ll find all sorts of inter­est­ing mem­o­ra­bil­ia there, includ­ing: the orig­i­nal pro­jec­tors (which look like you could turn them on and they would actu­al­ly work), var­i­ous orig­i­nal seats, and a col­lec­tion of movie posters from the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s.

Many peo­ple would pass on this one, but if you’re a movie buff like me you’ll find it inter­est­ing. Besides, it’s free. So what’s the harm in ded­i­cat­ing it 10 min­utes of your time?

There were still a cou­ple of places left that we want­ed to vis­it, so we decid­ed to head for the out­skirts of town. Our first stop was at the “Bar­ran­quitas Lin­ear Walk” or “Paseo Lin­eal de Bar­ran­quitas”. Like every­thing else we were only able to find tid­bits of infor­ma­tion here and there that didn’t actu­al­ly say much. So I’ll tell you what we observed.

Bar­ran­quitas Lin­ear Walk
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The only fig­ure, that I did find, stat­ed that the walk was 466 meters long. But that would be .29 miles , accord­ing to my math, and I know for a fact that it’s much longer than that. 

The walk bor­ders a ravine that goes down to the Bar­ran­quitas riv­er. On the oth­er side you have the town of Bar­ran­quitas. Nee­dles to say, the com­mand­ing view of the town alone is worth the trip.

North View of Barranquitas
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Then there’s the walk itself, where peo­ple exer­cise dur­ing morn­ings and evenings while they take in the view and the fresh air. Admit­ted­ly, the area does need some clean­ing and a fresh coat of paint, but we’ll blame that on hur­ri­cane María like the rest of Puer­to Rico’s woes.

Across the street you have the “Bar­ran­quitas Swing” or “El Colum­pio de Bar­ran­quitas”, where you can make that won­der­ful self­ie to send friends and fam­i­ly back home.

Bar­ran­quitas Swing “El Columpio”
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As we left “the swing” we head­ed fur­ther into the Bar­ran­quitas coun­try­side in search of “El Cor­ti­jo”, an old hacien­da with a cas­tle-like struc­ture that appears on the Inter­net as one of Bar­ran­quitas’ top attrac­tions. Well, just because it’s on the Inter­net it doesn’t have to be true”, because all we could see of “El Cor­ti­jo” was a closed gate.

We did how­ev­er cap­ture a beau­ti­ful view of the town of Bar­ran­quitas that became the thumb­nail for our video. So I guess the trip wasn’t a total waste of time.

Final­ly, there’s one place left in Bar­ran­quitas that we haven’t men­tioned. I’m talk­ing about the San Cristóbal Canyon or “El Cañón de San Cristóbal”. It sits between the town of Bar­ran­quitas and the neigh­bor­ing town of Aiboni­to and I cov­ered it when we vis­it­ed that town.

The San Cristóbal Canyon is the largest and deep­est canyon in the Caribbean and at its deep­est point has a ver­ti­cal drop of 800 feet. The canyon is oper­at­ed by the Puer­to Rico Con­ser­va­tion Trust or “Fide­icomiso de Con­ser­vación de Puer­to Rico” who oper­ates under the com­mer­cial name: “Para la Naturaleza”.

San Cristóbal Canyon

Guid­ed tours are con­duct­ed peri­od­i­cal­ly by expe­ri­enced guides. For infor­ma­tion vis­it: https://www.paralanaturaleza.org/ .

Oh, and one last thing about “el cañón”. I took one of those tours about 25–30 years ago, when I was a young or “young-er” man. And at that time I was con­vinced that I was going to die in that canyon.

Why? Because the place is slip­pery, humid and hilly. Real­ly hilly. And you have to remem­ber that the same 800 feet that you’ll climb down are the 800 feet that you’ll have to climb back up. So about halfway through, on my way back, I was ready to die.

That said, the place is stun­ning. Oh, and did I men­tion that it has the tallest water­fall in Puer­to Rico? If you’re a young health per­son, and you love adven­ture, then this is one place that you can’t miss.

Dri­ving back to San Juan takes about an hour under nor­mal con­di­tions. There are sev­er­al routes but the eas­i­est is back through Naran­ji­to and Bayamón. It also offers the most scenic views.

Oh, and one last thing. The ride back is most­ly down­hill, so make sure not to ride you brake ped­al or you’ll run out of brakes before you get to flat­ter land.

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!

©2024,Orlando Mer­gal, MA
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Bilin­gual Con­tent Cre­ator, Blog­ger, Podcaster,
Author, Pho­tog­ra­ph­er and New Media Expert
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