Bayamón, A Hidden Treasure Just 13 Miles Away
“My tale about spending a day in “la ciudad del chicharrón””

Par­ro­quia de la San­ta Cruz (Holy Cross Par­rish) (Click on image to see it larger)

It was the morn­ing of Feb­ru­ary 28, 2023. The sky out­side was so blue that it made your eyes hurt. And to top it all off, the tem­per­a­ture was a mild 78 degrees. It was the per­fect day to go for a walk. So why not do it in a place that I hadn’t vis­it­ed in 50 years; a place that’s only about 13 miles away from the tourist area?

Isn’t amaz­ing how some­times you have places right next to you and they sim­ply remain ignored? It’s not that I had­n’t vis­it­ed the munic­i­pal­i­ty of Bayamón in 50 years. Of course I have. But the lit­tle town of Bayamón itself… well, the last time I was there was in 1973.

You see, my first two years of col­lege took place in Bayamón, at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Puer­to Rico’s “Cole­gio Region­al”. I was just 16 ½ and the “cole­gio” had just opened its doors. So I was one of the orig­i­nal 250 stu­dents. And as you might imag­ine, I have an emo­tion­al attach­ment to this town.

We arrived in Bayamón close to 9:00am. I’m not going to give you the “blow by blow” sequence on how we got there. You can watch that in detail on the accom­pa­ny­ing video. What I will say is that it was easy. And even though it was a Tues­day, the traf­fic was sur­pris­ing­ly light.

When we got to town the first thing that we did was dri­ve around for a while just to get our bear­ings. As we passed in front of the old city hall build­ing there was a lady out­side that turned out to be the door atten­dant for the Oller Art Muse­um. My wife Zory walked up to her and asked her where we could park. She direct­ed us towards a park­ing struc­ture about a block and a half away.

When we got there I couldn’t believe my eyes. It’s a huge build­ing, albeit a lit­tle dif­fi­cult to maneu­ver in, that has one huge advan­tage. Well, actu­al­ly two. It’s right in the mid­dle of town and it only costs a dol­lar to park for the entire day!

The city of Bayamón is pep­pered with inter­est­ing things to see. It’s also clean, well kept and the streets are pret­ty good. And just so you under­stand me, “pret­ty good” is a com­pli­ment, because late­ly streets in Puer­to Rico have been terrible.

As we left the park­ing struc­ture our first stop was at the Holy Cross Parish (Par­ro­quia de la San­ta Cruz), a beau­ti­ful tem­ple built in the late 18th Cen­tu­ry. Con­struc­tion start­ed in 1772; the same year that the town was found­ed in a place called “Alto del Embarcadero”.

When my wife and I start­ed pro­duc­ing this series, back in Jan­u­ary, we had sev­er­al miss­es try­ing to see the inte­ri­or of Roman Catholic church­es on the Island (Car­oli­na and Tru­jil­lo Alto, to name two). Some­how it seemed like they were all closed. Then we dis­cov­ered that —for some rea­son that we still don’t under­stand— they seem to be open ear­ly in the morn­ing and close at around 10:00am. So now we go first thing in the morn­ing to make sure that we catch them open.

The “Par­ro­quia de la San­ta Cruz” was not only open. It was beau­ti­ful! I’m not an archi­tect, so I’m not going to make a fool of myself try­ing to tell you what style it is or which struc­ture it fol­lows. The fact is that I don’t know, and frankly I don’t care. All I can tell you is that it’s great. It has that Euro­pean feel, with wide brick walls and stained glass win­dows. And as far as the upkeep goes, it looks like it was built a year ago. They keep it in tip-top condition.

The tree plant­ed by Dr. Agustín Stahl (click on image to see it larger)

Right next to the “Par­ro­quia de la San­ta Cruz” is Bayamón’s town square. It’s a large pub­lic area filled with gaze­bos, lots of bench­es for peo­ple watch­ing and large trees that pro­vide ample shade. One of those trees has a spe­cial claim to fame. It was plant­ed in 1905 by Dr. Agustín Stahl, a local botanist who is one of the town’s most beloved heroes. Across the street there are sev­er­al addi­tion­al build­ings that are shin­ing exam­ples of the towns orig­i­nal architecture.

