Las Piedras, Puerto Rico | You’ll Be Surprised!

It was “Abue­lo Time” on Sep­tem­ber 8
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I have a sen­ti­men­tal con­nec­tion with Las Piedras. After all, I sold my first insur­ance pol­i­cy there. I was a young man, start­ing off as a “sales­man” with Com­bined Insur­ance Com­pa­ny. I hadn’t sold any­thing in my life, so the expe­ri­ence was terrifying.

After stum­bling through a canned pre­sen­ta­tion, I final­ly sold my first insur­ance pol­i­cy to an old man at the town square. It was all sweaty and wrin­kled and I was on the brink of a ner­vous breakdown.

Every one of us has had one of those expe­ri­ences. Things that we laugh at today, but weren’t fun­ny at all when they actu­al­ly hap­pened. Don’t we?

Well, there I was, at the main square of Las Piedras. Forty six years lat­er. It was closed and bar­ren; not exact­ly the image that I had in my mind!

There used to be a kiosk at the cor­ner of the plaza, where I made that first sale. Well, it’s no longer there. City Hall is in ruins. The Immac­u­late Con­cep­tion Parish is in ruins too.

How did this all become such a mess?

In one word: María.

Hur­ri­cane María made land­fall in Yabu­coa, Puer­to Rico. It was 6:15 in the morn­ing local time, when the storm hit as a cat­e­go­ry 4. It was dev­as­tat­ing. Not only in Yabu­coa, but across all Puer­to Rico. That’s how my mem­o­ries of Las Piedras were wiped out.

All of a sud­den my wife and I found our­selves try­ing to pro­duce a “five must-see places” video in a town that had noth­ing to see. Or did it?

Like always, I had pre­pared a list of places to vis­it com­plete with GPS coor­di­nates. City Hall, check! The main square, check! The Immac­u­late Con­cep­tion Parish, check! Next on our list: the “Las Piedras Cer­e­mo­ni­al Park and Indi­an Cave”.

What was that? I had nev­er heard of it, let alone vis­it­ed it. But hey, I was run­ning out of options so what the heck.

Hous­es in pret­ty bright col­ors
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As we start­ed towards the park we went by a com­mu­ni­ty with hous­es paint­ed in bright col­ors. This has become a trend in Puer­to Rico. It seems like every com­mu­ni­ty with lit­tle or noth­ing of his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance resorts to bright col­ors to attract local tourists. And it seems to work, because they keep doing it.

But I was nev­er going to attract some­one sit­ting in “What­ev­erville, U.S.A.” with hous­es paint­ed in pret­ty col­ors, so I con­tin­ued on my way.

For some­one trav­el­ling from abroad, the “Las Piedras Cer­e­mo­ni­al Park and Indi­an Cave” is basi­cal­ly in the mid­dle of nowhere. So your best bet is to punch the fol­low­ing coor­di­nates into your GPS and fol­low its every com­mand: [18.194674, ‑65.871958]. Lat­er on I’ll give you addi­tion­al coor­di­nates to get you back to State Road 30 and to the San Juan Metroplex.

The first time that I vis­it­ed the park they were clos­ing. The atten­dant was gra­cious enough to let me in to walk around for a few min­utes, but in the end he was about to leave. I told him who I was, and why I was there, and he offered to give us a V.I.P tour at a lat­er date.

Nor­mal­ly I pass on this kind of offer because it entails anoth­er vis­it, 90 more min­utes of dri­ving and addi­tion­al expens­es. But the place seemed amaz­ing so we sched­uled for Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 8.

On the morn­ing of Sep­tem­ber 8 the heat index was through the roof so the local gov­ern­ment closed down the schools while they “put their minds togeth­er” (that’s a scary thought) and explored pos­si­ble solu­tions. That meant that my grand­chil­dren got to spend some qual­i­ty time with grand­ma and grandpa.

There we were. All four ready to explore.

