Maunabo, Puerto Rico | A Tiny Town With Huge Possibilities 

Colo­nial Archi­tec­ture in Maunabo
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Maun­abo is one of those tiny towns in Puer­to Rico that still has the mag­ic of yes­ter­year. For many years it was one of the hard­est towns to get to because of its geo­graph­ic loca­tion. That cer­tain­ly put a damper on “progress”, but it also helped save the “mag­ic” of that sleepy Span­ish-style town that we all love.

My wife and I vis­it­ed Maun­abo on Sep­tem­ber 29th, as part of our “5 Must-See Places” series. “5 Must-See Places” at each town that is, not “5 Must-See Places” in Puer­to Rico.

Maun­abo shore­line with the Pun­ta Tuna Light­house in the distance
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When we first we entered the juris­dic­tion of Maun­abo it was 8:39am, quite a feat for some­one dri­ving from San Juan. We stopped to take in the view from a van­tage point way up in the moun­tains, just after pass­ing the Yabu­coa town line. And let me tell you, I’ve been to Italy, Spain and up and down the Unit­ed States and the Maun­abo coast­line has noth­ing to envy. It’s sim­ply breathtaking.

As we reached town it was already 8:38am. The town was just wak­ing up. The main square was desert­ed, the church was closed and there was just a sin­gle per­son stand­ing in front of City Hall. We walked around the square for a few min­utes and decid­ed to head for the Pun­ta Tuna Light­house area, cov­er that from the east­ern side, return to town and then cov­er the west­ern side of Pun­ta Tuna in the afternoon.

Pun­ta Tuna Lighthouse
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The Pun­ta Tuna Light­house is one of those mag­i­cal places that Puer­to Rico isn’t using to its full poten­tial (more on that in a minute). It sits next to anoth­er mag­i­cal place called the Pun­ta Tuna Nature Reserve and a loooooooooong stretch of beach apt­ly called “Playa Larga”, which in Eng­lish means “Long Beach”.

Playa Larga is a beau­ti­ful part of Puer­to Rico’s Caribbean Sea coast­line. The sand is gold­en yel­low and the water is a won­der­ful crys­talline turquoise blue. How­ev­er, I noticed that there wasn’t a sin­gle soul through­out the entire stretch. That got me think­ing, so I decid­ed to inves­ti­gate further.

Playa Larga
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What I dis­cov­ered is that “Playa Larga” is known for high surf and rip cur­rents. It’s also a pro­tect­ed nest­ing area for sea tur­tles. Maybe that’s why there was no one there. The fact of the mat­ter is that the area is sim­ply stunning.

I also noticed two neg­a­tive aspects for which no one in par­tic­u­lar on the Island is to blame. First was the evi­dent effects of ero­sion caused by ris­ing sea lev­els. It’s like some­one bit a chunk out of the entire coast­line. This is caused by the ris­ing tem­per­a­ture lev­els, that in turn have been melt­ing the polar caps and caus­ing the rise in sea levels.

Add to that the unprece­dent­ed amount of sarga­zo weed that the Island has received this year and it sad­ly makes for ugly beach­es. Not only in Puer­to Rico, but through­out the entire Caribbean area and the east­ern seaboard of the Unit­ed States.

All in all “Playa Larga” is still stunning.

Evi­dent effects of ero­sion and abun­dant sarga­zo weed at Playa Larga
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Against my der­ma­tol­o­gists rec­om­men­da­tions I decid­ed to walk the entire beach, end to end, and came up with some pret­ty nice images (if I do say so myself). This is one place that is tru­ely “a photographer’s playground”.

It would have been even bet­ter to arrive at around 6:30 in the morn­ing, to catch the Caribbean’s gold­en sun rays hit­ting the Pun­ta Tuna Light­house from the east. But that would have meant leav­ing home in San Juan at 4:30 in the morn­ing. Anoth­er option would have been to stay at a small hotel in the area. But we’re pro­duc­ing this series on our dime and on a shoe­string bud­get, so that was out of the question.

Albeit that it was close to 10:00am, and that the sun was a lit­tle bit high­er in the sky, I’m sure you’ll agree that this area is pure eye can­dy for land­scape photographers.

