Comerío – Music, People and Beautiful Landscapes 

San­to Cristo De La Salud Parish
(click on images to see it larger)

It was 8:04am. My wife and I were stand­ing in front of the “San­to Cristo De La Salud” Parish (that would be “Par­ro­quia San­to Cristo De La Salud”), in Com­erío, Puer­to Rico. But it was closed! As it start­ed to driz­zle, the sky got gloomy and gray, and I couldn’t help won­der­ing “what am I doing here”? Was it worth it to come this far?

Well, yes it was!!! You see, I’m a “glass half full” kind’a guy. I’ve also been a land­scape pho­tog­ra­ph­er for most of my life. So for me the lit­tle town of Com­erío had giant possibilities.

Min­utes before arriv­ing in town, we stopped at the Com­erío Dam, bet­ter known as “Los Saltos”. It’s a huge struc­ture, on the left side of road 167 going south, that once pro­duced hydro­elec­tric pow­er for a large por­tion of Puer­to Rico’s San Juan Metro­plex. Today, the Island has aban­doned hydro­elec­tric pow­er alto­geth­er and it main­ly depends on fos­sil fuels to sat­is­fy its ener­gy demand.

Los Saltos Dam
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That alone makes you won­der, since Puer­to Rico pro­duces no fos­sil fuels, and it sits in the mid­dle of the Caribbean, where wind and sun­light are abun­dant, what are these peo­ple think­ing? But I digress.

Get­ting to Com­erío can be tricky or easy, par­tic­u­lar­ly if you aren’t a local like me. The tricky way is com­ing from Aguas Bue­nas or Cidra, where there’s curve after curve and dozens of roads to know. The eas­i­est way, albeit the longest, is com­ing from Bayamón along State Road 167. I’m not going to give you the blow by blow instruc­tions, because that would be tor­ture —and it would make this post twice as long— but what I am going to tell you is that the eas­i­est way to get to Com­erío, if you’re com­ing from Isla Verde, Con­da­do or Old San Juan is to go through the Minil­las Tun­nel, fol­low State Road 18 until you get to the inter­sec­tion with Road 22, take Road 22 going west and fol­low it until you reach Exit 13, turn left on Ramón Luis Rivera Ave. and fol­low it until you reach the town of Comerío.

Sounds sim­ple, right. Well, it’s not. Ramón Luis Rivera Ave will become Road 167, which in turn will become Road # 5 at some point, and even­tu­al­ly it will become 167 once again just before you reach Com­erío. The impor­tant thing is that you fol­low the road with­out devi­at­ing. Don’t make any turns and you’ll even­tu­al­ly arrive in Com­erío. Or bet­ter yet, just punch the fol­low­ing coor­di­nates into your GPS and you’ll go straight to the cen­ter of town (18.218439, ‑66.226497).

Plaza de la Tro­va
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After find­ing the church closed, we decid­ed to take a stroll around “La Plaza de la Tro­va” to col­lect our thoughts. Every town in Puer­to Rico fol­lows a sim­i­lar mod­el. We inher­it­ed it from the Span­ish col­o­niz­ers, who in turn inher­it­ed it from post Con­stan­tine Rome. There’s a square in the mid­dle of town, a catholic church on the East­ern side of the square and city hall on the oppo­site end. The loca­tion of city hall isn’t always writ­ten in stone, but the catholic church is always on the East side.

Fur­ther­more, most build­ings around the square are two-storey high, with busi­ness­es on the bot­tom floor and liv­ing quar­ters on the sec­ond. Archi­tects call this the “Roman” model.

In Puer­to Rico most squares are named after a per­son, a thing or a Roman Catholic saint. The one in Com­erío is named after a music genre. But, not just any music, after Puer­to Rican “tro­va”.

What’s that?

Puer­to Rican Cuatro

Puer­to Rican “tro­va” is what you fre­quent­ly hear in our moun­tain towns. It’s the folk music of our ances­tors played with gui­tar, güiro, bon­gos, mara­cas and cuatro.

