Corozal, Gateway To The Heart Of Puerto Rico 

The oth­er day my wife and I vis­it­ed the lit­tle town of Corozal, Puer­to Rico. It’s a small town (2,601 inhab­i­tants) that sits almost at the geo­graph­i­cal heart of Puer­to Rico (that would be Orocovis).

The dri­ve to Corozal was easy. We took toll road PR-22 going west, got off on exit 22B towards road 165 going south, off again at exit 4 towards PR‑2 going west, took a slight right turn at PR-22 towards Corozal, drove to the very end, turned left on PR-159, right on PR-189 going west and arrived a few min­utes lat­er in the town of Corozal. The entire trip took a lit­tle over an hour.

Click on image to watch the video

When we arrived in Corozal it was 7:44am on the morn­ing of March 19th. To our sur­prise, there was already a con­sid­er­able amount of traf­fic in town. So much so that I had to dri­ve sev­er­al times around the main square before I found a park­ing spot.

Sacred Heart Parish South­west side
(click on image to see it larger)

As always, our first stop was at the love­ly Sacred Fam­i­ly Parish. It’s as small tem­ple with a sin­gle bell tow­er in the cen­ter and four clocks that don’t work fac­ing the car­di­nal points. The bells do toll on the hour. I know because I heard them while I was there.

Sacred Fam­i­ly Parish is not a posh build­ing in any sense of the word, but it does exude a great lev­el of peace and ele­gance that stems from its sim­ple but beau­ti­ful architecture.

At first glance we thought we had struck out, because the front and lat­er­al gates were closed. But walk­ing around the build­ing we dis­cov­ered a rear entrance that led to a lat­er­al door that was open.

Many Catholic church­es cel­e­brate mass ear­ly in the morn­ing and then close their tem­ples dur­ing most of the day. This is because many lack the resources and the per­son­nel to have some­one watch­ing all day long. And since rob­bery and van­dal­ism have become real issues in mod­ern times, they sim­ply choose to close to pro­tect the premises.

This is a sad reflec­tion of the times we are liv­ing in. When I was a kid church­es of all denom­i­na­tions were open round the clock. Hence, any­one who was afflict­ed, in sor­row or in search of illu­mi­na­tion could sim­ply walk into a tem­ple at any time of the day or night, say a prayer and seek holy guid­ance. But not anymore.

As a child my moth­er did her best to raise me in the Bap­tist faith. Hence, I know very lit­tle about the Catholic church. When I walked into Sacred Fam­i­ly Parish I noticed that all the fig­ures were cov­ered in dark pur­ple cloth. All but one (more on that in a minute).

There was no one there, so we walked right in and took as many pic­tures and video as we need­ed, always respect­ing the sanc­ti­ty of the place.

As we were about to leave a cou­ple of ladies walked in, said their prayers and sang a cou­ple of hymns. After observ­ing that they were done, we approached them to ask ques­tions about the tem­ple. They sug­gest­ed that we walk over to the Parish Office and ask for the dea­con in charge.

At the office we learned that Sacred Fam­i­ly Parish was estab­lished in 1795, the same year as the town itself. We also learned that it has under­gone sev­er­al restora­tions through­out the years due to the var­i­ous hur­ri­canes that have affect­ed the Island.

One of the ques­tions that I asked the dea­con was what do you actu­al­ly call the fig­ures that are always present in Catholic church­es. Are they effi­gies? Are they stat­ues? Are they saints? Com­ing from the Bap­tist camp, that is prob­a­bly the main dif­fer­ence between Protes­tant and Catholic tem­ples. Protes­tant tem­ples don’t have effi­gies. They only have a cross at the altar and that’s it.

San José at Sacred Heart Parish interior
(click on image to see it larger)

Well, to my sur­prise, they don’t call them any­thing. They sim­ply call them by their names. Case in point, there was sin­gle fig­ure that was uncov­ered and the dea­con referred to it as “San José” (Saint Joseph). And why was it uncov­ered, you might ask? Well, because it was “his” week, so he had to be visible.

The rest were cov­ered fol­low­ing a cen­turies old tra­di­tion that estab­lish­es that they should be cov­ered dur­ing the lent or “cuares­ma” peri­od and revealed at the begin­ning of Holy Week.

So there you go. Like our friends at NBC like to say: “the more you know”.

Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt Square
(click on image to see it larger)

After leav­ing the Parish Office we went straight to Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt Square. It’s a beau­ti­ful square with a round sit­ting area that’s imme­di­ate­ly north of Sacred Heart Parish.

Most towns in Puer­to Rico fol­low the Roman mod­el, that in turn was inher­it­ed from Spain. The Catholic church sits at the east end of the square and City Hall is usu­al­ly on the west­ern end. And, of course, the church altar is always on the east­ern end of the buildings.