Abal­lardes can make your life mis­er­able
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My grand­daugh­ter was the first to have a brush with nature. She was stung by an “abal­larde”. What’s that, you might ask? Well, think of it like a fire ant on steroids that will sting you off your feet! She got bit sev­er­al times. And here’s the thing, the bites will itch. And the more you scratch, the more they’ll itch.

So what’s the mes­sage here? If you’re plan­ning to vis­it the “Las Piedras Cer­e­mo­ni­al Park and Indi­an Cave” bring insect repel­lant (the deep woods vari­ety) and —since your still going to get bit (only less)— bring a tube of Benadryl gel.

And, since “abal­lardes” live on the veg­e­ta­tion, try not to brush against the plants and you’ll be bet­ter off.

There’s no poi­son ivy in Puer­to Rico —in case you’re won­der­ing— but there is a plant called “orti­ga” (“sting­ing net­tle in the King’s Eng­lish) that caus­es a ter­ri­ble itch. Just ask your guide and fol­low his instruc­tions to the letter.

David Velázquez show­ing us the pet­ro­glyphs
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When we got to the park we met with Mr. David Velázquez. He’s a chat­ty fel­low that knows every inch of the park. He’s also a self-taught expert in every­thing relat­ed to the Taínos.

Just to dri­ve a point home, the Taínos were not “indi­ans”. Nei­ther were any of the tribes in North or South Amer­i­ca. They were natives. They weren’t even “Native Amer­i­cans” because the name Amer­i­ca came lat­er. And they weren’t “indi­ans” because that was the name giv­en by Christo­pher Colum­bus to the natives of what he believed to be “the indies”.

They were sim­ply natives, like an Ital­ian would be a native of Italy. Back to our story.

Cer­e­mo­ni­al Cen­ter
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Our first stop was at the cer­e­mo­ni­al cen­ter. Taíno cer­e­mo­ni­al cen­ters were con­trolled by the tribe’s “shaman” or spir­i­tu­al leader. You can tell by the shaman stone that’s about halfway down the right side of the center.

This was also where the ‘Arey­to” was danced.

Accord­ing to Wikipedia an Arey­to was “a kind of rhyme or romance that our Taíno ances­tors sang and danced to at the same time. The inspi­ra­tion was in their dai­ly sto­ries, that were sung in cho­rus or indi­vid­u­al­ly by an indi­vid­ual, whose mis­sion was to guide the dance and/or the sto­ry, which the oth­ers repeated”.

So basi­cal­ly, it was their way of com­mu­ni­cat­ing cur­rent events.

The cer­e­mo­ni­al cen­ter was also where they cel­e­brat­ed spe­cial events such as vic­to­ries over their rivals, a good har­vest, a birth, a death, a mar­riage… it would all be done at the cer­e­mo­ni­al cen­ter to thank their divinities.

Some of the spe­cial fea­tures of this cer­e­mo­ni­al cen­ter include the shaman stone, which por­trays a shaman with dou­ble ears, dou­ble eyes and dou­ble mouth (mean­ing that he could see, hear and speak bet­ter than any­one); a huge stone shaped like a Man­atí and the but­ter­fly stone.

And here’s a true fact for you. Even after 500+ years this area is still known for its abun­dant butterflies.

Taínos would almost always live next to the rivers, where they would obtain food and water. That’s where they’d also build their “bateyes” (or “batey” in the sin­gu­lar sense). Some his­to­ri­ans argue that all sorts of events took place at the “batey”, includ­ing those of a reli­gious nature. But our guide David Velázquez was adamant that the cer­e­mo­ni­al cen­ter was were reli­gious events took place and the “batey” was where the “batú” was played.

“Batú” was a game, very sim­i­lar in nature to mod­ern day soc­cer, that was played between two teams, using a ball made of tree roots and resin. The ball had to be hard and boun­cy enough to play with, but not hard enough to hurt their heads.

The play­ers could come into con­tact with the ball with their body, legs and head, but nev­er with their hands.