Maybe you’re ask­ing your­self: “yeah, all of that sounds great, but how am I going to find all those places”? Well, don’t wor­ry, because —as in all my posts— there’s a GPS map at the bot­tom with pins for every loca­tion men­tioned. Just click on any pin and it will give you the GPS coordinates.

A mon­u­ment to the Bible’s Three Wise Men (click on image to see it larger)

On the south­east­ern cor­ner of the square there’s a stone mon­u­ment hon­or­ing the Bible’s “three wise men” and right across the street is the Fran­cis­co Oller muse­um. How­ev­er, the sign on the wall sim­ply says: “Museo Oller”. That build­ing used to be Bayamón’s City Hall.

Fran­cis­co Oller was born in Bayamón in 1833. He was the first Puer­to Rican to trav­el to Europe to study paint­ing in Madrid. He played a role in the foun­da­tion of the Impres­sion­ist move­ment in France and was instru­men­tal in bring­ing that pic­to­r­i­al cur­rent to Spain.

The muse­um has paint­ings by many Puer­to Rican artists and a sec­tion on the sec­ond floor ded­i­cat­ed exclu­sive­ly to Oller’s work. We were allowed to film what­ev­er we wished, except for the Oller exhib­it on the sec­ond floor. I guess it’s fair that if you wish to see his work you should vis­it his muse­um. Don’t you think?

And let me tell you, it was fantastic.

When we left the muse­um there was this pen­e­trat­ing smell of cof­fee in the air. Puer­to Rican’s are cof­fee lovers by nature. So much so that when my wife and I trav­el to the U.S. Nation­al Parks we car­ry sev­er­al pounds of Puer­to Rican cof­fee in our suit­case, along with an expres­so cof­fee mak­er, just to have our morn­ing brew. In some cas­es we’ve even car­ried a small elec­tric range to do the job right.

So, as you can imag­ine, we were sim­ply hypnotized.

This prac­tice of car­ry­ing large amounts of cof­fee in our lug­gage has also raised the occa­sion­al red flag with our TSA friends at the air­port, since drug smug­glers use cof­fee to mask the smell of cocaine. But we don’t care because we have noth­ing to hide. They just open your bag, con­firm that it’s only cof­fee and away we go.

From the Oller Muse­um we walked north on Dege­tau street, for about half a block, until we reached the “Paseo Bar­bosa”. It’s a tree cov­ered prom­e­nade that tra­vers­es two city blocks until it reach­es what used to be the home of Dr. José Cel­so Bar­bosa.

Bar­bosa was a Puer­to Rican physi­cian, soci­ol­o­gist and polit­i­cal leader, born in 1857 in Bayamón, who is also rec­og­nized as the father of the state­hood move­ment on the Island. He was the first Puer­to Rican, and one of the first per­sons of African descent, to earn a med­ical degree in the Unit­ed States.

He also intro­duced the inno­v­a­tive idea of employ­ers pay­ing a fee for the future med­ical needs of their employ­ees (a very ear­ly form of what we now call health insurance).

The smell of cof­fee was get­ting stronger so I just had to ask. The muse­um atten­dant point­ed us towards a small estab­lish­ment, about half a block south, were a bunch of “young­sters” had estab­lished a “tor­refac­ción” called “Café 2150”. In Eng­lish a “tor­refac­ción” is a “cof­fee roast­ing facil­i­ty”, in the tra­di­tion of how Puer­to Rican cof­fee has been pro­duced for cen­turies. You can actu­al­ly wit­ness the cof­fee being process through a long glass window.

On the way to the cof­fee place we passed a small prom­e­nade where sev­er­al small busi­ness­es sell arti­sanal prod­ucts. There’s also a small bar at the end, with “al fres­co” tables, that gets its shade from sev­er­al large trees and the train tracks above.

