Cidra, Puerto Rico | The Town Where It’s Always Spring 

Glob­al warm­ing has become a real prob­lem. You can hard­ly turn on the news with­out learn­ing about a place that’s burn­ing up. And Puer­to Rico is no excep­tion. Just recent­ly we’ve had sev­er­al weeks with tem­per­a­tures exceed­ing 100°F. Thank­ful­ly, that’s not the case in Cidra, Puer­to Rico.

At 1,417 feet above sea lev­el, tem­per­a­tures in Cidra are usu­al­ly sev­er­al degrees below those of the San Juan Metro­plex. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like you’ll need a coat. But tem­per­a­ture is a lot more tol­er­a­ble than at the coast.

Cidra is also beau­ti­ful. Along with the cool­er tem­per­a­tures comes lush veg­e­ta­tion, a beau­ti­ful lake (albeit man-made), and jaw drop­ping land­scapes all around.

My wife Zorai­da and I have been vis­it­ing every town in Puer­to Rico at a rate of two towns per month. The idea is to pro­duce a video for each town plus one or more blog posts dur­ing a peri­od of two to three years. That’s right, there’s 78 towns (or munic­i­pal­i­ties) in Puer­to Rico. So at a rate of 24 per year it will take us 39 months.

That’s with­out count­ing any health prob­lems that might come along, vaca­tions or the oca­sion­al week when we might not feel like going out altogether.

Then there’s the ele­ment of just enjoy­ing our Island and get­ting out of the house. After all, peo­ple pay pre­mi­um prices to vis­it our Island par­adise and we have it all for free!!!

So this time we jumped in our Pathfind­er and head­ed for the lit­tle town of Cidra.

 

When we got there it was 8:24 in the morn­ing. We’ve learned that, if we want to catch the Catholic church­es open, we have to arrive well before 9:00am. Most of them cel­e­brate an ear­ly mass and then close until the after­noon. Dur­ing my child­hood I remem­ber that most church­es remained open all day. You could walk right in, say a prayer and walk back out.

Most of the time there was no one there. But times have changed. Crime and van­dal­ism have forced church man­age­ment to take more severe mea­sures. And since they don’t have the funds to have peo­ple just watch­ing after the facil­i­ties all day long, they just close altogether.

Hence, if you want to catch them open, you have to get up ear­ly. And, to be frank, even that doesn’t work some­times, because once the mass is over some­times they’ll rush you out just to close the temple.

And why is this? Well, you have to under­stand that parish­ioners see the church is a place for wor­ship. For tourists it most­ly holds archi­tec­tur­al and his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance. So the two view­points don’t always meet.

In any case when we got to the “Par­ro­quia de Nues­tra Seño­ra del Car­men” (that’s the Nues­tra Seño­ra del Car­men Parish) they were cel­e­brat­ing a prayer ser­vice. So it wasn’t like we could walk in and shoot video to our heart’s con­tent. Even so I was able to film a cou­ple of shots in a respect­ful man­ner and walk out of the tem­ple silently.

The Nues­tra Seño­ra del Car­men Parish is a small­er tem­ple, when com­pared to oth­ers on the Island, but it’s beau­ti­ful and well kept. It sits on the east side of the Fran­cis­co M. Zeno Square, a rather large plaza, with dozens of trees and bench­es, that’s very inviting.

Sad­ly, the square was being pow­er washed when we got there and the work­ers told us that it would prob­a­bly take until 2:00 or 3:00 in the after­noon. Hence, there was yel­low tape all around it and the beau­ti­ful water foun­tain in the cen­ter was shut off.

Close to the church, on the south side of the square, there’s a small mon­u­ment to the town’s vet­er­ans. That too had yel­low rib­bons block­ing it off, but with a tight crop I was able to get a nice shot of it.

Years ago I learned that in pho­tog­ra­phy (as well as in video) the only thing that’s impor­tant is what’s in the shot. For exam­ple, a few years ago I vis­it­ed the north­east­ern Unit­ed States to shoot the fall col­or. How­ev­er, that year the col­ors weren’t as vibrant as I would’ve liked. So we had a hard time find­ing those mag­nif­i­cent land­scapes that we all dream about.

In spite of hav­ing a rather mun­dane fall, I came out with great pic­tures. In fact, any­one that saw my shots thought the col­ors had been out­stand­ing. Why? Because the only trees that mat­tered to me were the ones in the picture.

So, back to the veteran’s mon­u­ment. There was a yel­low rib­bon to the left of it, two men with pow­er wash­ers and a wet side­walk. But you see none of that in my pic­ture. Why? Because it’s all about what you show and what you leave out.

