Toa Alta, A Wasted Trip That Turned Out Great! 

Have you ever start­ed your day on the wrong foot and end­ed up hav­ing a great time? Well, that’s exact­ly what hap­pened to my wife and I when we vis­it­ed Toa Alta, Puer­to Rico. And it has to do with a deci­sion that I made ear­li­er in the year.

When I start­ed this series I approached city hall in each town. I invit­ed the may­or to pro­vide us with a city offi­cial that could show us around town. After all, it’s free pro­mo­tion. But most may­ors ignored us.

Hence, we decid­ed to vis­it like any oth­er tourist and do what any oth­er tourist would. They drop in unan­nounced. And if they don’t like what they find, they sweep the floor with the town’s rep­u­ta­tion on social media.

But this approach has a down­side. You nev­er know what to expect. Some­times you run into sit­u­a­tions like the one we found in Toa Alta.

San Fer­nan­do Rey Parish

On the morn­ing of July 20, 2023 my wife and I vis­it­ed the town of Toa Alta. We got there at 8:05 hop­ing to catch the Catholic church open, Egozcue Square nice and clean and Yolan­da Falls flow­ing at full capac­i­ty. Well, we struck out!

The Catholic church has been closed for repairs since the recent earth­quakes. There was a health fair tak­ing place on Egozcue Square. City Hall turned out to be a boxy build­ing. The Maso Rivera The­ater was closed (as I expect­ed it to be at 8 in the morn­ing) and Yolan­da Falls turned out to be more of a trick­le than a full blown water feature.

So, we were approach­ing 8:30am and none of our plans were materializing.

Thank­ful­ly, I’m a stub­born kind of guy. So I approached a group of munic­i­pal police that were pro­vid­ing secu­ri­ty at the health fair. I guess I still had hopes of see­ing the church inte­ri­or. They con­firmed that the “San Fer­nan­do Rey Parish” was closed for repairs. They also added that mass was being held at a small­er chapel next to it.

San Fer­nan­do Rey Parish

The “San Fer­nan­do Rey Parish” is one of the old­est and nicest in Puer­to Rico. Con­struc­tion start­ed in 1752 and it has the longest bar­rel vault ceil­ing of any church on the Island. I had also heard that it’s very well kept, so —as you can imag­ine— we real­ly want­ed to see the interior.

At that point we con­sid­ered leav­ing Toa Alta and explor­ing near­by Toa Baja instead. But this was one time when we “didn’t know what we didn’t know”. One of the offi­cers (who lat­er turned out to be the chief of police) men­tioned the town’s new “Vil­la Pes­quera” and insist­ed that we see it.

Toa Alta City Hall

At first I thought he was pulling my leg. After all, a “vil­la pes­quera” is a fisherman’s vil­lage and those are typ­i­cal­ly by the sea. And being that Toa Alta has no coast, the whole thing sound­ed like a prank to me. I even smiled and asked him: “how can Toa Alta have a fisherman’s vil­lage when it doesn’t have a coast?” He smiled back and said: “it’s by the lake.”

He even offered to have one of his offi­cers escort us all the way to the project.

So, how could I say no to that?

Maso Rivera Theater

The offi­cer escort­ed us for 7 or 8 min­utes across the Toa Alta coun­try­side to a place called the: “Proyec­to de Pesca Recre­ati­va Embalse La Pla­ta”. In the King’s Eng­lish that means: “La Pla­ta Reser­voir Recre­ation­al Fish­ing Project”.

At an aver­age speed of 40 mph, that offi­cer must’ve escort­ed us for 5 or 6 miles through some of the nicest coun­try­side in Puer­to Rico. When we final­ly got there we thanked the offi­cer and went in.

Police Escort

So let me tell you, call­ing that place a “Fish­ing Project” is the under­state­ment of the year. The place is gor­geous. As you approach the front gate you descend close to the riverbed of the “La Pla­ta” riv­er. There’s a dam close by so the riv­er actu­al­ly forms a lake.

