Puerto Rico

Almost 2 years late, we arrived at last in Puerto Rico for belated wedding celebrations, interrupted first time round by the catastrophic effects of Hurricane Maria.  Now it is difficult for the stranger to spot the damage wreaked by the storm although the renovation programme continues, scaffolding and teams of painters in evidence although it is hard to know what is wholly new and what restoration.

The capital city, San Juan was unexpected for its sheer size, the old city with its steep cobbled streets and painted buildings inside the hefty remains of defensive city walls abutting the sea and marked by solid forts  more of a fit with pre-imaginings than modern metropolitan streets of business and resort hotels, international shops and office blocks, linked by wide highways.  The pace of life is busy but less frenetic than that environment might suggest - Puerto Ricans work hard, but they play harder and that is the real point of life.

 The island is highly populated, numbers somewhat reduced since the hurricane,  but once out of San Juan there are large areas of not very much.  The landscape encompasses coastal plains including former centres of the sugar industry in the South East, the great ridge of the Cordillera Central running like a spine down the island, miles of beaches and the El Yunque rainforest, the only tropical rainforest in the USA, it's dense vegetation, waterfalls, walking trails, fauna and flora, a short drive from the capital.

On our drive to the rainforest we stopped to eat phenomenal crab stuffed fritters, alcapurrias I think, at the best of a row of roadside stalls, judging by the queues even on a mid-week afternoon.  At weekends this beach area is crammed with people and I imagine you have to start queuing shortly after breakfast.  Fried food of one sort or another is a favourite, fritters from banana/plaintain tostones which are delicious to fish, fowl or meat in the crispiest batters then a lot of rice and bean based dishes with chicken and pork picked up with local hot sauces and begun with a base of sofrito.  Rum is the local drink and the beautifully laid out Bacardi factory had to be on the sightseeing list although the processes described, similar to our local Scottish distilleries, were less interesting than the history of what remains a family owned firm.

In a week too punctuated by parties for serious island exploration we barely scratched the surface of the island, moving west from San Juan to Aguadilla for a weekend of celebrations in adjacent villas overlooking the sea and south to Ponce for the glories of the Museo de Arte de Ponce, stuffed with an extraordinary collection of carefully chosen work from old masters to contemporary work starred with some major treasures.

 The town too, despite its reputation among the San Juan elite who have no time for provincial backwaters, is attractive if apparently strangely depopulated.  The art deco buildings are being restored, whether again from age and natural wear and tear or from Maria, it is hard to know.  There is a slow air abroad in the town streets and air of somnolence, the splendid market building almost deserted on an off day and the streets, aside from the unwanted car in every photograph, largely free of pedestrians.

 Even the dock and the marina areas were empty but perhaps Ponce is a weekend place and certainly the schedule of cruise ships mooring there is available online.In San Juan the cruise ships double the population of the old town for a day at a time with huge mainland Americans in straining clothes wandering the forts or aboard one invalid scooter after another, not obviously enjoying themselves, before heading back to the comfort of massive ships towering above the old buildings and themselves the size of small towns.

Flights to Puerto Rico from Europe generally require a stop on the mainland USA anywhere from New York to Miami or Charlotte, N Carolina, on our own return, a blessed relief after the expectedly grim Miami outward experience.  We stayed in the Condado Plaza Hilton in San Juan, right on the seafront and with some rooms still boarded up as the hotel continues renovations.  It was exactly and entirely as expected including those peculiar habits of American hotels such as not having a bar open almost any time you might want a drink although the diner chain, Denny's, incorporated into the hotel's 2nd tower, adjacent to the swimming pool, was open 24 hours a day with heart stopping dishes loaded with expanding ingredients.  In Ponce we stayed in the charming and old Hotel Melia, also having a rather curious facelift with a line in brightly painted baroque furniture in its lobby and common parts that is eccentric but not disastrous.  To my delight, my daughter, flinging herself on her bed on arrival, discovered, to her shrieking horror, an enormous cockroach hidden in the cover.