Cayey, Puerto Rico | Food, Nature and Art 

Ramón Frade Square (click on image to see it larger)

It was 8:38 in the morn­ing, on May 26th, and my wife and I were park­ing in front of the Ramón Frade Square in the town of Cayey, Puer­to Rico. The weath­er­man had announced a max­i­mum tem­per­a­ture for the day of 108° F, so we planned to be in and out before noon. Well, as you will learn through­out this post that wasn’t the case.

To get to Cayey we just punched the fol­low­ing coor­di­nates into our GPS and it guid­ed us straight to the Ramón Frade Square (18.112760, ‑66.166262). For more infor­ma­tion about arriv­ing in Cayey please watch the video below. 

Cayey was my father’s birth­place, so I was curi­ous about it. Hav­ing lived in Puer­to Rico since 1963, I must admit that the only times that I had vis­it­ed Cayey was on my way to some­where else. Not once had I actu­al­ly walked its streets. So you can imag­ine how it felt to walk on the same plaza where my father would shine shoes as a 10-year-old boy back in 1923.

Cayey is a very nice town that seems clean and well kept. There’s some con­struc­tion going on south­west of the Frade Square, but sur­pris­ing­ly there was hard­ly any traf­fic congestion.

Our first stop was at the “Nues­tra Seño­ra de la Asun­ción Parish” a beau­ti­ful 18th cen­tu­ry Roman Catholic tem­ple, paint­ed in blue, that sits on the east­ern side of Frade Square. Expe­ri­ence has taught us that most Roman Catholic church­es in Puer­to Rico open ear­ly in the morn­ings to cel­e­brate mass and close after 9:00 or 10:00 am.

It’s a sad fact of life that crime has risen dra­mat­i­cal­ly on the Island. This is a con­cern for church­es in gen­er­al since they are the per­fect tar­get for their P.A. sys­tems, reli­gious arti­facts and for van­dal­ism. Oth­er denom­i­na­tions are not as attrac­tive for these hood­lums since they do not have ear­ly morn­ing rituals.

Anoth­er thing I’ve noticed is that church offi­cials on the Island don’t seem to under­stand that these tem­ples are also attrac­tive as tourist des­ti­na­tions. The fact that they are old, archi­tec­tural­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed and well kept makes them appeal­ing to tourists regard­less of their reli­gious beliefs.

Hence, many times we get to one of these tem­ples when the ear­ly mass is about to and we are tact­ful­ly shown the door sev­er­al min­utes lat­er. That’s not always the case but it cer­tain­ly was in Cayey.

In any case, the “Nues­tra Seño­ra de la Asun­ción Parish” looks like some­thing straight out of Europe. The orig­i­nal tem­ple was built in 1815 and mod­i­fied in 1889. On Decem­ber 10, 1984 it was added to the Nation­al Reg­is­ter of His­toric Places of the Unit­ed States.

In 2016 the munic­i­pal­i­ty of Cayey decid­ed to redo the Ramón Frade Square and over 500 buri­als were found in the frontal area of the tem­ple, along with a part of the orig­i­nal foun­da­tion. The remains were relo­cat­ed to a near­by rest­ing place to pre­serve their dig­ni­ty and integri­ty and repli­cas were placed in the orig­i­nal loca­tions to cre­ate an open air exhibit.

The exhib­it is right in front of the church entrance and it lends a sense of his­tor­i­cal con­text to an oth­er­wise mod­ern envi­ron­ment. There is abun­dant sig­nage cov­er­ing every aspect of the exhibit.

On the inside the church has beau­ti­ful wide columns, tall arched ceil­ings and mahogany pews, all of which cre­ate an aus­tere but invit­ing environment.

As we left the tem­ple we went for a stroll along the Ramón Frade Square. Ramón Frade de León was a Puer­to Rican visu­al artist and archi­tect who lived between the years 1875 and 1954. His real­ist paint­ing style cap­tured the lifestyle of ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry Puer­to Ricans.

There’s also a muse­um with his most icon­ic paint­ings at the near­by cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Puer­to Rico, but it was closed the day that we vis­it­ed town.

Ramón Frade de León Band Shell (click on image to see it larger)

Final­ly, the band­shell on the south end of the square is dec­o­rat­ed with a por­trait of Frade, as well as many of his most famous paintings.

Around the square there are small cafes and tables where you can relax and watch life go by. On the far north­west­ern cor­ner of the square, on the cor­ner of Núñez Romeu and Luis Muñoz Rivera, is a gray and white build­ing that was once the orig­i­nal Town Hall or “Alcaldía”.

