Ceiba A Town In Limbo

Saint Anthony Of Padua Parish has been closed since 2017 due to roof problems.

Saint Antho­ny Of Pad­ua Parish has been closed since 2017 due to roof problems. 
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In Puer­to Rico there are towns that stand out for their his­to­ry. Oth­ers because of their exu­ber­ant nature. Oth­ers are just mag­nif­i­cent cities. And still oth­ers are best to vis­it on your way to some­where else. Then there are towns like Cei­ba, that bake in the Caribbean sun in a sort of lethar­gy… a “lim­bo” state, if you will. It’s a town that once wasn’t, then it was, and now it isn’t. No, this isn’t a play of words. Nor am I try­ing to be face­tious. It’s sim­ply the sad real­i­ty of an entire region.

Today we vis­it the town of Cei­ba, in the south east­ern­most cor­ner of Puer­to Rico. And while the town itself counts among its best fea­tures —that it’s the place to catch the fer­ry to Vieques and Cule­bra— I promise to find some­thing nice to say about this small cor­ner of Puer­to Rico.

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Cei­ba wasn’t always an inde­pen­dent town. It was actu­al­ly part of the neigh­bor­ing town of Fajar­do until April 7, 1838. Back them its econ­o­my was main­ly agri­cul­tur­al in nature. Then in the ear­ly 1940’s it became home to Roo­sevelt Roads Naval Station.

In 1919, just 2 years after Puer­to Ricans were grant­ed U.S. Cit­i­zen­ship, U.S. Sec­re­tary of the Navy Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt toured Puer­to Rico and the small town of Cei­ba. In 1940, then pres­i­dent Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt ordered the cre­ation of a pro­tect­ed anchor­age in the sea area between Puer­to Rico and Vieques. One year lat­er Con­gress assigned an ini­tial sum of $50 mil­lion (equiv­a­lent to $1036 mil­lion in today’s money).

Aircraft carrier | Roosevelt Roads Naval Station | Puerto Rico By GPS

Air­craft carrier
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The base was actu­al­ly named Roo­sevelt Roads by Navy Sec­re­tary Frank Knox on 15 May 1941.

Roo­sevelt Roads wasn’t a run-of-the-mill oper­a­tion. It was actu­al­ly the largest U.S. naval base out­side the con­ti­nen­tal Unit­ed States. So nat­u­ral­ly, it had tremen­dous eco­nom­ic impact on the economies of all the neigh­bour­ing towns in the area.

When the base closed, on March 31st, 2004, it sucked the oxy­gen out of the entire region. You can still see it today as you dri­ve through emp­ty streets pep­pered with aban­doned buildings.

What’s worse, the gov­ern­ment of Puer­to Rico has done very lit­tle with this immense piece of land. Every­where you look there is over­grown veg­e­ta­tion, aban­doned build­ings and rust­ed facilities.

When we got to the Cen­ter of Cei­ba it was 8:38 in the morn­ing. Our first stop was going to be at the beau­ti­ful Saint Antho­ny of Pad­ua Parish. How­ev­er, the tem­ple was closed. Lat­er on, after speak­ing to the Parish priest, we learned that the tem­ple has been closed since 2017, when hur­ri­cane María inflict­ed severe dam­age to the building’s roof.

My wife and I admiring Saint Anthony Of Padua Parish | Ceiba, A Town In Limbo | Puerto Rico By GPS

My wife and I admir­ing Saint Antho­ny Of Pad­ua Parish
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The fact that it has tak­en sev­en years to fix a roof, and that it still isn’t fixed, is a clear indi­ca­tor of how dire the eco­nom­ic real­i­ty is in this area.

One notable fact about this tem­ple is that its altar points west instead of east. Also the City Hall build­ing sits west of the church and the plaza, named after Felisa Rincón de Gau­ti­er, sits east of the temple.

This strange arrange­ment total­ly breaks with tra­di­tion­al Span­ish Archi­tec­tur­al stan­dards, under which the tem­ple was usu­al­ly on the east side of the square (with the altar point­ing east) and City Hall was at the oppo­site west­ern end.