After putting in my quo­ta of beach pic­tures for one morn­ing at “Playa Larga” we went up to the Pun­ta Tuna Light­house. I had vis­it­ed the light­house for the last time on March 10, 2015. And how do I recall the exact date, you might ask. Because of the time stamp on my dig­i­tal images for that day. Isn’t tech­nol­o­gy wonderful?

Most light­hous­es, both local­ly and nation­al­ly, have been decom­mis­sioned by the U.S. Coast­guard and replaced with fed­er­al buoys, bea­cons, and elec­tron­ic aids (includ­ing the com­mer­cial ver­sion of GPS, which adds addi­tion­al features).

Most towns, for­tu­nate enough to have a light­house, have con­vert­ed them into tourist attrac­tions, with muse­ums, play­grounds and even reen­act­ments. I don’t know what it is, but there’s some­thing about light­hous­es that attracts tourists.

In fact, my wife and I made a trip to New Eng­land back in 2017 just to shoot fall col­or, cov­ered bridges, light­hous­es and —of course— vis­it Aca­dia Nation­al Park.

Maun­abo hasn’t fol­lowed the nation­al trend of con­vert­ing local light­hous­es into tourist attrac­tions. Of course, they are for­tu­nate enough to have the light­house. But it’s just sit­ting there.

When we vis­it­ed, back in 2015, the atten­dant at the time told us that the city had just been grant­ed the light­house and that they were plan­ning to restore it and con­vert it into a muse­um. Well, eight years lat­er it hasn’t changed a bit. It’s just sit­ting there and the present day atten­dant seems so bored that she hard­ly moves a mus­cle when she speaks to you.

We walked around the light­house perime­ter for a while, but there’s noth­ing there except for the stun­ning land­scape that sur­rounds it. You have a beau­ti­ful top view of “Playa Larga” to the east and of “Playa Negra” to the west.

Maun­abo City Hall
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After leav­ing the Pun­ta Tuna Light­house it was almost noon so we decid­ed to give the Catholic Church a sec­ond try. As I’ve said in pre­vi­ous posts, there are tourists that go around the world vis­it­ing old church­es. It’s a form of tourism just like vis­it­ing muse­ums, cas­tles or nation­al parks can be. And, since Puer­to Rico has a great deal of beau­ti­ful old church­es, we make it a point to vis­it them as an essen­tial ele­ment of our “5 Must-See Places” series.

And why are they most­ly Catholic, you might ask? Well, because Spain is a Catholic coun­try and Puer­to Rico belonged to Spain for over 400 years. That means that the old­est church­es on the Island are a most­ly Catholic.

When we got back to town the church was still closed, so we went to City Hall to ask when we might catch it open.

When I was a child I remem­ber Catholic tem­ples being open all day. But today it’s a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. Crime and van­dal­ism has forced them to take stricter mea­sures. And, since they don’t have the peo­ple, or the bud­get, to have some­one watch­ing the tem­ples all day long, they sim­ply cel­e­brate mass in the morn­ing and close the rest of the day. It’s a sad thing to say, but that’s the world that we live in.

At City Hall they sug­gest­ed that we walk around the back of the church and ask at the parish office. For­tu­nate­ly the priest was there and he was nice enough to let us in.

The San Isidro Labrador & San­ta María de la Cabeza Parish is a 224-year-old tem­ple that’s as nice on the out­side as it is on the inside. It’s not as large as oth­ers that we’ve vis­it­ed, but it’s cer­tain­ly beautiful.

After leav­ing the parish we decid­ed to have lunch and go for a dri­ve in the coun­try­side. Shoot­ing the Pun­ta Tuna Light­house from both sides pos­es a geo­graph­i­cal and astro­nom­i­cal conun­drum. Why? Because it sits on a promon­to­ry that points straight south.

That means that you’ll have to be on the east side ear­ly in the morn­ing and on the west side late in the after­noon. And if you want to make your images dur­ing the blue hour your best bet will be to stay at a local hotel.

We took State Road #3 going west, as if we were going to the neigh­bor­ing town of Patil­las. It’s a beau­ti­ful stretch of road that in many areas bor­ders the Caribbean sea. Anoth­er thing we found along State Road #3 were the ruins of the old Colum­bia Sug­ar Cane Mill.