Now, while we’re still far from done with Bayamón, let me give you my pre­lim­i­nary opin­ion about this great town. Puer­to Rico can be very polit­i­cal in nature and most Puer­to Ricans belong to their own “tribe”, if you will. But there’s a small group of may­ors that have sim­ply risen above all that noise. They sim­ply do their job and they do it well.

They’re not saints. Don’t get me wrong. But they just stay away from the polit­i­cal fray and do what they were elect­ed to do. Hence, they’re hard­ly ever in the news.

I could name them all —because they’re not that many— but I’d prob­a­bly for­get some­one. So let’s just say that the may­or of Bayamón belongs to that elite group. He keeps his town in pris­tine shape, does his job, stays away from every day stri­den­cy and hon­ors who needs to be hon­ored, regard­less of polit­i­cal ties.

So how was my cof­fee? To die for!!!

After leav­ing the cof­fee place we walked north just to see sev­er­al old build­ings on the same street. We didn’t go in. In fact, many of them were closed. But they’re just pret­ty, and we want­ed to see them.

Cham­ber of Commerce

The first was the old “Cham­ber of Com­merce” build­ing, on the cor­ner of road 855 and Bar­bosa street. And just so you know, Road 855 is also called Dr. Veve street. It’s just that it has a num­ber as well.

On the same cor­ner, across the street, is the old “Oller The­ater”, built in 1938 as a com­mu­ni­ty the­ater. And final­ly, anoth­er block north is the old “Loa­ri­na” lodge on one cor­ner and a rather large food truck court on the oth­er, where the food trucks aren’t actu­al­ly food trucks. They’re actu­al­ly car­go trail­ers that are both larg­er and look bet­ter than reg­u­lar food trucks.

From there we had only two places left to vis­it, but they weren’t with­in walk­ing dis­tance. So we walked sev­er­al blocks back to our $1 park­ing and got our car.

In my first para­graph I told you that the tem­per­a­ture that day was a cool 78° Faren­heit. And it was! But even with 78° the blis­ter­ing Caribbean sun will do a num­ber on your skin. So if you’re plan­ning to do this kind of “urban explo­ration” my advise is that you bring along a bot­tle of sun­block; the high­er the SPF the bet­ter. Oh, and a bot­tle of water won’t hurt either.

Hacien­da San­ta Ana

Our next stop was at Hacien­da San­ta Ana, a once sug­ar cane plan­ta­tion, estab­lished in 1787 that has been pro­duc­ing Puer­to Rico’s finest rum, “Ron del Bar­ril­i­to” since 1880.

Once again, the exact turn-by-turn direc­tions to get to Hacien­da San­ta Ana are in the accom­pa­ny­ing video, but the exact coor­di­nates are in the map at the end of this post.

Hacien­da San­ta Ana

When we arrived there was and elec­tron­ic gate with an inter­com sys­tem and no guard. So I pressed the but­ton a cou­ple of times and a few sec­onds lat­er I was buzzed in. There’s a recep­tion cen­ter towards the left and an ample park­ing area behind it.

We parked, walked inside and where received by an ami­ca­ble young lady. I told here who I was, what I was doing, and that I was hop­ing to have some­one show us the place for Puer­to Rico By GPS. She referred us to a young man that turned out to be Edgar­do J. Sánchez, the Oper­a­tions Director.

Edgar­do J. Sánchez, our host

Years of expe­ri­ence doing what I do have taught me that the best approach is almost always the frank and direct one. So I told him who I was, what I was doing and that I was look­ing to have some­one show us the place for Puer­to Rico By GPS. I also made it clear —albeit, not in so many words— that my inten­tions weren’t to pay for the tour or to par­tic­i­pate in any sort of “tast­ing”. To my sur­prise, his response was: “do you have time right now”?

So, we spent the bet­ter part of the next hour explor­ing the facil­i­ties of “Ron del Barrilito”.

