Salinas, Puerto Rico | Fine Cuisine, Lots of History and Great People 

Last Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 12, my wife Zory and I vis­it­ed the town of Sali­nas, on the south­ern coast of Puer­to Rico to pro­duce this post and a 13 minute video. It was pour­ing cats and dogs when we left our home in San Juan. But by the time we got to Sali­nas we had a clear blue sky and and plen­ty of sunshine.

Sali­nas owes its name to the salt flats that once cov­ered some of its coastal ter­ri­to­ry. How­ev­er, to quote a local res­i­dent; “the only place where there’s salt these days is at the supermarket”.

The dri­ve to Sali­nas takes a lit­tle over an hour, most­ly along PR-52. As always, we left around 7:00am and were there at a lit­tle over 8:30. So why the dif­fer­ence in time? Because it was Mon­day and traf­fic was mur­der on the San Juan por­tion of the trip.

Nues­tra Seño­ra de la Mon­ser­rate Parish
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Our first stop was at the “Nues­tra Seño­ra de la Mon­ser­rate” Parish. I guess that would be “Our Lady of Mon­ser­rate Parish” in the King’s Eng­lish. And let me tell you, the expe­ri­ence was total­ly dif­fer­ent than at the pre­vi­ous town of Guaya­ma.

The door was open and we walked right in. It’s a beau­ti­ful tem­ple, built in 1854, that has under­gone sev­er­al restora­tions and enlarge­ments through­out the years. Today it can com­fort­ably accom­mo­date up to 600 patrons, although there’s a sign at the door that says that admis­sion is lim­it­ed to 300, due to Covid restric­tions. Masks are also a must to enter the temple.

When we entered the tem­ple the lights were out, but we walked to the Parish office and they kind­ly turned them on so that we could shoot our video.

The “Nues­tra Seño­ra de la Mon­ser­rate” Parish is 169 years old. But it doesn’t show because it’s exquis­ite­ly main­tained. The inte­ri­or is sim­ply beau­ti­ful. It has one large seat­ing area and two small­er chapels.

As we left the “Nues­tra Seño­ra de la Mon­ser­rate” Chapel we walked south to the City Hall build­ing. It’s a beau­ti­ful neo­clas­si­cal struc­ture built in 1920 and paint­ed in gray and white.

This is the sec­ond year that my wife and I have been explor­ing Puer­to Rico town by town. And one of the things that I’ve dis­cov­ered is how lit­tle infor­ma­tion you find some­times and how scat­tered it is. For exam­ple, the only infor­ma­tion I found on the Inter­net about the Sali­nas City Hall build­ing was on a cou­ple of web­sites from Okla­homa and Wash­ing­ton DC. Here in Puer­to Rico all I found were pret­ty pictures.

City Hall
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Our rea­son for vis­it­ing City Hall was to ask about points of inter­est in Sali­nas. Instead, we were direct­ed to the Tourism office on the south end of the munic­i­pal­i­ty. Actu­al­ly, I had met the per­son in charge of tourism for Sali­nas the year before at a con­ven­tion in San Juan. But I called him twice pri­or to our vis­it and he nev­er returned my calls. Lat­er I would learn that the guy was on vaca­tion. I guess no one answers when he’s not around.

In any case, before head­ing for the tourism office, we decid­ed to go for a stroll at “Plaza Las Deli­cias”, the beau­ti­ful square in the cen­ter of town. The first thing that caught our atten­tion were the cone shapes sculp­tures on the south side of the square. They’re actu­al­ly salt shak­ers evok­ing the town’s “salty” past.

On the north side there’s a band­stand with a bust of Don Chepo Cara­bal­lo on the west­ern end. Chepo Cara­bal­lo was a union leader from the town’s sug­ar cane era. On the north­east­ern cor­ner there’s an obelisk hon­or­ing the town’s fall­en heroes from the Korea and Viet­nam wars.

The dri­ve to the Tourism office took about 10 min­utes. Ini­tial­ly we stopped at the old office, but that one was destroyed by Hur­ri­cane Fiona a cou­ple of years ago. The new one is about a half a mile up the road where an old ele­men­tary school used to be. In any case, our vis­it to the Tourism Office was more about where “not to go”.

You see, Sali­nas is a food­ie town. It’s also a swimmer’s town, although it’s not a beach town (more on that in a minute). It also has a race track (for drag rac­ing, that is) and the famous (or infa­mous, depend­ing on who you ask) Cen­tral Aguirre His­toric District.

In any case, most of the action takes place dur­ing the evenings and week­ends, not on Mon­day morn­ings. So we left the tourism office and head­ed for the “La Playa” sec­tor. Don’t take me wrong, I guess you can find great seafood restau­rants all over Sali­nas. But the real­ly great ones are with­in a two-mile stretch of road at “Bar­rio La Playa”.

