Three Days Of Work And Play In Cabo Rojo

Zory and I with Tomás Ramírez, Pres­i­dent of the Puer­to Rico Parador Own­ers Association

The first edi­tion of the Puer­to Rico Hote­lier Con is in the his­to­ry books and it was a smash­ing suc­cess. For the first time rep­re­sen­ta­tives of all sec­tors of the Puer­to Rico tourism indus­try came togeth­er in Cabo Rojo for two days of sem­i­nars, exhi­bi­tions and camaraderie.

And where did this all take place? Not in the San Juan metro­plex like most peo­ple would have expect­ed. Instead, Xavier Ramírez and his team chose the Cabo Rojo Con­ven­tion Cen­ter as the place to launch this new year­ly event.

Zorai­da and I were hon­ored to be among the 40+ exhibitors that kicked off this event rep­re­sent­ing, of course, Puer­to Rico Pho­tog­ra­phy. There we met local gov­ern­ment offi­cials and busi­ness peo­ple who are lead­ing the charge in the emerg­ing west-coast tourism sector.

That was the “work” part, and it took place from March 13 to the 14th. On March 15 came the “play” part.

Zory and I stayed at Com­bate Beach Resort, a 47-room bou­tique hotel that sits right next to the Cabo Rojo Wildlife Refuge. I’ve nev­er con­sid­ered myself a bird pho­tog­ra­ph­er but the fact is that I’ve been to Cabo Rojo many times and I’ve shot tra­di­tion­al land­marks like the Mor­ril­los Light­house, the Stone Bridge, Com­bate Beach, Boquerón Beach and oth­ers. I’ve also shot a few birds, but not as many as I would’ve liked. So the first order of the day was the Cabo Rojo Wildlife Refuge.

First light at the Wildlife Refuge in Cabo Rojo Puer­to Rico

As you prob­a­bly know, Cabo Rojo sits on the south­west­ern­most cor­ner of Puer­to Rico, so it’s kind of hard to catch a sun­rise. How­ev­er, it’s not hard to catch first light and play with the water and veg­e­ta­tion to cre­ate gor­geous land­scapes like the one you see to your right. It’s also pos­si­ble to cre­ate stun­ning water­scapes of boats and water birds.

Nev­er­the­less, I was also able to cap­ture sev­er­al birds includ­ing a prized Trou­pi­al (Turpi­al in Span­ish). The Trou­pi­al is a beau­ti­ful yel­low, black and white bird that hap­pens to be the nation­al bird of Venezuela. It is found in Colom­bia, Venezuela, and the Caribbean islands of Aru­ba, Curaçao, Bonaire, and Puer­to Rico.

Trou­pi­al at the Cabo Rojo Wildlife Preserve

I had been try­ing to pho­to­graph a Trou­pi­al for years but the only time I shot one the pic­ture was out of focus. This time I nailed it right on the mon­ey along with sev­er­al gray king­birds (pitir­res in Span­ish), doves (palo­mas) and seag­ulls (gavio­tas).

Then it was water­fall time! Of course, there are no water­falls in Cabo Rojo (at least not that I know of) but I had a list of 10 or so on my iPhone (along with their GPS coor­di­nates) for shoot­ing when­ev­er I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty. So I chose three from that list, and of those three I end­ed up shoot­ing two.

Guamá Riv­er Low­er Falls

From Cabo Rojo we drove to our first pair of falls in the near­by town of San Sebastián, about 30 miles and an hour’s dri­ve to the north­east. There we vis­it­ed the Guamá Riv­er falls which many tourists know by the com­mer­cial name of “Goza­lan­dia”. The Guamá Riv­er falls are com­prised of the low­er Guamá Riv­er falls and the upper Guamá Riv­er falls. The for­mer are about five min­utes away from the park­ing lot at a nor­mal walk­ing pace and the lat­er are about half a mile away. There is a paved trail lead­ing to both falls and the sight is well worth the effort. How­ev­er, the walk to the upper falls is a lit­tle more strenuous.

Guamá Riv­er Upper Falls

You should also know that these falls are very pop­u­lar among the locals as a bathing spot, so if you’re a land­scape pho­tog­ra­ph­er like me it might take you a while to get that gor­geous shot with no one in it.

We left San Sebastián and went on to the town of Lares, a 22-minute dri­ve towards the south­east along road PR-111. About halfway between San Sebastián and Lares you’ll find “Salto Col­la­zo” a beau­ti­ful water­fall that hard­ly has as much water as it used to. Nonethe­less, I stopped and made the picture.

Salto Col­la­zo

After that the plan was to dri­ve through Lares, down to PR-52 (the road that goes between San Juan and Areci­bo along the north coast), and then get off on the road lead­ing to Ciales, where there were oth­er water­falls that I want­ed to shoot. How­ev­er, want­i­ng to do some­thing and being able to are often two dif­fer­ent things. It was get­ting late so we left them for anoth­er day.

Ansel Adams once said that “twelve sig­nif­i­cant pho­tographs in any one year is a good crop.” Of course, Adams didn’t shoot with a DSLR. All in all I made 15 good pho­tographs just that Fri­day. So I can’t com­plain one bit.

By 6:30pm Zory and I were back home in Car­oli­na, sip­ping some red Span­ish wine, munch­ing on some tapas, and get­ting ready to take a show­er and hit the sack.

It was an intense three days, but we met some won­der­ful peo­ple, offered our ser­vices, showed our images, and even got a chance to make some new ones. Not bad if you ask me!  Here are the rest of the images.

For more great pic­tures of Puer­to Rico and abroad vis­it our gallery at Puer­to Rico Pho­tog­ra­phy.

©2019,Orlando Mer­gal, MA
____________________

Bilin­gual Con­tent Cre­ator, Blog­ger, Pod­cast­er,
Author, Pho­tog­ra­ph­er and New Media Expert
Tel. 787–750-0000, Mobile 787–306-1590

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