Cataño, Puerto Rico, Where Possibilities Meet Reality 

A trib­ute to Taíno her­itage (click on image to see it larger)

I start­ed this series about “5 Must-See Places in the town of ???” last Jan­u­ary in the town of Car­oli­na. And while some towns have more than lived up to my expec­ta­tions, oth­ers have not quite hit the mark. I guess you can find “5 Must-See” places any­where, if you look hard enough, but in some cas­es I just ask myself “don’t these peo­ple see the pos­si­bil­i­ties”? Case in point, the town of Cataño, Puer­to Rico.

I used to be a fan of rev­erend Robert Schuller. Not because of his reli­gious per­sua­sions, but because of his phi­los­o­phy of “pos­si­bil­i­ty think­ing”. You can’t walk along the Cataño prom­e­nade with­out ask­ing your­self: “why isn’t this place a tourism pow­er­house like its sis­ter city Old San Juan to the north”? After all, the dis­tance between them —as the crow flies— is less than 2 miles.

Fur­ther­more, there’s a fer­ry ser­vice that has been con­nect­ing these two cities unin­ter­rupt­ed­ly since 1853, albeit in the begin­ning it was more of a car­go ser­vice than a peo­ple trans­port operation.

In any case, Zory and I vis­it­ed Cataño on Thurs­day, March 16 to cov­er the town for this series. As with all towns we emailed the mayor’s office ask­ing for sup­port in the way of infor­ma­tion and maybe some­one that could point us in the right direc­tion. The silence was deaf­en­ing. I guess the fact that the pre­vi­ous may­or (the one that was in office until Novem­ber 30, 2021) is being indict­ed for fed­er­al cor­rup­tion charges could have had some­thing to do with that. In any case, we didn’t insist.

Cataño is home to the Bac­ardí Rum Dis­tillery, the world’s largest rum dis­tillery, so we attempt­ed to con­tact them as well. But, after two weeks of fol­low up, and them con­tin­u­ous­ly drag­ging their feet, they answered our request at the last minute, when our video was close to com­ple­tion. So that’s why they’re not in our video or on this arti­cle. If you want infor­ma­tion about Bac­ar­di “google them”!

Vis­it­ing Cataño with Zorai­da remind­ed me of our vis­it to Venice, Italy, way back in 1984. That was the first time that Zory and I ven­tured into this world of “self-guid­ed” adven­tures. We sim­ply booked a 44-day trip to Spain and end­ed up explor­ing most of south­ern Spain, as well as a sig­nif­i­cant part of Italy. And we did it on our own, guid­ed by what —back then— used to be called “Michellin Guides”.

Of course, nowa­days Michellin Guides have evolved into a web assist­ed ser­vice, but back then they were sim­ply small green books that you would buy for each region of Europe and ven­ture out on your own. We also used a series of trav­el books called “Let’s Go” that were also quite good. Those no longer exist.

In any case, when we got to Venice we stayed at a place called “El Lido”. Back then it was a qui­et neigh­bor­hood, filled with small hotels and restau­rants, where you would catch a fer­ry called “the Vaporet­to” that would take you straight to Venice. Today “El Lido” is a full blown tourist des­ti­na­tion where, among oth­er things, they cel­e­brate the Venice Film Festival.

You can stay with­in Venice if you want, but it’s a lot more expen­sive. After all, the city isn’t get­ting any larg­er, so as more tourism comes in, it’s a mat­ter of sup­ply and demand. That’s how “El Lido” got so pop­u­lar, by pick­ing up the slack between Venice’s sup­ply and demand. Even so, I don’t think it’s as afford­able as when we visited.

What I’m going to say next is only my per­cep­tion. And God knows that my ideas have gone against the grain before, when it comes to tourism in Puer­to Rico. Why can’t the gov­ern­ment of Puer­to Rico (specif­i­cal­ly the gov­ern­ment of Old San Juan) real­ly blow up tourism in the Old City?

By the way, you don’t do that by adding more con­crete megas­truc­tures and allow­ing the city’s his­to­ry to be destroyed. You do it by pre­serv­ing Old San Juan’s pat­ri­mo­ny and return­ing it to its orig­i­nal essence. That would mean clos­ing the City to vehic­u­lar traf­fic, repaving the streets with “ado­quines” that would resem­ble the orig­i­nals as much as pos­si­ble, and mak­ing it a walk­a­ble city. All of it!!!

It’s not that hard. All you have to do is look at sim­i­lar cities in Spain, Por­tu­gal, France, Italy, Ger­many and Greece. They’ve all elim­i­nat­ed auto­mo­biles and their economies are going through the roof. Maybe there’s a hint there.

View of Old San Juan from Cataño, Puer­to Rico

A pros­per­ous Old San Juan could gen­er­ate more than enough tourism to sup­port the Old City and the north­ern rim of Cataño. It could become the “El Lido” of the Caribbean with dozens of small hotels, restau­rants, enter­tain­ment and “the view”. Oh my God, the view of Old San Juan from the Cataño side is sim­ply breathtaking.