The Colum­bia Sug­ar Cane Mill was estab­lished in 1900 and destroyed by hur­ri­cane San Felipe in 1928. Accord­ing to a neigh­bor that I spoke with, hur­ri­cane Georges destroyed most of what was left in 1998 and hur­ri­cane María cleaned out the rest in 2017.

Today only a few walls are left, but with a lit­tle cre­ativ­i­ty and imag­i­na­tion you can make some great images.

It was get­ting close to 2:00pm and my watch was drag­ging its hands like Colum­bia Sug­ar Mill molases. I had lit­tle or noth­ing left to shoot in Maun­abo so we head­ed for “Playa Negra”, the black sand beach that sits west of the Pun­ta Tuna Lighthouse.

Pun­ta Tuna Light­house from Playa Negra 2015
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This used to be the ide­al spot to shoot the light­house from its west­ern side. In fact, I made a beau­ti­ful image from that very spot back in 2015. But now it’s a dif­fer­ent story.

Glob­al warm­ing and the rise in sea lev­els have tak­en their toll on Playa Negra. What used to be black sand is more like a hole. The depres­sion from where I parked my car to the water’s edge was between 4 and 5 feet deep. You can see the root sys­tem on var­i­ous palm trees and what you have is tan sand from the sea bot­tom cov­er­ing what used to be black sand.

There’s a vacant build­ing behind the beach that looks like it might have been a food stand. Admit­ted­ly, some­one keeps it clean and most­ly free of graf­fi­ti. But the fact remains that the area hard­ly resem­bles what it was in the past.

As for pic­ture tak­ing, you have the mouth of the Maun­abo riv­er right by and there are still a few plants and palm trees that you can use as fore­ground for an evening shot of the lighthouse.

And believe me, I don’t report any of this with plea­sure. But it’s God’s hon­est truth. And in Puer­to Rico By GPS we tell it like it is. That has always been our motto.

As for the gov­ern­ment? You could argue that cli­mate change, glob­al warm­ing and ris­ing sea lev­els are both: not their fault and beyond their con­trol. But oth­er than the same “envi­ron­men­tal activist voic­es”, that are always in the news com­ment­ing about these issues, you hard­ly hear any­one else address­ing these prob­lems, espe­cial­ly gov­ern­ment figures.

Well, here’s a news flash for them (the gov­ern­ment, that is). Most of the tourists that vis­it Puer­to Rico come here for the beach­es. Don’t believe me? Ask them!!! And if our beach­es “go to hell in a hand bas­ket” so will our tourism sec­tor. So get with the program.

Please give me a sec­ond while I get off my soapbox.

Even with the present con­di­tions I was able to pop off a cou­ple of great images from “Playa Negra”. I’ve also includ­ed one that I shot back in 2015, with chop­py sea con­di­tions, that I espe­cial­ly like.

Vicente Morales Tunnels
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After leav­ing “Playa Negra” we returned home through the Vicente Morales Tun­nels. We didn’t use them dur­ing our morn­ing dri­ve because we arrived along the more scenic beach­side road.

The Vicente Morales Tun­nels are a 1 kilo­me­ter-long tun­nel sys­tem that goes between Maun­abo and the neigh­bor­ing town of Yabu­coa. They’re also the longest in Puer­to Rico.

Vicente Morales Tun­nel Interior
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And how can a 1 kilo­me­ter tun­nel be the longest any­where, you might ask? Well, that’s because they’re the only real tun­nels in Puer­to Rico. The oth­er “so called” tun­nels are the “Minil­las Tun­nel” in San Juan, and those aren’t real tun­nels to begin with.

Minil­las Tun­nel, San Juan
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The Minil­las Tun­nel is actu­al­ly a huge bridge of sorts that holds the Minil­las Gov­ern­ment Cen­ter on top. I saw it being built dur­ing the late 70’s and what they did was dig a huge trench, build the road and then build the “ceil­ing” above. Of course, they end­ed up with a tun­nel of sorts but it wasn’t like they bored a hole through anything.

Besides, the Minil­las Tun­nel, even if it were a real tun­nel, is only 396 meters long.

After exit­ing the Vicente Morales Tun­nels we took a beau­ti­ful dri­ve along State Road 53 to Humacao, State Road 30 from Humacao to Caguas and Toll Road 52 back to 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.

©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