Yabucoa 6 Years After Hurricane María 

Arriv­ing in Yabu­coa, Puer­to Rico
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It was the morn­ing of Sep­tem­ber 19, 2023. My wife Zory and I explored the lit­tle town of Yabu­coa, Puer­to Rico as part of or “5 Must-See Places” series on YouTube. It was sur­pris­ing to see how far this town has come from the dev­as­tat­ing events of Sep­tem­ber 20, 2017.

Just 6 years ear­li­er Yabu­coa was the epi­cen­ter of one of the largest dis­as­ters in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. These aren’t my words. They were the words of FEMA offi­cials when they saw the destruc­tion across the entire island of Puer­to Rico.

María made land­fall at 6:15am and tore a path of death and destruc­tion through Puer­to Rico, from Yabu­coa to Hatil­lo, with a death toll of 2,975 and total mon­e­tary loss­es top­ping $96.61 bil­lion. It was the fourth-costli­est trop­i­cal cyclone on record.

Look­ing at a map it would seem like María only went through 21 or 22 towns, but there wasn’t a sin­gle inch of land in Puer­to Rico that wasn’t affect­ed by hur­ri­cane María. It was a nightmare.

Hur­ri­cane María
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My wife and I weren’t on the Island that day. We were at my sis­ter’s house in New York, where her and my wife were cry­ing their eyes out, all night long, in front of the TV. I still remem­ber how I jok­ing­ly told my wife “esa es una ven­tis­ca” when we left the Island on the 17th to shoot the fall col­ors in New Eng­land. Well, that “ven­tis­ca” (strong breeze) mor­phed into one of the dead­liest mon­sters in his­to­ry in a mat­ter of days.

Six years lat­er Yabu­coa is still strug­gling, but the improve­ment is notice­able. Everything’s green again, many of the build­ings have been repaired or are in process of being rebuilt and life goes on “nor­mal­ly”. But the signs of a dis­as­ter are still there, if you know where to look.

There are still mul­ti­ple struc­tures that have no win­dows or doors. There are signs with just the frames and alu­minum roofs that are still miss­ing. Those are the obvi­ous signs. But there are oth­ers that are not so obvious.

New pow­er poles with cable separators 
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Most of the pow­er poles are new. I could tell because they aren’t the tra­di­tion­al “cross-type” poles used by the Puer­to Rico Pow­er Author­i­ty, where the cables where phys­i­cal­ly sep­a­rat­ed by the top com­po­nent of the cross. Instead they’re the mod­ern type used in the main­land, where the cables are clos­er togeth­er and held apart by separators.

And then there’s the Catholic Church, the “San­tos Ánge­les Cus­to­dios” Parish. It’s a mas­sive con­crete struc­ture that was rebuilt like a bunker back in 1968. And again, I wouldn’t blame them, since many of Puer­to Rico’s mean­est hur­ri­canes like San Felipe, San Ciri­a­co, San Ciprián, San­ta Clara, Georges and most recent­ly María have all plowed through this town.

Notice the white rollup doors
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But what caught my eye were the two huge roll-up doors. You know, like the ones you would see in a com­mer­cial ware­house. I could be wrong, but some­how it seems like the orig­i­nal doors must have been messed up by María.

I hear that the inside of the tem­ple is quite nice and that it has beau­ti­ful stained win­dows galore. But we weren’t able to see the inte­ri­or because the church was closed.

In front of the church there’s a small square (more like tiny) that’s clean and has ade­quate tree cov­er. Come to think of it, it’s a mir­a­cle that those trees are even stand­ing, giv­en the sever­i­ty of María’s winds. But there they are and they’re beautiful.

Hacien­da Lucía was closed. Only by appointment!
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After a brief walk around town we head­ed for the ruins of Hacien­da Lucía. Dur­ing the 19th cen­tu­ry Yabu­coa was a sug­ar cane pow­er­house and Hacien­da Lucía was one of its six sug­ar cane plan­ta­tions. There’s a small gov­ern­ment-run exhib­it where you can see one of the hacien­da’s orig­i­nal sug­ar cane mills. But guess what? The place was closed. What we found was a sign that says that they only receive vis­i­tors by appointment.

Well guess what? That might work for local vis­i­tors, but not for some­one trav­el­ing from abroad, who’s bound to just drop by unan­nounced. Besides, I tried the phone num­ber on the sign (787–893-3000) and all I got was a black box with a dead-end exten­sion that no one answers.

And don’t get me wrong. I would cer­tain­ly not expect the gov­ern­ment to pay for some­one to sit on his/her hands just wait­ing for some­one to shop up. That would be a waste of resources and we all know how fru­gal the gov­ern­ment is. But there are ways to auto­mate reser­va­tion sys­tems so that they’ll be acce­si­ble 24/7 from any­where in the world.

Giv­en this real­i­ty, it then becomes a mat­ter of will. Will the dif­fer­ent munic­i­pal­i­ties embrace inter­na­tion­al tourism or are they just inter­est­ed in “think­ing small”? Puer­to Rico has hun­dreds of inter­est­ing places to explore, but it takes a lot more than TV ads to make it happen.

From Hacien­da Lucía we moved on to Cen­tral Roig, anoth­er one of the sug­ar cane oper­a­tions that is present­ly in ruins. There was no one there and —quite frankly— it didn’t seem like the safest place in the world. So we just looked around briefly and moved on.