The “cua­tro” is Puer­to Rico’s nation­al instru­ment. It was orig­i­nal­ly inspired on the lute fam­i­ly of instru­ments, but over the cen­turies it has evolved into a full-blown instru­ment in its own right. Noth­ing sounds like a well played Puer­to Rican “cua­tro”.

But there’s more. “Tro­va” music is gen­er­al­ly impro­vised. It can be penned before­hand, but 9 out of 10 times it comes straight out of the “trovero’s” imagination.

Well, Com­erío is known as “la cuna de la tro­va”, or “the cra­dle of ‘tro­va’”, in the king’s Eng­lish. Hence, nam­ing this square “la Plaza de la Tro­va” hon­ors the immense con­tri­bu­tion that Com­erío has made to Puer­to Rico’s folk­loric music.

As expect­ed, the “San­to Cristo de la Salud” parish sits on the east­ern side of “la plaza de la tro­va”. It’s a mod­ern style tem­ple, built in the 1970’s and paint­ed in yel­low with white trim. It has twin steeples with one bell on the left tow­er and two bells on the right.

As for the inside, I can’t tell you a thing because —once again— it was closed.

The orig­i­nal her­mitage was built between 1829 and 1830, just 3 years after the town was found­ed as “Sabana del Pal­mar”. Lat­er on, in 1894, the town was renamed Com­erío to hon­or the Taíno chief that ruled this part of the Island when the Span­ish con­quis­ta­dors arrived.

The church in the back­ground with the “Plaza de la Tro­va” foun­tain as fore­ground makes for a beau­ti­ful picture.

Com­erío City Hall
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On the South side of the square you have city hall. It’s a colo­nial style build­ing, paint­ed in yel­low and light brown, with white trim. There’s a clock tow­er on the West side of the facade with a clock that actu­al­ly works. That’s a rar­i­ty in itself.

After explor­ing “La Plaza de la Tro­va” we decid­ed to enter city hall. Expe­ri­ence has taught us that it’s fre­quent­ly a great place to pick up infor­ma­tion on what to see and do in town. When we got there we struck a con­ver­sa­tion with a young man that was stand­ing in front of the build­ing. Lat­er on I learned that he was actu­al­ly a munic­i­pal worker.

He told us about the city hall build­ing itself (“la alcaldía”, like we say in Span­ish), the towns points of inter­est and where to go next. We also learned that Comerío’s city hall is actu­al­ly the mayor’s place of business.

Many towns in Puer­to Rico have built larg­er, more posh city halls and con­vert­ed their old build­ings into muse­ums. But, not Com­erío. This is where the sausage actu­al­ly gets made.

Com­erío Cul­tur­al and Civic Cen­ter
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On the west side of the square there’s yet anoth­er notice­able build­ing, paint­ed in pink with white trim, that’s Com­erío’s Cul­tur­al Civic Cen­ter (Cen­tro Cívi­co Cul­tur­al de Com­erío). Through­out the years the struc­ture has served as a pri­vate res­i­dence, sev­er­al busi­ness con­cerns and even a casino.

And before I con­tin­ue, be advised that —as in all my posts— I’ve includ­ed a GPS map at the end with the coor­di­nates for all the places mentioned.

For­mer Com­erío Tobac­co Destem­ming
and Ware­house Facil­i­ties
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From this point on we did a lit­tle bit of walk­ing. A few blocks north of the Cul­tur­al Civic Cen­ter there’s a huge build­ing, paint­ed in yel­low and gray, that was once a tobac­co destem­ming facil­i­ty. This is because towards the turn of the 20th cen­tu­ry Com­erío was one of the most impor­tant tobac­co pro­duc­ers on the Island. So much so that it was actu­al­ly called “El Pueblo Del Taba­co”, or “the tobac­co town” and its orig­i­nal flag had a tobac­co leaf in the center.

You can tell how impor­tant tobac­co was for Com­erío by the sheer size of this build­ing. In fact, at the turn of 20th Cen­tu­ry Comerío’s tobac­co was ranked among the best in the world.

