Dorado, 23 Square Miles Of Beauty And Adventure 

Dora­do Atlantic Coast
(click on image to see it larger)

If Dora­do weren’t called Dora­do, it would need to be called “Lin­do”. Why? Because it is! You see, the word “lin­do” means “pret­ty” in Span­ish, and that’s one thing that this town def­i­nite­ly is.

Dora­do is the 12th small­est munic­i­pal­i­ty in Puer­to Rico and the 6th in terms of per capi­ta income. With that comes lots of finan­cial inequal­i­ty, but that’s a mat­ter for anoth­er post.

My wife and I vis­it­ed the town of Dora­do twice. Once on the after­noon of April 5th, on our way back from our vis­it to Vega Alta, and again on April 18th. Our first vis­it was one of sheer oppor­tu­ni­ty. We were dri­ving by and we saw the church open. So we decid­ed to film it, in case it was closed when we returned. As it turns out, the church was actu­al­ly closed when we returned on April 18th, so it turned out to be a smart decision.

Click on image to watch a short video

There are two ways to get to Dora­do from San Juan. You can take Toll Road 22, and see noth­ing but coun­try­side and build­ings, or you can take the “scenic route” and dri­ve along the south­ern shore of San Juan Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. We took the later.

You’ll know you’re in Dora­do ter­ri­to­ry when you see a giant Sea­horse mon­u­ment on the right-hand side of road 165. These are the exact coor­di­nates: “18.466396, ‑66.210644”.

Some peo­ple stop to shoot a cou­ple of self­ies, enjoy the view of the Atlantic Ocean coast and breath the fresh salty air. Oth­ers, the more adven­tur­ous type, even go for a swim. But be advised that this is not the best beach area. There are no facil­i­ties what­so­ev­er, the coast has very lit­tle sand and is even rocky in some parts, and the surf is men­ac­ing­ly strong. There are much bet­ter alter­na­tives and I’ll tell you all about them in a few paragraphs.

A cou­ple of miles down the road you’ll pass a large curve and arrive at the inter­sec­tion with road 693. I’m sure it had an exit num­ber at some point in time, but the sign was nowhere to be found.

Turn right at the inter­sec­tion with road 693, dri­ve about a half a mile, go over the bridge and turn right at the first inter­sec­tion. You’ll imme­di­ate­ly find a small park­ing lot on your right-hand side.

That riv­er that you’ll see imme­di­ate­ly east of the park­ing lot is the “La Pla­ta” Riv­er, orig­i­nal­ly calle “Thoa” by the Taíno natives. In fact, that’s where the munic­i­pal­i­ties of Toa Alta and Toa Baja got their names.

La Pla­ta is the longest riv­er in Puer­to Rico. It flows south to north and goes through the munic­i­pal­i­ties of Guaya­ma, Cayey, Com­erío, Naran­ji­to, Toa Alta, Toa Baja, and Dora­do on its way to the Atlantic Ocean.

Julio Bar­reto Monument
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When we turned right, imme­di­ate­ly before reach­ing the park­ing area, I noticed two fea­tures that you might be inter­est­ed in. The first was a stat­ue of “Julio Bar­reto”, a local crab trap­per and the oth­er a “Coquí” stand­ing next to a “Maga” flower. I guess this piece evokes “puer­tor­i­can­hood” (yes, I just made up that word) since the “Coquí” is a lit­tle frog that’s every­where on the Island and gets its name ono­matopoe­ical­ly. As for the “Maga” flower, it’s con­sid­ered the Island’s emblem­at­ic flower.

And here’s a fun fact, depend­ing on who you ask. Did you know that there are Coquí frogs in the large island of Maui in Hawaii? That’s right, and they’re dri­ving the hawai­ians crazy!!!

You see, the Coquí frog is native to Puer­to Rican. In fact, its sci­en­tif­ic name is Eleuthero­dacty­lus Coqui. It lives pret­ty much every­where on the Island, but it par­tic­u­lar­ly loves the trees. And you know what else it loves? Rain. You can hear thou­sands of them after a rain­fall with their unmis­take­able song: coquí, coquí, coquí…

Well, some­how a cou­ple of those Coquí frogs made their way to the island of Maui. Even­tu­al­ly they also made their way into the wild and, since they have no nat­ur­al preda­tors over there, they repro­duced like crazy.