As for the work­ers, it’s a tricky propo­si­tion. If you arrive in town ear­ly, to catch the church open, you often run into city work­ers pow­er wash­ing the plazas and side­walks. If you arrive lat­er, everything’s clean but the church is closed.

In the case of Cidra we were lucky to have the church open. And guess what? If it weren’t for the work­ers the city wouldn’t be as nice as it is. So it’s a mat­ter of nav­i­gat­ing these two realities.

As we walked west along the edge of the plaza we dis­cov­ered a small Fire­house Muse­um ded­i­cat­ed to Cidra’s first fire­fight­er: “José Pepe Álvarez”. It’s a small muse­um, by any stan­dard, but it’s filled to the rafters with pic­tures, infor­ma­tion and mem­o­ra­bil­ia of Island’s fire­fight­ing heroes.

There’s even an orig­i­nal 1934 fire truck that’s so well pre­served that it seems like you could prob­a­bly dri­ve it to the next fire.

But the best thing about this tiny muse­um were the atten­dants. They took us through every pic­ture, every exhib­it and every piece of mem­o­ra­bil­ia and explained them in great detail.

After leav­ing the Fireman’s Muse­um we walked north along the square, turned right and found the old City Hall build­ing on our left hand side. Right now it’s closed, but we were told lat­er on, at the new City Hall build­ing, that city offi­cials are plan­ning to reopen it as the Cidra Muse­um of History.

Even though the old City Hall build­ing was closed, I must say that there’s hard­ly any busi­ness­es board­ed up, any graf­fi­ti or urban blight in Cidra. Anoth­er thing that we didn’t see where home­less peo­ple. I can’t affirm that there aren’t any, I can just say that I didn’t see any.

As we passed the Old City Hall build­ing, we walked a lit­tle fur­ther down the street, turned left on “Padil­la El Caribe” Street, right on Anto­nio R. Barceló and found the new City Hall build­ing at the end of the street. To the eye it looks brand new, but lat­er on I was told that it’s actu­al­ly 15 years old. There too there were city work­ers pow­er wash­ing the sidewalks.

One of the things that I learned ear­li­er at the Firemen’s Muse­um was about a great exhi­bi­tion that the city had on the sec­ond lev­el of the new City Hall build­ing. They didn’t tell us what it was about, but they said it was great.

Hence, that was my open­ing line when we arrived at the recep­tion area of the New City Hall build­ing: “I’ve been told that there’s a great exhib­it on the sec­ond lev­el of this build­ing”. The atten­dant smiled and led us up to a won­der­full exhi­bi­tion area hon­or­ing Mr. Mon­ser­rate Flo­res, the “cidreño” that cre­at­ed and nur­tured the Annu­al Puer­to Rican Day Parade in New York.

The Annu­al Puer­to Rican Day Parade is the largest cel­e­bra­tion of cul­tur­al pride in the Unit­ed States. It takes place on the sec­ond Sun­day of June along Fifth Avenue in Man­hat­tan, New York. There are 3.2 mil­lion Puer­to Ricans in New York, mak­ing it the largest con­cen­tra­tion out­side the Island.

Although the New York parade is the largest, it has inspired sim­i­lar events in oth­er cities with large Puer­to Rican pop­u­la­tions such as: Chica­go, Philadel­phia, Chica­go and Orlan­do. And while the event includes a parade, typ­i­cal of Anglo Sax­on coun­tries, it is main­ly inspired on the pop­u­lar “Fies­tas Patronales” that are cel­e­brat­ed year­ly in every Puer­to Rican municipality.

On the third floor of the new City Hall build­ing there’s anoth­er gallery hon­or­ing the town’s may­ors. Like oth­er towns in Puer­to Rico the one thing that caught my eye was that they were all male. In fact, I stand cor­rect­ed. There was one female that occu­pied the post briefly after the pri­or may­or was forced to aban­don his posi­tion. Short­ly after she was replaced with anoth­er male.

After view­ing the third floor exhi­bi­tion we were left in the care of Mrs. Pao­la Peña and Mr. Angel H. Rivera, at the town’s press office, where we spent almost an addi­tion­al hour. Mrs Peña pro­vid­ed us with print­ed mate­ri­als and addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion about this won­der­ful town.

I also learned that the “new City Hall” build­ing isn’t so new after all. It just looks new, but it’s actu­al­ly 15 years old.