And, like the famous Steve Jobs would have said, here’s one more thing. Regard­less of your views on the con­sump­tion of alco­holic bev­er­ages, “Ron Del Bar­ril­i­to” is tru­ly an arti­sanal prod­uct who’s his­to­ry and devel­op­ment has been inter­wo­ven with that of Bayamón since the very beginning.

“Ron del Bar­ril­i­to” is not your aver­age rum. Most com­mer­cial rums are aged for a year, while “Ron del Barrilito’s” most afford­able bot­tle is aged from 3 to 5. That alone makes for a smoother, tasti­er prod­uct. From there it only gets bet­ter, going to 10, 20 and even 35 years in the case of their 5‑Star prod­uct. And there’s anoth­er thing that adds to this rum’s excel­lence. “Ron Del Bar­ril­i­to” is only aged in vin­tage white oak sher­ry bar­rels, nev­er in new bar­rels. This lends a spe­cial taste to the prod­uct that you can’t get any oth­er way.

Peo­ple from all over the world come to enjoy the tour of their facil­i­ties, learn about the his­to­ry of the Fer­nán­dez fam­i­ly, sam­ple their dif­fer­ent prod­ucts and learn to com­bine them and mix them. And in case you’re won­der­ing, yes there is a tour where you get to taste that 35-year-old masterpiece.

For more infor­ma­tion vis­it their web­site or call 787–415-8601.

Bayamón Muse­um of Art

It was close to 3:30pm when we con­clud­ed the tour of Hacien­da San­ta Ana, so I fig­ured that we had about an hour to squeeze in one more place. That place was the Bayamón Muse­um of Art, locat­ed with­in the Bayamón Sci­ence Park, about three miles away.

Bayamón Sci­ence Park

Once again, the turn by turn instruc­tions to get to the Bayamón Muse­um of Art are in the accom­pa­ny­ing video, but if you want to do your own thing the GPS coor­di­nates are below.

The Bayamón Muse­um of Art is a mod­ern muse­um that has one claim to fame: “every­thing inside has been made by Puer­to Rican artists”. It has a huge per­ma­nent col­lec­tion by many of the Island’s most noto­ri­ous artists and presents itin­er­at­ing col­lec­tions to keep the offer­ing fresh and exciting.

It was the per­fect place to end a day of walk­ing under Puer­to Rico’s blis­ter­ing sun.

Lat­er on that day, as I was home going over the day’s events with my wife, it struck me that there was one thing that I had total­ly missed dur­ing our adven­ture in Bayamón. It was some­thing that I grew accus­tomed to dur­ing my first two years of col­lege in that town. I couldn’t believe it!!! How could I have missed it? I didn’t see any “chichar­ron” ven­dors any­where!!! After all, the town’s moniker is “la ciu­dad del chichar­rón” (the city of chichar­rón, if you will).

Chichar­ron de Bayamón Pushcart

When I was a stu­dent you’d see push­carts sell­ing “chichar­rón con pan de hogaza” on every cor­ner. And what’s that, you might ask? Well, chichar­rón is a “pork rind”. But not just any pork rind. The ones in Bayamón were about 18 inch­es across. Just to give you a men­tal pic­ture, that will stick in your mind for­ev­er, imag­ine a corn flake the size of an LP record!

Well, you’d buy one of those things and it would come with a giant piece of bread. And back in 1971 it would set you back about a dol­lar. I won­der if they’re still around?

If you’re vis­it­ing Puer­to Rico in the near­by future, and you’d like to explore places that are tru­ly off the beat­en path, then Bayamón is an excel­lent option. The city is clean, safe and easy to nav­i­gate. And with a one dol­lar park­ing to boot you can’t go wrong!

And here’s an assign­ment for you. If you hap­pen to dis­cov­er where they have that won­der­ful “chichar­ron de Bayamón”, drop me a line. I’d love to step back in time.

Until next time,

©2023,Orlando Mer­gal, MA
____________________

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