Puer­to Rican Coquí
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A coupe of yeas ago, I was watch­ing a news piece about this sit­u­a­tion and in some areas the prob­lem is so bad that local author­i­ties are explor­ing ways to exter­mi­nate them. I remem­ber a recep­tion­ist, at one of those “open air hotels”, that couldn’t hear the per­son on the oth­er end of the line because the “coquíes” were so loud.

I mean, for us in Puer­to Rico it may even seem fun­ny, but the hawai­ians aren’t very amused. If you would like to hear what the call­ing of “coquíes” sounds like hit the play­er below.

You Can lis­ten to coquí frogs here.

After park­ing our SUV we walked south along the riv­er bank, under the bridge and arrived at a small park called the “La Pla­ta Recre­ation­al Area”. There are bench­es for peo­ple watch­ing, trees galore and one of those huge chairs, to take your self­ie, that seem to be pop­ping up every­where on the Island.

La Pla­ta Recre­ation Area
(click on image to see it larger)

There’s also a two storey gaze­bo-shaped struc­ture that had seen bet­ter days until it ran into the fury of hur­ri­cane María back in 2017.

One thing I should men­tion is that there seems to be con­struc­tion going on every­where in the town of Dora­do. In fact, we were told that one of the places up for renew­al is that gaze­bo-shaped struc­ture. As it stands now, the sec­ond lev­el is closed to the public.

Right next to the park there’s a small muse­um called La Pla­ta Exhi­bi­tion Hall, or “Sala de Exposi­ciones La Pla­ta”. It’s an itin­er­at­ing muse­um main­ly ded­i­cat­ed to local and Island artists. The day we vis­it­ed there was an exhib­it by chil­dren from a local school.

Now, here’s a fun fact about Dora­do. It’s a town on a hill. So the eas­i­est was to explore it is to park your car, explore the area around it, then move you car and explore again. Oth­er­wise, you’ll end up exhaust­ed and with your car across town.

So that’s what we did. We walked a lit­tle fur­ther up Mén­dez Vigo street to the Casa Del Rey, a neo­clas­si­cal struc­ture built in 1823 to house Span­ish per­son­nel. The build­ing was restored by the Puer­to Rico Insti­tute of Cul­ture back in 1978 and a year lat­er it was includ­ed in the U.S. Nation­al Reg­is­ter of His­toric Places.

Con­trary to our expe­ri­ence at La Pla­ta Exhi­bi­tion Hall, which was quite delight­ful, our vis­it to La Casa del Rey was rather under­whelm­ing. In fact, most of what I learned about La Casa Del Rey I got from the Internet.

Casa del Rey Muse­um | Dora­do, 23 Square Miles Of Beau­ty And Adven­ture | Puer­to Rico By GPS

As we walked in the door we were told that we couldn’t shoot any video. What’s more, we could make any pho­tographs either. So the few pic­tures in this post are from the facade and what­ev­er I could “sneak out”.

I also felt like it doesn’t fol­low a com­mon theme. It’s more like a hodge­podge of all things “Dora­do”.

Juan Boria Arts Center
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Across the street you have the Juan Boria Arts Cen­ter which is present­ly closed for restora­tions. Juan Boria Romero was born on Feb­ru­ary 17, 1906, in Dora­do and gained inter­na­tion­al fame as a bom­ba and ple­na per­former and com­pos­er. Bom­ba and ple­na are —of course— Puer­to Rican folk­loric rhythms that have a great African influence.

It was time to move our vehi­cle, so I walked down the hill, drove up, picked up my wife and parked by the Saint Antho­ny Of Pad­ua Parish. We had already vis­it­ed the parish back on April 5th.

Saint Antho­ny Of Pad­ua Parish is a small tem­ple when com­pared to oth­ers on the Island. Con­struc­tion start­ed in 1842 and six years lat­er the “doradeños” cel­e­brat­ed their first mass in their new temple.