Our next stop was Playa Lucía. At one point it seems like Playa Lucía was a full-blown gov­ern­ment oper­a­tion with show­ers, gaze­bos, con­ces­sion stands and ample park­ing. But today all that’s left is the water and the palm trees. The place is soli­tary and most­ly abandoned.

You can also see the effect that glob­al warm­ing and the ris­ing tide are hav­ing on the shore­line. The ero­sion is evi­dent. In some cas­es you have palm trees that have just fall­en into the water. Addi­tion­al­ly, this year Puer­to Rico as a whole has received an unprece­dent­ed amount of sarga­zo weed. So much so that the beach­es are just cov­ered in the stuff.

Don’t get me wrong. The gov­ern­ment isn’t to blame for the sarga­zo. This has been an issue since before Christo­pher Colum­bus sailed the ocean blue. In fact he men­tions it in his log. But it also seems like noth­ing is being done to clean it up. And that does touch the gov­ern­ment directly.

In many ways Playa Lucía seems like a nice place to bathe, but the fact is that there was nobody there. So I guess the jury is still out on this one.

From Playa Lucía we head­ed south, as if we were going towards the neigh­bor­ing town of Maun­abo. We want­ed to check out a huge bold­er that’s split in half on the edge of a cliff by the water. Locals call it “las guare­tas” because it resem­bles the twin rear tires of a semi truck. That’s what those tires are called in Span­ish: “guare­tas”.

We also want­ed to see a cou­ple of beach­es in that direc­tion that are sup­posed to be quite nice. The first was “Playa El Negro” and the oth­er is called “El Cocal”. What we didn’t con­sid­er was the topog­ra­phy of the area.

These three attrac­tions are in an area where the road goes around the edge of the moun­tains and you have to dri­ve down steep roads to the seashore. And of course, if you have to go down a steep grade to get there, you’ll have to go up a steep grade to get back out.

That was a prob­lem for us because our SUV has a fuel injec­tion prob­lem and I still haven’t got­ten around to hav­ing it fixed. So we decid­ed to turn around and head for the Yabu­coa Har­bor Boulevard.

The Yabu­coa Har­bor Boule­vard is pas­sive enter­tain­ment area with a beau­ti­ful beach that is just that: “beau­ti­ful”. Accord­ing to the patrons that were tak­ing in the see breeze the beach is most­ly “eye can­dy”. Nobody bathes there because of the rocky bot­tom, high surf and under­wa­ter currents.

Peo­ple most­ly go there to relax by the sea, fish and take a stroll along the beau­ti­ful board­walk. On a clear day you can also see the neigh­bor­ing island munic­i­pal­i­ty of Vieques in the distance.

After leav­ing the Yabu­coa Har­bor Boule­vard we head­ed for Guayanés Beach, which is phys­i­cal­ly on the oth­er side of the Yabu­coa Bay. Guayanes Beach is a gov­ern­ment run facil­i­ty but it’s not a Bal­n­eario. Bal­n­ear­ios are run by the cen­tral gov­ern­ment and at this point in time they’re not in the best of shape.

Guayanés Beach is run by the Munic­i­pal Gov­ern­ment of Yabu­coa and it’s actu­al­ly quite nice. There are show­ers, restrooms and a cou­ple of gaze­bos. How­ev­er, I didn’t see any life­guards or buoys. The water seems calm and it has a sandy bottom.

We actu­al­ly talked with a cou­ple of patrons who told us that the beach is usu­al­ly calm and that there are lots of lit­tle shell­fish in the water. They also told us about the destruc­tion caused by hur­ri­cane María in the area and how it had tak­en months to clean up.

You can actu­al­ly still see some rem­nants of that destruc­tion, but most of the sur­round­ing struc­tures have been repaired.

After leav­ing Playa Guayanés we had every inten­tion of vis­it­ing two addi­tion­al beach­es: “Playa Ica­cos” and “Playa Sec­re­ta”. How­ev­er, we ran into one of Puer­to Rico’s sad real­i­ties. Puer­to Rican law spec­i­fies that beach­es on the Island to belong to the peo­ple. They’re con­sid­ered ‘pub­lic domain”. But in many places pri­vate con­cerns have pur­chased beach­side prop­er­ty and sim­ply fenced out the locals. And this is exact­ly the case with these two beaches.

They’re inside a gat­ed com­mu­ni­ty called “Pal­mas del Mar” and as hard as I tried, there was no way to get to them. So, after mak­ing some amaz­ing images of the island of Vieques over the Pal­mas del Mar sky­line, we decid­ed to go home.

Vieques over the Pal­mas del Mar skyline
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Yabu­coa is a beau­ti­ful town that has a lot going for it. It has resilient peo­ple, inter­est­ing places to explore and nice beach­es. How­ev­er, I don’t know if they have a col­lec­tive “shell shock men­tal­i­ty” but you get that eerie feel­ing that every­thing is stand­ing still.

Yes, this town suf­fered a lot. There’s no doubt about it. But it also has a lot going for it. So I just wish them the best!

To get to San Juan from the Pal­mas del Mar area just take State Road 53 until you reach the inter­sec­tion with State Road 30, fol­low State Road 30 west to the exit towards Toll Road 52 going north and fol­low 52 until you reach the Minil­las Tun­nel. Or bet­ter yet, copy your hotel coor­di­nates before leav­ing in the morn­ing and use them to get back to the San Juan Metro­plex in the afternoon.

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