In case you’re won­der­ing, Felisa Rincón de Gau­ti­er was a Cei­ba-born woman who was City Man­ag­er of the city of San Juan between 1946 and 1968. Many called her “alcalde­sa” or “may­oress”, but the fact is that the posi­tion didn’t exist under San Juan munic­i­pal law. Just a tech­ni­cal­i­ty? Yeah, but there’s a piece of triv­ia for you.

There’s an exten­sive post on my blog “Puer­to Rico By GPS” about “Doña Fela” —as the peo­ple of San Juan lov­ing­ly called her— and her muse­um on Clara Lair Street.

After leav­ing Felisa Rincón de Gau­ti­er square our plan was to explore the sur­round­ing attrac­tions that I found on Google Maps. But boy, was I mis­guid­ed! As it turned out, the best Cei­ba had to offer was the pier where you catch the fer­ry for the island munic­i­pal­i­ties of Vieques and Cule­bra. And even that was under construction.

This is what “El Columpio” beach turned out to be | Ceiba, A Town In Limbo | Puerto Rico By GPS

This is what “El Colum­pio” beach turned out to be
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The first place we attempt­ed to vis­it was “El Colum­pio” beach, which we imag­ined as trop­i­cal slice of par­adise, with an idyl­lic swing, where you could make beau­ti­ful sea­side pic­tures. Instead, it turned out to be an old rusty Navy pier.

A lit­tle fur­ther down the road the gov­ern­ment is build­ing the new fer­ry ter­mi­nal for the Island munic­i­pal­i­ties of Vieques and Cule­bras. The old ter­mi­nal used to be in the neigh­bour­ing town of Fajardo.

With the clos­ing of Roo­sevelt Roads the gov­ern­ment decid­ed to move the ter­mi­nal to Cei­ba because the phys­i­cal dis­tance to Vieques is short­er. How­ev­er, the trip Cule­bra is actu­al­ly short­er from Fajar­do. So, is the move real­ly ben­e­fi­cial? It depends on who you ask.

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I don’t know, but what I can say is that my friends on both Islands aren’t very hap­py with the ser­vice. That’s why nei­ther Island is men­tioned in my books, videos or blog.

And here’s anoth­er ques­tion. Why didn’t the gov­ern­ment fin­ish the Cei­ba ter­mi­nal before clos­ing the one in Fajar­do? That way they wouldn’t have had such a mess. Just “sayin”…

Final­ly, isn’t it sad for a town to be thought of as “the jump­ing point” to some­where else?

“Los Machos” Beach | Ceiba, A Town In Limbo | Puerto Rico By GPS

Los Machos” Beach
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Any­way, we drove by the ter­mi­nal and head­ed for “Playa Los Machos” on the north­east­ern cor­ner of town. With a name like that, I was expect­ing a real­ly treach­er­ous beach . You know, the kind of beach where you real­ly have to be “gung ho” to go. And I wasn’t all wrong.

The gov­ern­ment has done a nice job with the place in terms of build­ing gaze­bos, show­ers and san­i­tary facil­i­ties. How­ev­er, there are no buoys or life­guards and the park­ing area is mere­ly a sandy lot.

All in all “Playa Los Machos” is what I call a “wild beach”, mean­ing that it’s main­ly like God made it.

As for the water, the surf was chop­py and loaded with sarga­zo weed. If you ask me, I wouldn’t swim there at all. And with all the sarga­zo it does­n’t qual­i­fy as “eye can­dy” either.

 

A lit­tle fur­ther south there’s anoth­er beach called “Medio Mun­do” beach that would fall inside the perime­ter of Roo­sevelt Roads. But I don’t see how it could be any bet­ter since it’s most­ly the same beach, just a lit­tle more to the south. In any case, we tried to reach it, but were unable to find our way there.

After leav­ing “Playa Los Machos” we parked under a tree by the road, had a sand­wich and soda and head­ed for San Juan.

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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!

Orlando Mergal | Puerto Rico By GPS

©2024,Orlando Mer­gal, MA
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