In Eng­lish “bar­rio” means “ward” and “la playa” means “the beach”. So I guess it could be called “the beach ward”. But no one does. So just stick to “Bar­rio La Playa”.

Peo­ple come from all cor­ners of Puer­to Rico to enjoy seafood in Sali­nas
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This time we didn’t vis­it any of the restau­rants. After all, it was 9:30. But we’ve been to sev­er­al of them in the past and they’re just great. There’s all sorts of seafood and the lob­sters are so fresh that the prac­ti­cal­ly crawl off your plate.

One thing you’ll notice in Sali­nas is that there are boats every­where. The town has a large and active fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty so fresh fish is everywhere.

Those boats also serve a sec­ond pur­pose: recre­ation. Remem­ber a while ago when I said that Sali­nas is a swimmer’s town, but not a beach town? Well, that’s because Sali­nas is a coastal town that doesn’t have any beach­es. So where do peo­ple swim? At the keys!!!

The keys south of Sali­nas are sim­ply “heav­en­ly”. But you’ll need a boat to get there. Lit­er­al­ly. There used to be a water taxi that you could take, but it has been “in repair” for a while and the only option at the moment is to char­ter a local boat own­er. You’ll have to arrange for the per­son to take you there, leave you and pick you up at a pre­arranged time. Of course, many tourists aren’t that trust­ing, so the crowd at the keys is most­ly locals with their pri­vate boats.

Puer­to Rico Inter­na­tion­al Speed­way
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Leav­ing “Bar­rio La Playa” our next stop was at the Puer­to Rico Inter­na­tion­al Speed­way, bet­ter known among the locals as “La Pista de Sali­nas”. I used to race there dur­ing the 70’s and it has come a loooooooong way. Gone are the days of a hap­haz­ard strip with bleach­ers in the sun. Today’s speed­way seats 18,000 peo­ple under­cov­er and has both drag rac­ing and circuit.

Sad­ly, all we could do was look through the fence.

This is the clos­est thing that you’ll see of what once was Cen­tral Aguirre
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Our next stop was at “Cen­tral Aguirre”. Aguirre was a 2,000+ acre sug­ar plan­ta­tion and mill that oper­at­ed in Sali­nas between the 19th and late 20th cen­turies. In 1898 the oper­a­tion was pur­chased by Ford and Com­pa­ny and con­vert­ed into a com­pa­ny town.

In case you didn’t know, com­pa­ny towns were the clos­est thing to slav­ery, except that they were legal. Why? Because the work­ers in a com­pa­ny town had no way of escap­ing their reality.

From the out­side, life in a com­pa­ny town could seem great. You had hous­ing, shop­ping facil­i­ties, church­es, enter­tain­ment, parks, post office, tele­graph and even a hotel; all inside a com­mu­ni­ty that was sep­a­rate from the reg­u­lar town of Sali­nas, or whichev­er oth­er town might have been the case. That’s right, because com­pa­ny towns sprout­ed like mush­rooms after the Unit­ed States took over Puer­to Rico.

But not every­thing was peach­es and cream. Work­ers at com­pa­ny towns were paid with vouch­ers or coin instead of cold hard cash. Those vouch­ers or coins were only redeemable at stores inside the com­pa­ny town. Hence, the work­ers had no option but to buy every­thing at com­pa­ny stores, regard­less of the price, vari­ety and quality.

There were also sep­a­rate coins for milk, meat, mer­chan­dize, etc. Hence, you might have coins for meat in your pock­et and not be able to buy milk for your kids. It was basi­cal­ly a scheme for “pay­ing with­out pay­ing”. In the end com­pa­ny own­ers would take home all the mon­ey and pay work­ers with scraps.

Aguirre coins
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By the same token (par­don the pun), the town didn’t ben­e­fit either from any kind of mul­ti­pli­er effect.

In the end, the work­ers were left with a sub­stan­dard qual­i­ty of life and no mon­ey to show for their hard work. This sparked the cre­ation of labor unions which led to leg­is­la­tion, improved work­ing con­di­tions and the even­tu­al demise of sug­ar cane farm­ing on the Island.

Just so you know, walk­ing inside the Aguirre pro­duc­tion area is VERY DANGEROUS. Espe­cial­ly if you have lit­tle chil­dren in your par­ty. There are sharp rusty edges every­where and those holes in the floor are over 10 feet deep. There’s scrap met­al hang­ing every­where and the next piece to fall could be sec­onds away. Be alert!

Orig­i­nal Aguirre church.
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Of course, this whole chap­ter in Puer­to Rico’s his­to­ry didn’t hap­pen as neat­ly or as suc­cinct­ly as I’ve just told you. It was messy, peo­ple got hurt and many lived in mis­ery for close to 100 years.

Even so, good or bad, sug­ar cane farm­ing was a chap­ter in Puer­to Rico’s his­to­ry and it isn’t being shown any­where on the island, except maybe for the notable excep­tion of Hacien­da La Esper­an­za in Man­atí. We cov­ered Hacien­da La Esper­an­za in a pri­or post sev­er­al years ago and we will cer­tain­ly return when we vis­it the town of Man­atí in the future.

