Discover Fort San Felipe del Morro in Old San Juan

If there’s one word that describes Fort San Felipe del Mor­ro, in San Juan, Puer­to Rico it’s awe­some!  And that’s exact­ly what the weath­er was also like this past week­end.  It was awe­some.  So Zorai­da and I took to the road to fin­ish this two-part series about the Span­ish Forts in Puer­to Rico.

Fort San Felipe del Mor­ro is a 6‑level mil­i­tary for­ti­fi­ca­tion that ris­es 145 feet above sea lev­el.  How­ev­er, when you first arrive it does­n’t seem tall at all.  This is because the entrance to the fort is through a con­crete bridge that goes straight into the fifth level.

The pur­pose of Fort San Felipe del Mor­ro was to guard the entrance to San Juan Bay.  And in doing so it also guard­ed the south­ern part of the city of San Juan.  The east­ern side of the city was pro­tect­ed by Fort San Cristo­bal and the north has so many reefs that try­ing to land any­where on that coast would have been pure suicide.

Every­thing in Fort San Felipe del Mor­ro serves a mil­i­tary pur­pose; even the things that aren’t so appar­ent.  For exam­ple, when you first arrive on El Mor­ro grounds you go across a giant lawn that does­n’t have a sin­gle tree.  This is called the “glacis”, and the rea­son why it does­n’t have a sin­gle tree is to deny attack­ing forces of any form of cover.

This bridge used to be a drawbridge

Then there’s a con­crete bridge that enters the fort.  In Span­ish colo­nial times this was actu­al­ly a draw­bridge, that when raised offered addi­tion­al pro­tec­tion for the fort doors.

But wait, there’s more!  You will notice that there’s a dry moat that goes around the entire east­ern side of the fort.  In case of an attack the incom­ing sol­diers would have been forced to lean lad­ders on the out­er side of the moat, climb down those lad­ders (with their backs towards the fort), cross the moat and then climb up the fort walls.  In the mean­time there would have been Span­ish sol­diers with cross­bows, can­nons, mus­kets, and any­thing else they could get their hands on, shoot­ing at them.

The view of Fort San Felipe del Mor­ro from the oth­er side of the bay is awesome

From the water it was even worse.  First, there would be five lev­els of pure fire­pow­er point­ing straight at the bay entrance (that’s where the incom­ing ves­sel would be).  And on the oppo­site side was Fort San Juan de la Cruz that would catch them in a crossfire.

Zorai­da and I vis­it­ed El Mor­ro last Sat­ur­day and the day was so spec­tac­u­lar that we returned on Sun­day just to shoot some addi­tion­al footage from the old lep­er hos­pi­tal on the oth­er side of San Juan Bay.

El Mor­ro from the old lep­ers hospital

The view from the oth­er edge was awe­some.  Espe­cial­ly because we are in Novem­ber and that’s when the Island is hit by “la mare­ja­da de los muer­tos”.  I guess a loose trans­la­tion for this phe­nom­e­non would be the “swell of the dead”.  In Span­ish tra­di­tion Novem­ber 2nd is called “el día de los muer­tos” or “the day of the dead” and that’s where these unusu­al­ly high swells —that gen­er­al­ly hap­pen in Novem­ber— got their name.

It will take you about a cou­ple of hours to explore Fort San Felipe del Mor­ro.  Espe­cial­ly if you go up and down all its intri­cate spi­ral stair­cas­es, tun­nels and ramps.  The fort is oper­at­ed by the U.S. Nation­al Park Ser­vice so there are well trained park rangers that will answer you every question.

There is also a small shop where you can buy every­day sou­venirs but you can also acquire actu­al books about the his­to­ry of Old San Juan, Fort San Felipe del Mor­ro, Fort San Cristo­bal and the his­to­ry of Puer­to Rico in general.

Fort San Juan de la Cruz “El Cañuelo”

I’ve been vis­it­ing both these forts —and Old San Juan in gen­er­al— since I was a teenag­er.  Then I showed them (repeat­ed­ly) to my chil­dren.  Now the mar­vels of mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy are allow­ing me to show them to you and to the world.  And I’m lov­ing every minute of it!

Puer­to Rico is a beau­ti­ful island with won­der­ful and wel­com­ing peo­ple.  Sure, it has its share of crime and trou­ble, just like any oth­er place in the world.  But with a lit­tle com­mon sense —and with the infor­ma­tion that we pro­vide on Puer­to Rico By GPS— you can have a won­der­ful time.

On our next post we’ll leave Old San Juan behind and show you some­place won­der­ful out­side the San Juan Metro­plex.  Which one?  I hon­est­ly don’t know yet.  But I’m sure you’re going to love it.  That’s a promise!

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‘Till next time,

©2013,Orlando Mer­gal, MA
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Bilin­gual Con­tent Cre­ator, Blog­ger, Pod­cast­er,
Author, Pho­tog­ra­ph­er and New Media Expert
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