Like most Puer­to Rican towns, Cayey also fol­lowed the Span­ish tra­di­tion of build­ing the Catholic Church on the east­ern side of the town square and City Hall on the oppo­site end. Today’s City Hall is at anoth­er location.

Old City Hall Build­ing (click on image to see it larger)

In hind­site, I won­der why they moved City Hall to the new loca­tion. Maybe it’s just my impres­sion, but the old build­ing seems larg­er and it cer­tain­ly is more ele­gant. In any case, the cen­ter of Cayey (what we Puer­to Ricans call “el cas­co”) is nice, clean and well maintained.

After leav­ing the cen­ter of town we retraced our steps back out of town and took PR-52 going south. Sev­er­al miles lat­er we were at the Mon­u­men­to Al Jíbaro Puer­tor­riqueño (that’s the mon­u­ment to the Puer­to Rican Peasant).

A friend of mine —who’s quite cyn­i­cal— once told me that mon­u­ments are built for the dead. And I guess he was right since you rarely any see mon­u­ments ded­i­cat­ed to liv­ing peo­ple. I guess the Bea­t­les would be the one excep­tion to that belief.

In any case, in Puer­to Rico the “jíbaro” was the peas­ant work­er who did most­ly menial and agri­cul­tur­al labor. They were also among the less edu­cat­ed and most eco­nom­i­cal­ly deprived. Oh, and in case you’re won­der­ing, they were not relat­ed to the South Amer­i­can “jivaros” who will shrink your head to the size of a door knob.

21st cen­tu­ry Puer­to Rico hard­ly has any jíbaros left. Today even the most igno­rant and eco­nom­i­cal­ly deprived on the Island have iPhones, Inter­net hookups and satel­lite TV. Not that they’re bet­ter off. They just think that they are.

The “Mon­u­men­to Al Jíbaro Puer­tor­riqueño” was my first sur­prise (dis­ap­point­ment) of the trip. It used to be that there was a large park­ing area next to the stat­ue where peo­ple would stop, walk to the base of the stat­ue and take in the view of the beau­ti­ful “Tetas de Cayey” right behind it.

In case you’re won­der­ing, the “Tetas de Cayey” got that name for the same rea­son that the “Grand Teton” moun­tain range, in the great state of Wyoming, got theirs. If you’re not aware of that sto­ry, just go to Google and search for “How the Grand Teton got its name”.

Las Tetas de Cayey (click on image to see it larger)

The fun­ny thing, how­ev­er, is that accord­ing to local experts nei­ther peak is actu­al­ly in Cayey. Some say that one is in the near­by town of Sali­nas and the oth­er is in Coamo. Oth­ers say that they’re both in Salinas.

Anoth­er fact is that, like real breasts, they’re not exact­ly the same size. The west­ern one is 65 feet taller, stand­ing at a full 2,759 feet above sea level.

Final­ly, the actu­al rea­son why they’ll always be called “Las Tetas de Cayey” is because they’re also locat­ed on “la Sier­ra de Cayey”, the moun­tain­ous region that divides the north­east­ern por­tion of Puer­to Rico from the southeast.

Oh, and in case you’re won­der­ing, their real name is “Las Piedras de Collado”.

As for the Mon­u­men­to Al Jíbaro, it’s anoth­er sad exam­ple of how Puer­to Rico’s gov­ern­ment has aban­doned pub­lic spaces and recre­ation areas. There’s no longer any park­ing area, so if you decide to vis­it you’ll have to park on the shoul­der of PR-52, which is out­right dangerous.

To get to the mon­u­ment you’ll have to walk around a tall fence until you find an open­ing close to the rear on the east­ern side. Then you’ll have to walk over tall grass and stay clear of the many ant piles along the way. Final­ly, you’ll arrive at a mon­u­ment that clear­ly hasn’t been tend­ed to in years. What a sad way to hon­or the Island’s peas­ant workers.

After leav­ing the “Mon­u­men­to al Jíbaro there was no way to take PR-52 going north so we had to dri­ve all the way to Exit 58, by the Puer­to Rico Olympic Train­ing Cen­ter (Alber­gue Olímpi­co), dri­ve under the express­way and then retake PR-52 going north until we reached Exit 32 towards the world famous Gua­vate Restau­rant Area.

That’s right! We were miss­ing two stops on out trip. We were head­ed for the Gua­vate Restau­rant Area and for Char­co Azul, a beau­ti­ful swim­ming pond that’s actu­al­ly in the neigh­bor­ing town of Patil­las to the south. We decid­ed to include Char­co Azul in the Cayey video because it’s actu­al­ly eas­i­er to get there through PR-184 that goes by the Gua­vate Restau­rant Area any­way. So we decid­ed to vis­it Char­co Azul first and then stop at the Gua­vate Restau­rant Area on our way back.