How­ev­er, from what I remem­ber from that vis­it, the folks at Hacien­da La Esperanza show you more of a “san­i­tized” ver­sion of what life was real­ly like at a sug­ar cane plan­ta­tion. The truth is that these places had mis­er­able work­ing con­di­tions. It was back­break­ing labor under the blis­ter­ing Puer­to Rican sun.

There are dozens of old sug­ar cane hacien­das pep­pered all over Puer­to Rico. Some are down to the mere foun­da­tions, but oth­ers are in bet­ter shape. It sounds to me like the per­fect reen­act­ment oppor­tu­ni­ty. Of course, such an effort would come with an admit­tance fee. But it would cer­tain­ly be an inter­est­ing attraction.

After leav­ing “Cen­tral Aguirre” we head­ed for “El Alber­gue Olímpi­co”, the train­ing facil­i­ties where Puer­to Rico’s elite ath­letes pre­pare for inter­na­tion­al events. There’s a muse­um there where you can learn about the Island’s illus­tri­ous and hard earned par­tic­i­pa­tion in world games. Sad­ly, it was closed and and it won’t reopen until Feb­ru­ary 27th.

Alber­gue Olímpi­co
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Here again we see poor web­site main­te­nance rear its ugly head. What’s worse, in most cas­es you find noth­ing at all when look­ing for cer­tain tourists attrac­tions. And when you do it’s often out­dat­ed. Why did we have to dri­ve all the way there to learn that the muse­um was closed? Isn’t that what web­sites are for?

From “El Alber­gue Olímpi­co” gate we turned around and head­ed for two addi­tion­al places in Sali­nas. Except that most peo­ple don’t even real­ize that they’re in Sali­nas. They think they’re in Cayey!

Mon­u­ment to the Puer­to Rican Peas­ant (Mon­u­men­to al Jíbaro Puer­tor­riqueño)
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Of course, I’m talk­ing about the “Mon­u­men­to Al Jíbaro Puer­tor­riqueño” (Mon­u­ment to the Puer­to Rican Peas­ant) and las Piedras del Col­la­do, bet­ter known as “Las Tetas de Cayey”, a cou­ple of moun­tains with a very pecu­liar shape. You pass them both on your right hand side on your way to Salinas.

The “Mon­u­men­to Al Jíbaro Puer­tor­riqueño” is a stat­ue sculpt­ed by Tomás Batista, a Puer­to Rican sculp­tor who has cre­at­ed some of Puer­to Rico’s most notable mon­u­ments. It was unveiled in 1976 by the gov­ern­ment of Puer­to Rico to hon­or the Island’s peas­ant workers.

There used to be a park­ing lot next to the stat­ue where you could park your car, stretch your legs and walk up to the stat­ue. Today the park­ing is no more and there’s a fence around the statue.

The grass is high and the place sim­ply seems aban­doned. Of course, Puer­to Ricans have made a hole on the north side of the fence and you can walk up to the stat­ue. But the whole thing is dan­ger­ous, espe­cial­ly if yo have chil­dren in your par­ty. I mean, just imag­ine. You have to park on the shoul­der of a busy express­way for starters.

I guess “El Mon­u­men­to Al Jíbaro Puer­tor­riqueño” has faired about as well as the Island’s actu­al peasants.

Tetas de Cayey
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On the north end of the fence, just about where the hole is, there’s an excel­lent view of “Las Tetas de Cayey” (believe me, no one calls them “Las Piedras del Col­la­do”). So why are they called “Las Tetas de Cayey”? For the same rea­son that the Grand Tetons, in the great state of Wyoming, are called that way. Don’t know why that is either? Google it!

“Las Tetas de Cayey” are a pro­tect­ed area that stand at 2,759 feet above sea lev­el in the Cayey Moun­tain Range. I’ve read that there are peo­ple that con­duct rap­pelling at “Las Tetas de Cayey”. But don’t quote me on that one, because at 225 pounds and 69 years of age, I’d nev­er try some­thing like that.

By the way, your best bet for vis­it­ing “El Mon­u­men­to Al Jíbaro Puer­tor­riqueño” and “Las Tetas de Cayey” is on your way to Sali­nas and not on your way back. To vis­it on your way back you’ll have to dri­ve sev­er­al miles past the stat­ue just to make a u‑turn. I only showed them last because I had all the imagery from our pre­vi­ous vis­it to the town of Cayey in June of 2023.

If you leave the “El Mon­u­men­to Al Jíbaro Puer­tor­riqueño” and intend to go towards San Juan, you’ll have to dri­ve all the way to the next toll plaza to turn back. From there fol­low PR-52 for around 45 min­utes ‘till you reach PR-18. Fol­low PR-18 ‘till the end and you’ll reach 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.

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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