Zorai­da and I actu­al­ly took the fer­ry in Old San Juan and jumped over to the Cataño side. The fer­ry itself is quite good, albeit they only have a sin­gle boat. That’s right, a sin­gle boat that goes back and forth all day long. What could go wrong there?

That said, the ter­mi­nals are quite mod­ern and clean, and the ser­vice works like clock­work. On the Cataño end the facil­i­ties are just as good.

When you get to Cataño there’s a long prom­e­nade that bor­ders the bay east and west of the fer­ry ter­mi­nal. We walked west for a cou­ple of miles until we reached the famous —or should I say infa­mous— Cataño Pyra­mid. More on that in a minute.

The Cataño gov­ern­ment has been improv­ing this area for years build­ing a two lane street named “Las Ner­iedas”, but it seems like they’ve run into legal snags in their attempt to expro­pri­ate local residents.

The prom­e­nade is quite nice, with recre­ation facil­i­ties for the younger crowd and sit­ting pro­vi­sions for peo­ple-watch­ing adults. It is, how­ev­er, rather timid in the way of trees. I don’t know if hur­ri­canes María and Fiona blew away whichev­er trees were there, or if they were nev­er put there to begin with, but there are very few places to hide from the blis­ter­ing Puer­to Rican sun.

Cataño Prom­e­nade chil­dren’s recre­ation facilities

That would have been an excel­lent con­cern to address with a city offi­cial, but, when they don’t respond, you can only speculate.

To no one’s sur­prise, on the oth­er edge you have the same sit­u­a­tion. The gov­ern­ment built a beau­ti­ful prom­e­nade, along the city wall, that goes from San Juan Gate to the bot­tom of Fort San Felipe del Mor­ro. Once again, they did a beau­ti­ful job, but they for­got the trees. As a result hard­ly any­one uses it, because the Caribbean sun is sim­ply too much.

Cataño Prom­e­nade and Con­ven­tion Center

We walked along the water’s edge past the Cataño Con­ven­tion Cen­ter (hard­ly what you would visu­al­ize a con­ven­tion cen­ter to be), a large stage where they occa­sion­al­ly cel­e­brate street fes­ti­vals, a stat­ue cel­e­brat­ing Taíno cul­ture, a small children’s area, a beau­ti­ful board­walk that goes over the fisherman’s area and even­tu­al­ly reached the Cataño Pyramid.

This hare-brained project was built sev­er­al decades ago. If I recall cor­rect­ly, it was done dur­ing the admin­is­tra­tion of Edwin Rivera Sier­ra, a rather col­or­ful char­ac­ter that was accused of cor­rup­tion, in his own right, sev­er­al times, but was nev­er pros­e­cut­ed.  He also trav­eled to Rusia and acquired a huge stat­ue of Christo­pher Colum­bus called “Birth of the New World”.

Christo­pher Colum­bus Statue

The stat­ue mea­sured a whop­ping 350 feet (45 feet more than the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty) and was orig­i­nal­ly offered to the Unit­ed States. The piece was reject­ed by the U.S. gov­ern­ment and even­tu­al­ly found its way to Cataño, where it laid in parts for years. Even­tu­al­ly it was erect­ed in the neigh­bor­ing town of Areci­bo (about 45 miles to the west) where it lan­guish­es in the sun.

There are many things to say about Edwin Rivera Sier­ra, some good and some not so much, but I’m just going to leave it at that. As for the pyra­mid, there have been attempts to restore it and con­vert it into an elec­tron­ic library. But giv­en the fact that it’s right in front of the Cataño water­front, where the salty air would sure­ly do a num­ber on it, I’m not con­vinced that it would be a good idea.

The Cataño Pyramid

In the mean­time it’s sim­ply an eye­sore; anoth­er exam­ple of the pharaon­ic projects that politi­cians take on to enthuse an igno­rant electorate.

It was get­ting late and my wife and I were going to miss our fer­ry if we didn’t hur­ry. So we start­ed walk­ing east back to the fer­ry ter­mi­nal. Like I men­tioned in the short video that I made about Cataño, this a munic­i­pal­i­ty of con­trasts. You have lots of mon­ey that goes into the import/export busi­ness, the oil refin­ing sec­tor and the rum dis­tillery. But at the same time you have lots of poverty.

With pover­ty comes poor edu­ca­tion and a peo­ple that fall prey to projects like the Cataño Pyramid.

Cataño is a beau­ti­ful place with lots of pos­si­bil­i­ties. The only thing miss­ing is an hon­est gov­ern­ment and the will to become the jew­el that it cer­tain­ly could be.

I mean, all you have to do is go there!!! Talk about “loca­tion”, “loca­tion”, “loca­tion”… You can’t do much bet­ter than Cataño.

See you next time,

©2023,Orlando Mer­gal, MA
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