You can still see the exact rock where the “batú” balls were man­u­fac­tured. You can also see the seats, carved into the stone, where the “cacique” and his pro­tec­tors would sit to enjoy the game.

And in case you haven’t fig­ured it out by now, the “cacique” was the trib­al chief. And in the the case of this park in par­tic­u­lar, his name was “Jumacao”.

The “batey” at “Las Piedras Cer­e­mo­ni­al Park and Indi­an Cave” is exact­ly as it was the last time a taíno played “batú” there. The only dif­fer­ence is that now it has grass on it, because keep­ing it in a bar­ren state would bring addi­tion­al expens­es that the park can’t cov­er at this point.

You will also see El Yunque Nation­al For­est in the dis­tance. This wasn’t an acci­dent. The Taínos believed that their gods lived at El Yunque so the “batey” faced that way. You will learn addi­tion­al tales about those gods a lit­tle lat­er, but for now let’s just leave it at that.

Large Cave
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From the “batey” we went to the large cave. This is the cave where the Taínos would refuge in times of war and hur­ri­canes. It’s the largest of the two caves. Anoth­er fact is that it has no pet­ro­glyphs. More on that later.

We didn’t enter the larg­er cave because the entrance was wet and slip­pery. Instead, I low­ered a cam­era on a large pole to take the best images pos­si­ble. My adven­tur­ous nature has its lim­its at age 69.

From there we con­tin­ued to the small­er cave which David Velazquez calls “the library”.

Before reach­ing the cave Velázquez showed us the many war­rior seats carved in the stones all around the entrance to the “library” cave. This shows the impor­tance that this cave had for them.

Inside the cave there are 178 pet­ro­glyphs depict­ing all aspects of taíno life. But there’s one in par­tic­u­lar that will raise the hair on the back of your neck. It depicts some sort of being with a giant head, a small body, arms with three fin­gers, a small nose and mouth, and very large slant­ed eyes. Above him some sort of ship with rays that shine upon the being below.

Accord­ing to Velazquez that means that the being below came from the ship above!

Even if that weren’t the case, how did the prim­i­tive Taínos come up with an image like that? How did they move all those huge stones to build their cer­e­mo­ni­al park and batey?

Those of us that have tak­en an anthro­pol­o­gy course in col­lege, learn that nature doesn’t cre­ate straight lines. Every time you see some­thing in a straight line it’s because it’s man made, So how did the Taínos move all those heavy rocks to build a rec­tan­gu­lar “batey”?

Rocks in a straight line
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There’s anoth­er thing that will blow your mind at the “Las Piedras Cer­e­mo­ni­al Park and Indi­an Cave”, but David Velázquez made me promise not to tell. So you’ll have to ask him when you go there. I can only promise that it will leave you won­der­ing. That’s if he tells you!

So what do you think so far? Is it worth explor­ing? How much do you think the admis­sion is? Well, what­ev­er num­ber you came up with, you’re wrong, because admis­sion is free!!!

That’s right. ¡Gratis!!!

How­ev­er, you can’t walk right in. You’ll need a reser­va­tion. Because David Veláquez is the only one there and he has to sched­ule his time very care­ful­ly. Just call 787–733-2160 and they’ll take care of you.

And in case you’re won­der­ing, there are two addi­tion­al attrac­tions that peo­ple men­tion in Las Piedras that we decid­ed to ignore.

The first was Cer­ro Los Gatos, which requires a long and stren­u­ous climb. The sec­ond was Monte del Retiro, which was just up the road from La Cue­va Del Indio. Monte del Retiro is a pri­vate prop­er­ty where there are three enor­mous rocks with pet­ro­glyphs. How­ev­er, the own­er charges $15 per per­son just to go in. That would’ve been $60. So we decid­ed to pass.

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.

As you exit the park you’ll want to get back to State Road 30. To do so just punch the fol­low­ing coor­di­nates into your GPS: (18.185114, ‑65.887913). And to get back to San Juan just fol­low these (18.446976, ‑66.068866) and you’ll get to the Minil­las Tunnel.

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.

Until 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