Char­co Azul is actu­al­ly locat­ed with­in the Carite State For­est, a nation­al reserve that sits with­in the munic­i­pal­i­ties of Caguas, Cayey, Guaya­ma, Patil­las and San Loren­zo. There was a time when you could go through the entire for­est and many oth­er towns and cross the Island from east to west by the Panoram­ic Route.

Well, these days the Panoram­ic Route is in a sad state of repair and —like many oth­er facil­i­ties in gov­ern­ment hands— it isn’t expect­ed to improve any time soon.

To get to Char­co Azul you’ll have to do some walk­ing through the Carite For­est. The actu­al dis­tance is about half a mile, each way, along most­ly flat terrain.

You can tell that the place is aban­doned from the minute you get there. The gate is bro­ken, the pic­nic facil­i­ties are aban­doned and cov­ered in graf­fi­ti, there are no restrooms and the veg­e­ta­tion is over­grown. The trail is most­ly intact with a few areas that have been destroyed by mudslides.

My wife and I decid­ed to leave our Pathfind­er out on the road as we had no idea what we would find. Sur­pris­ing­ly, the few peo­ple that we did find along the way were not from the Puer­to Rico. One cou­ple was from the con­ti­nen­tal Unit­ed States and the oth­er small group was from Latin America.

I won­der what they wrote about this place on social media?

We final­ly reached Char­co Azul about half an hour lat­er walk­ing at a com­fort­able pace. The tem­per­a­ture and humid­i­ty were scorch­ing hot so —believe me— we were tempt­ed to jump right in. But that wasn’t why I was there, so I took my pic­tures , record­ed my footage and head­ed back.

The big yel­low sign say­ing that “Ami­gos De La Nat­u­raleza” had to clean up the place caught my atten­tion imme­di­ate­ly.  In oth­er words, if this place is pris­tine it’s no thanks to the gov­ern­ment. I would have glad­ly linked to them on this post, but they don’t seem to have a website.

Char­co Azul lives up to its name. It actu­al­ly is blue!!! Albeit the water wasn’t as clear after a cou­ple of rainy days. The pond is about 30–50 feet across and it seems to be quite shal­low along the edges. How­ev­er, in my research I found that the blue area can reach a depth of 15 feet. So if you don’t know how to swim stay away!!! There’s also a rock where the locals jump into the deep end, but I’d steer clear of it.

Like always, I write these posts as a free ser­vice and for enter­tain­ment pur­pos­es only. There­fore, I assume no respon­si­bil­i­ty for your safe­ty and/or well­be­ing when vis­it­ing any of the places cov­ered in my videos or posts. So use com­mon sense.

Anoth­er thing I dis­cov­ered on my way back is that there is no cell­phone cov­er­age in this area. It’s basi­cal­ly a dead zone. The only rea­son why my GPS took me there is because it down­loaded the map infor­ma­tion way before I entered the for­est. To get back to civ­i­liza­tion just retrace road 184 head­ing north and you’ll end up at the Gua­vate Restau­rant area.

By the time we got to the Gua­vate Restau­rant Area it was almost 2:00pm. We had been on our feet all day, walk­ing and explor­ing, and we were ready to kick back and enjoy some gen­uine Puer­to Rican cuisine.

Gua­vate is known for roast­ed pig. It’s done in the tra­di­tion­al Puer­to Rican way: whole, on a stick, over open flames and slooooow­ly cooked to per­fec­tion for around 8 to 10 hours. Then it’s cut up into por­tions, using a razor sharp machete, and served will all sorts of Puer­to Rican side dish­es. These can be yel­low rice with pigeon peas and small chunks of pork, yuc­ca, blood sausage, ripe plan­tains and many oth­er local delicacies.

And, of course, to wash it all down, you can have a vari­ety of adult bev­er­ages, an ice-cold beer (or sev­er­al), or just a reg­u­lar soda or fruit juice.

You can enjoy it all right on the spot, or get it to go, like we did.

There are sev­er­al dozen restau­rants along road 184 and —like any­where else in the world— they can vary in terms of qual­i­ty. So what can I say? Do what we do. Look for the ones with the most patrons. After all, they’re full for a reason.

NOTE: Due to the large exten­sion of land cov­ered in this post, you will need to zoom in and out on the map to see every pin. Please par­don the inconvenience.

To return to the San Juan Metro­plex just take PR-52 going north and fol­low it to the end. You’ll end up at the Minil­las Tun­nel. Or bet­ter yet, do what I always do when I trav­el abroad. Right down the GPS coor­di­nates for your hotel before you leave in the morn­ing. That way you’ll always have a point of return.

See you next time!!!

©2023,Orlando Mer­gal, MA
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