Well, in the case of Corozal the altar does point east, but the church sits at the south­ern end of the square and City Hall is at the north­ern end. Why every­thing was laid out that way is beyond me. After all, they were the first things built in town, so it’s not like they had land lim­i­ta­tions of any kind. But I digress.

Corozal City Hall
(click on image to see it larger)

Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt Square has ample tree cov­er­age and bench­es galore for peo­ple watch­ing. It also has water foun­tains along the west perime­ter, but they weren’t working.

As always, after explor­ing the square we made a quick stop at City Hall to ask about oth­er points of inter­est. There we met a young man who was quite friend­ly and out­go­ing, but was most­ly able to tell us about “what we couldn’t see” in town.

There’s a small “Barber’s Muse­um” on the west side of the square, right next to Sacred Fam­i­ly Parish, that used to be one of those small town bar­ber shops. On the out­side it looks great, but sad­ly it was closed.

On the north­east end of the square there’s anoth­er old build­ing, paint­ed in green, that’s known as “Casa Loy­dí” (or the Loy­dí house). At one point in time it was some sort of a muse­um cel­e­brat­ing Puer­to Rican Cul­ture, but accord­ing to our friend­ly employ­ee at City Hall, nowa­days it’s most­ly an emp­ty building.

And before I for­get, there’s also a small mon­u­ment, next to the Bar­ber Shop Muse­um, ded­i­cat­ed to the town’s fall­en mil­i­tary heroes.

So there we were. It was a lit­tle over 8:30am and we were basi­cal­ly done with the town of Corozal. There were a cou­ple of places that I want­ed to explore in the rur­al areas, but the cen­ter of town was done.

There was a one-lane bridge that I had read about dur­ing my research called the Mav­il­la Bridge that dates back to 1903 and a State Park called Monte Choca. So we decid­ed to explore those. In hind­sight, we should have vis­it­ed them in the reverse order, but that’s the kind of thing that you learn after the fact.

The Mav­il­la Bridge sits on the north­east­ern end of Corozal, on kilo­me­ter 17.7 of road 159. What’s inter­est­ing about this bridge is that it has retained its orig­i­nal design and struc­ture for over a cen­tu­ry. So we went there, got out of our car, went across it on foot, took some pic­tures and video and returned to our car.

So why did we actu­al­ly go there, you might ask? After all, it’s only a bridge. Well, because it’s there. The same rea­son why I went to the Segovia aque­duct in Spain and walked across it… because it was there.

Monte Choca State Park
(click on image to see it larger)

From the Mav­il­la Bridge we drove all the way to the south end of the munic­i­pal­i­ty, to a place called the Monte Choca State Park. It’s not a state park in the sense that you might visu­al­ize it in the Unit­ed States. It’s sim­ply a huge piece of land that the gov­ern­ment has reserved for con­ser­va­tion purposes.

When we got there we dis­cov­ered three things: that the place was closed, that there weren’t any recre­ation­al facil­i­ties and that now we were at the far end of Corozal. That’s why we should have gone to Monte Choca first and to the Mav­il­la Bridge last.

I must add, how­ev­er, that Corozal has some of the nicest coun­try­side that I’ve seen in Puer­to Rico. The place is sim­ply gor­geous. And the view of the north coast on a clear day must be stunning.

And I do say “must be” because dur­ing our vis­it there was this thick haze in the atmos­phere that hard­ly let us define the hori­zon. So we drove along the Monte Choca area as we found our way back along the Naran­ji­to and Bayamón coun­try­side. By 10:30am we were back on Toll Road 22 on our way to the San Juan Metroplex.

So what can I say about Corozal? Well, it’s a love­ly town that’s great to vis­it on your way to some­where else! And I’m not try­ing to make fun of the place. It’s just that some places are great for spend­ing a cou­ple of hours, but they hard­ly war­rant a whole-day’s visit.

That’s why I titled this post “Corozal, Gate­way To The Heart Of Puer­to Rico”. It’s not a euphemism. It’s not click bait. It’s the truth.

Corozal is sur­round­ed by sev­er­al won­der­ful towns that you can com­bine for a day’s worth of adven­ture. Those towns are: Oro­co­vis, Bar­ran­quitas and Aiboni­to, all to the south. There’s so much more to do in those towns that an entire day won’t suffice.

And the food? Oh my God. The mom and pop restau­rants in all four towns are sim­ply amaz­ing. So take some time to enjoy the local cuisine.

In our case, we weren’t there for the food. My wife and I were there to do a job; to col­lect the infor­ma­tion, the pho­tos and the footage to pro­duce our blog post and video. So we were back home in San Juan before noon.

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!

©2024,Orlando Mer­gal, MA
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Bilin­gual Con­tent Cre­ator, Blog­ger, Podcaster,
Author, Pho­tog­ra­ph­er and New Media Expert
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