Saint Antho­ny Of Pad­ua Parish
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On the out­side the build­ing is rater boxy, with three small bells and a sim­ple cross in the cen­ter. On the inside it’s a dif­fer­ent sto­ry, with arched doors and win­dows and beau­ti­ful wood decorations.

There was anoth­er thing about this tem­ple that caught my atten­tion. We vis­it­ed on a bright sun­ny day. Yet, the tem­per­a­ture inside the parish wasn’t hot, and there wasn’t any air con­di­tion­ing. The tall ceil­ings com­bined with mul­ti­ple ceil­ing fans more than did the trick.

Like my friend Fer­nan­do Abruña always says: you don’t always need air con­di­tion­ing. High ceil­ings, large win­dows and doors, and a lit­tle cross ven­ti­la­tion is often enough.

As we left the Catholic church we went for a walk around the main square. Like most oth­er towns in Puer­to Rico, you have a main square with the Catholic Church on the east side and City Hall some­where on the west end. This arrange­ment was inher­it­ed from Spain, who in turn inher­it­ed it from the Romans.

Mon­u­ment to the Races
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There’s a mon­u­ment in the mid­dle of the square hon­or­ing the three races that gave way to mod­ern day Puer­to Rico. Those were: white Euro­peans, black Africans and Taínos. I guess you could say that those were the main con­trib­u­tors, because mod­ern day Puer­to Rico has become more of a melt­ing pot of mul­ti­ple cul­tures and nationalities.

On the south­west cor­ner of the square you have City Hall, which extends across the street to a sec­ond build­ing. There’s also a stat­ue of gen­er­al San­ti­a­go Mén­dez Vigo, the Puer­to Rican gov­er­nor who signed the procla­ma­tion cre­at­ing the town of “San Anto­nio De Dora­do” back in 1842.

I nor­mal­ly don’t men­tion com­mer­cial ven­tures in my posts, because it erodes my cred­i­bil­i­ty, but in this case it has to do with some­thing that my wife and I enjoyed. Right next to the San­ti­a­go Mén­dez Vigo stat­ue there’s a small cafe­te­ria where you can enjoy the famous “alca­purrias bisexuales”.

Bisex­u­al Alcapurrias
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So what are those, you might ask? Well, alca­purrias are a local del­i­ca­cy made of “yautía” (taro root), green bananas and ground beef. Of course, every cook has his/her secret sea­son­ing, but they basi­cal­ly con­tain Puer­to Rican “sofrito”, salt, pep­per, corian­der and annatto.

First you ground the taro root and green bananas into what’s called “masa” that’s basi­cal­ly sea­soned with salt. Then you cook the meat with “sofrito, salt, pep­per, corian­der and annatto.

Final­ly you spread some masa into a cir­cle on a banana leaf, put a string of ground meat through the cen­ter and roll it into cylin­dri­cal form. Final­ly you fry the whole thing and float to culi­nary heaven.

So what’s so spe­cial about the “alca­purrias bisex­u­ales”? Well, for starters they’re about a foot long. Reg­u­lar alca­purrias are more like 4 inch­es. Sec­ond, they’re juicy and made as you wait. There’s no sit­ting under an infrared bulb here.

All in all, it’s “alca­purria nirvana”.

And the name? Well, that’s a gim­mick to catch the public’s attention.

After enjoy­ing a cou­ple of these foot-long mir­a­cles we walked over to a small­er plaza called “La Plaza de los Doradeños Ilus­tres, or “The Plaza of the Illus­tri­ous Doradeños”, in the King’s Eng­lish, that has always remind­ed me of a sim­i­lar one that we vis­it­ed in the small town of “Palos de la Fron­tera”, in the province of Huel­va, in Spain.

Plaza of the Illus­tri­ous Doradeños
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It’s a nice lit­tle plaza with plen­ty of bench­es for peo­ple watch­ing and —you guessed it— busts of illus­tri­ous “doradeños”.