A lit­tle fur­ther north, along road 156, we vis­it­ed the “Casa de La Cul­tura Cacique Com­erío”, a recep­tion and activ­i­ty cen­ter where you’ll find infor­ma­tion about Com­erío, itin­er­at­ing exhi­bi­tions and meet­ing rooms where dif­fer­ent activ­i­ties take place. There’s even a skele­ton of a young Arawak girl, encased in glass, that was dis­cov­ered in the “Piñas” ward of Comerío.

There we met with Mrs. Rosa Meléndez.

You can also book a half-day city tour that includes a knowl­edge­able guide, a talk about the town’s his­to­ry, vis­its to the most icon­ic places and trans­porta­tion. At the time of this writ­ing it was only $7 per per­son, which in my opin­ion is a great deal.

For more infor­ma­tion call 787–875-7075.

And speak­ing about tours and guides, there are two spec­tac­u­lar places in Com­erío that we chose to pass on. One was “La Mora” cave sys­tem and the oth­er was a nat­ur­al water pool called “Los Pilones”. Accord­ing to Mrs. Melén­dez, the caves are quite dan­ger­ous and get­ting to “Los Pilones” takes a long walk along treach­er­ous ter­rain. Both require a spe­cial­ized guide and a strong, healthy physique that I lost years ago. I wouldn’t be sur­prised if you had to sign a hold-harm­less waiv­er as well.

There was still anoth­er place of inter­est just north along road 156, but we were far enough from our car already, and we would’ve just got­ten fur­ther away if we con­tin­ued. So we decid­ed to go back to our car and then dri­ve to “The Tree Of Life”˘.

Tree Of Life View­point
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“The Tree Of Life” is a small park on the North end of town with a unique sculp­ture sit­ting in front of the “La Pla­ta” riverbed. La Pla­ta Riv­er is Puer­to Rico’s longest riv­er and also one of the might­i­est. Its width alone will give you an idea of the pow­er of this river.

Dur­ing hur­ri­cane María thou­sands of “com­erieños”, and many oth­ers liv­ing down riv­er, got to expe­ri­ence that might first hand. But hey, we were there on a beau­ti­ful sun­ny morn­ing and the riverbed only added to the beau­ti­ful landscape.

There were “flam­boy­anes” every­where
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Anoth­er thing that added to the land­scape were the hun­dreds of “flam­boy­anes” in bloom. Nor­mal­ly these trees bloom in August, but this year they’re sim­ply out of con­trol. I guess it has to do with cli­mate change.

I talk all about “los flam­boy­anes”, and how they got to Puer­to Rico, in my pre­vi­ous video and post about the town of “Cidra”.

There was one more place on our list. It was a swim­ming hole, on the West out­skirts of town, that I read about some­where on the Inter­net. I try to make these posts and videos as var­ied as pos­si­ble. After all, not every­body is into old church­es and build­ings. So I try to include a lit­tle bit of everything.

Las Pailas Swim­ming Hole
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“Las Pailas” is a nat­ur­al pond, a few miles west of town, in the “Río Hon­do”. In Span­ish the words “río hon­do” mean “deep riv­er”, so we imag­ined it more like the “Char­co Azul” that we cov­ered in our Cayey video. But it was noth­ing like that. In fact it was a lit­tle underwhelming.

Even so, the wind­ing coun­try road, lined with dozens of “flam­boy­anes”, made the trip more than pleasurable.

The eas­i­est way to get out of Com­erío is the same way you arrived. Just fol­low State Road 167 until you reach Toll Road 22. Then turn right and fol­low Toll Road 22 until it merges with State Road 18. Even­tu­al­ly you’ll reach the Minil­las Tunnel.

Or bet­ter yet, record your hotel coor­di­nates before you leave in the morn­ing and punch them into your GPS in the after­noon to get back to the San Juan Metroplex.

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.

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.

See you next time!

©2023,Orlando Mer­gal, MA
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Bilin­gual Con­tent Cre­ator, Blog­ger, Pod­cast­er,
Author, Pho­tog­ra­ph­er and New Media Expert
Tel. 787–750-0000, Mobile 787–306-1590