After leav­ing City Hall we walked back to our car and head­ed towards the “Pres­en­cia e Iden­ti­dad Pub­lic Art Project”. It’s a huge mosa­ic mur­al, made of tile, that was cre­at­ed by dozens of artists, munic­i­pal work­ers and vol­un­teers and financed by Caribbean Refres­cos (hold­ers of the Coca Cola fran­chise on the Island) and McDonald’s Restaurants.

I can only imag­ine the amount of peo­ple that must have par­tic­i­pat­ed on this project and the amount of time that it must have tak­en to com­plete. The piece is huge, tak­ing an entire cor­ner around a McDonald’s restau­rant. But the pieces are also tiny.

The “Pres­en­cia e Iden­ti­dad Pub­lic Art Project” is tru­ly a mas­ter­piece and a tes­ta­ment to what dif­fer­ent seg­ments of soci­ety can accom­plish when they join forces and put their minds to it.

In the video I say that our last stop was at Hacien­da Sabanera, but that’s not actu­al­ly true. Before head­ing for Hacien­da Sabanera we we went by the orig­i­nal bridge that used to con­nect Cidra along road 172. You can catch an excel­lent view of the lake from there and there’s even one of those giant chairs that have become so pop­u­lar lately.

After that we final­ly head­ed for Hacien­da Sabanera. It’s a huge recre­ation­al prop­er­ty north­east of town present­ly being devel­oped by the town of Cidra. And before you ask, no, it nev­er was an actu­al hacien­da. They just call it that way to hon­or the “sabanera pigeon” that’s endem­ic to Cidra.

One of the first things that caught my atten­tion was the sig­nage. There are actu­al­ly signs that tell you what kinds of trees you’re look­ing at. Maybe the peo­ple at the Willie Miran­da Marín “Botan­i­cal” Gar­den in Caguas could take a hint.

Hacien­da Sabanera has walk­ing trails, gaze­bos, bar­be­cue facil­i­ties, fish­ing areas and even docks where you can launch a kayak. And if I had to point out the one thing that caught my atten­tion the most it would be the silence. I could hear myself think­ing. In fact, the loud­est nois­es at Hacien­da Sabanera are the birds chirp­ing, the wind blow­ing and the lake’s water bub­bling against the shoreline.

Just so you know, Puer­to Rico doesn’t have any nat­ur­al lakes. Every lake on the Island is actu­al­ly a water reser­voir cre­at­ed for human con­sump­tion. How­ev­er, they’re the per­fect place to bring your favorite book and relax.

On the way out from Hacien­da Sabanera we went the wrong way. Or maybe not. It all depends who you ask. When we got to State Road 173 we turned right towards Sabanera Ward, that’s “Bar­rio Sabanera” in the tongue of Cervantes.

Going west would’ve tak­en us back to town where we would’ve tak­en State Road 172 out of town and back to Toll Road 52. Turn­ing right also took us to State Road 172 (even­tu­al­ly), but not with­out going through dozens of curves across Certene­jas Ward.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s a beau­ti­ful area. But it’s easy to get lost, espe­cial­ly if you’re from out of town.

 

How­ev­er, like they say: “every cloud has a sil­ver lin­ing”. The “Apple Maps” lady kept say­ing “certe­neges” instead of Certene­jas. I always get a kick out of her pro­nun­ci­a­tion of Puer­to Rican names and places.

Even­tu­al­ly (very even­tu­al­ly) we reached State Road 172, turned left, got to Toll Road 52 and back to the San Juan Metroplex.

But there’s one thing that I left out on pur­pose just to cre­ate am “open loop” (that’s a fan­cy name for an unan­swered ques­tion or unful­filled promise). You know those beau­ti­ful orange col­ored trees that you saw through­out my video and in the pho­tos in this post? They’re called “flam­boy­anes” (in the plur­al sense) and “flam­boyán” in the singular.

They’re indige­nous to the island nation of Madas­car and where plant­ed in many trop­i­cal regions around the world, includ­ing Puer­to Rico, dur­ing the Span­ish con­quest. There real name is “flame tree” or “Roy­al Poinciana”.

But ask any Puer­to Rican and he’ll say: “yeah, that’s a flam­boyán and it’s a native tree”. I guess they’ve been here so long that they’re already part of our real­i­ty. So are the palm trees, that actu­al­ly came from Africa dur­ing the 16th century.

 

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.

Cidra was a great town that made quite an impres­sion on us. So much so that we expect to return soon to do some land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy. We’ll prob­a­bly do that by the end of June when we cov­er the Aiboni­to Flower Fes­ti­val.

See you 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