We had three places left to vis­it (more like two, because one was closed). When we vis­it­ed the church, on April 5th, we were told not to miss the “San­tu­ario del Cristo” that’s a lit­tle fur­ther up Mén­dez Vigo street, turn­ing right on Paseo Del Cristo street. We were also told that it only opened on Thursdays.

Well, guess what? April 18th was a Thurs­day and the “San­tu­ario” was closed. So we con­tin­ued on to Bal­n­eario Manuel “Nolo” Morales.

Dora­do is a coastal town and it’s also a beach town. And, in case you’re won­der­ing, there’s a dif­fer­ence. Some towns are next to the ocean but they’re hard­ly beach towns, because their coast is rocky, dan­ger­ous or down­right dirty and polluted.

That’s not the case in Dora­do. How­ev­er, like in the case of Río Grande (that we cov­ered in a pre­vi­ous post), most of Dorado’s beach­es are fenced out by pri­vate con­cerns leav­ing only the “bal­n­eario” for the towns­peo­ple to enjoy.

By now you must have fig­ured out that the word “bal­n­eario” means pub­lic or gov­ern­ment-run beach. It also means that you get life­guards, buoys, sig­nage, show­ers, restrooms and park­ing. Best of all every­thing is free except for the park­ing. But even that is a nom­i­nal fee.

Bal­n­eario Manuel “Nolo” Morales (east­ern side)
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Bal­n­eario Manuel “Nolo” Morales is actu­al­ly one large beach divid­ed by a break­wa­ter. I cov­er this beach in great detail in my book Puer­to Rico Beach By Beach so I won’t go into every lit­tle detail, but it’s the only place where every­day “doradeños” can go for a dip in their entire municipality.

Bal­n­eario Manuel “Nolo” Morales (west­ern side)
(click on image to see it larger)

The east­ern por­tion has low­er surf and is suit­able for par­ties with chil­dren. The west­ern por­tion has high­er surf and is show­ing the signs of ero­sion caused by cli­mate change and ris­ing sea levels.

There was one place left to vis­it and it was a lit­tle after 1:00 o’clock. It’s called “El Ojo del Buey”, in Eng­lish “The Ox’s Eye”, and it’s a rock for­ma­tion right next to the delta of the La Pla­ta River.

The Ox’s Eye (El Ojo Del Buey)
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There’s only one way to get there. You have to dri­ve to the end of a road and walk about half mile along the Atlantic shore­line. Some parts of the trek are along a sandy trail with dense veg­e­ta­tion and oth­ers are over rocky ter­rain. But all of them are under the blis­ter­ing Caribbean sun.

A wide brim hat, light reflec­tive cloth­ing, hik­ing shoes, plen­ty of water and sun­block are cer­tain­ly in order.

At the end you’ll find a rock for­ma­tion that resem­bles the skull of an ox, com­plete with eye sock­ets, snout and brain cavity.

It’s quite a sight against the back­drop of the wild Atlantic ocean. And if you’re a land­scape pho­tog­ra­ph­er like me you sim­ply won’t resist the urge to shoot it. It’s the image I used for the thumb­nail of my video.

La Pla­ta Riv­er Delta
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Oth­er attrac­tions in the area are the La Pla­ta delta and sev­er­al coves along the way. How­ev­er, be advised that none of this area is for bathing. In fact, as you park your car, there’s a large sign next to the gate warn­ing you about the dan­gers of this place.

Of course, that same half mile that you walk to “El Ojo Del Buy” is the one you’ll have to walk back on the way to your car.

And let’s leave some­thing crys­tal clear here. I’m not say­ing that any­thing in this area is intrin­si­cal­ly dan­ger­ous, because it’s not. But be advised that you’ll be in rugged ter­rain and under extreme solar radi­a­tion. So pre­pare accordingly.

So how do you get back to San Juan? Well, here’s the easy way. Copy the coor­di­nates for the town square from the map below and put them in your GPS. That will get you out of the Ojo del Buey are and back to civ­i­liza­tion. From there, fol­low road 693 going east until you reach the inter­sec­tion with road 165. Turn left and fol­low road 165 until you reach exit 7B going towards Toll Road 22. Fol­low Toll Road 22 until you reach the Minil­las Tun­nel in San Juan.

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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