If you recall from my pre­vi­ous Com­erío video and blog post, there’s anoth­er dam upriv­er that forms yet anoth­er lake. And this is because the “La Pla­ta” riv­er is Puer­to Rico’s longest, span­ning for 60 miles.

The “La Pla­ta Reser­voir Recre­ation­al Fish­ing Project” is a full blown recre­ation­al facil­i­ty that goes well beyond fish­ing. It has ample park­ing facil­i­ties, a boat ramp for kayaks and small boats (up to 30hp), spe­cial areas des­ig­nat­ed for bird­watch­ing, dozens of gaze­bos where you can bring your bar­be­cue and spend the day with friends and fam­i­ly, ample sig­nage every­where, a large con­fer­ence room and even a fish­ing muse­um for those who REALLY wish to learn about the dif­fer­ent fish avail­able in the area.

Do’s and Don’ts Sign

What you won’t find at the gaze­bos is elec­tric pow­er. And that wasn’t an acci­den­tal omis­sion. It was done by design. This a place where you go to enjoy nature, peace and qui­et. Boom box­es and loud music are frowned upon. In fact, there’s a huge sign at the entrance with all do’s and don’ts. For more infor­ma­tion call (787) 472‑4765.

When we arrived they were cel­e­brat­ing a pri­vate event and the place was closed to the gen­er­al pub­lic for the day. I iden­ti­fied myself and told the lady why I was there. She was kind enough to let us through, albeit for a short peri­od. And let me tell you, this place is so large that —even though the group had booked the entire facil­i­ty— there were still half a dozen gaze­bos available.

The “La Pla­ta Reser­voir Recre­ation­al Fish­ing Project” is open Wednes­days through Sun­days, and hol­i­days, from 7:00 in the morn­ing to 5:00pm. Mon­days and Tues­days they close for main­te­nance. And boy do they do a great job? The place is sim­ply pris­tene. I didn’t see a sin­gle can­dy wrap­per, paper cup, can, bot­tle, cig­a­rette butt, dis­pos­able plate or eat­ing uten­sil any­where. So please, let’s help keep it that way.

As we were about to leave, I thanked the lady at the front gate and head­ed back to town to thank the offi­cer for rec­om­mend­ing us such a great place. Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but one thing I’ve noticed while pro­duc­ing this video series is that peo­ple get nicer and nicer as you go fur­ther and fur­ther away from the San Juan Metroplex.

Now don’t get me wrong. The same thing hap­pens every­where. My wife and I have vis­it­ed 22 U.S. Nation­al Parks and the sit­u­a­tion is quite sim­i­lar. I guess the rig­ors of city life make peo­ple cranky.

This is the part where I nor­mal­ly tell you about the ride back. But we didn’t return home after leav­ing Toa Alta. Instead we went to Toa Baja, which is just north, and pent sev­er­al hours explor­ing that town as well.

Of course, I’m not going to tell you about it now because that would steal the thun­der from my next post. But what I am going to tell you is that the Toa Baja vis­it was just as hap­haz­ard and won­der­ful. So much so that I went there twice.

Pret­ty soon we’re going to start our third ring of towns around the San Juan Metro­plex. It’ll include the towns of Río Grande, Las Piedras, Yabo­coa, Maun­abo, Patil­las, Arroyo, Guaya­ma, Sali­nas, Aiboni­to, Bar­ran­quitas, Corozal and Vega Alta. It offers a great mix of moun­tain and coastal towns.

So let me know how we’re doing so far. Are you enjoy­ing our videos? What do you thing about the arti­cles. Is there some­thing you would like us to add or any­thing you’d like us to leave out.

After dri­ving 18,000 miles in 3 years through half of the Unit­ed States, vis­it­ing nation­al parks, my wife and I have decid­ed to explore our own Island and show it to you. Are you lik­ing it so far?

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.

Oh, and one last thing! If you’re plan­ning to vis­it Old San Juan 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 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
____________________

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