At first glance, it's bizarrely familiar. American uniforms and processes fill the airport. Chains like McDonalds, Walgreens, Walmart and Wendy's line the roads, all built in the standard corporate architecture. U.S.-style license plates tag the cars. We followed a big, beautifully-maintained highway with standard U.S. signage west from San Juan. In the capital, Spanish colonial history and architecture house Bank of America, T.J. Maxx and Ben & Jerry's, while the ethnic and linguistic mix on the streets is about the same as South Florida.Get out of San Juan, however, and things change quickly. English is obviously not the first language, and many people don't speak it at all. Chains and strip malls give way to vegetable stands and impromptu barbecue places comprised of a couple oil-can grills and a quickly hammered-together bar. Locals seem to populate them all afternoon. Packs of stay dogs lope through the palm forest and three-foot-long lizards bask in the middle of badly-potholed and poorly marked roads. Sat nav systems are useless at everything but zig-zagging you through poorly-paved lanes in small towns ... rundown but colourful ... where locals throw their hands up in amused rebuke when pointing out that you're taking the one-way system from the wrong direction. A mountain cloaked by tropical rain forest dominated the horizon. The beaches were gloriously strewn with coconuts and local fishermen nattering away in Spanish.
Welcome to an alternative reality where the USA goes all dusky and exotic.
I must admit, Puerto Rico was a second choice. I'd really wanted to spend the five nights we had between cruise and return flight in the Virgin Islands. Transport costs and logistics (we needed to be in San Juan airport by 9am New Year's Day) made this impractical, so Puerto Rico won by default. But I wanted to get out of San Juan, the default cruise extension. We opted for the northwest corner of the island, just beneath El Yunque national park and anchored by the town of Fajardo, where a ferry goes to Puerto Rico's smaller sister islands. Turns out these are Virgin Islands, too ... the Spanish Virgins ... and while not quite as spectacular as the American or British VI, the beaches, reefs and coastline can put up a fair fight.
Having had fantastic experiences with the website VRBO sourcing our rental properties in Sonoma and Gascony, we booked a beach-side condo through them and were delighted. While I wouldn't have given up the cruise, the five leisurely days in Elio and Maria's two-bedroom, ground-floor place in Casa Del Mar were just as special, in their own way. There was none of the characterless feel you often get from holiday rentals; the place was beautifully and comfortably furnished, complete with original paintings on the walls and cheerful, tropical colour schemes. Internet, cable TV (a bit dodgy on the connection), air conditioning and ceiling fans let the husband lounge without fear of sunburn, while I could take to the patio furniture, with sea views, or walk across a short stretch of exquisitely maintained lawn to be on the beach. The complex sits on a beautiful small bay, with short walks in either direction tipping backwards to other bays and other views. It's the Atlantic on this side of the island, so the surf and clarity are more like Florida than the Caribbean, but I was happy.In fact, something about Casa del Mar reminded me strongly of the Floridian summers of my childhood. It wasn't very crowded until New Year's Eve, but the people who were there were all families quietly going about their own business. Everyone was exceptionally friendly; our next door neighbours even brought us a plate of traditional food on New Year's Eve so we could have the local holiday experience. (Indeed, that was the best traditional food I had while in the Caribbean.)
The overwhelming majority of our fellow residents were Puerto Rican. We saw few white faces. I was puzzled. Where were all the continental American visitors? Why hadn't all those people who flock to Florida discovered this spot, a bit further south, more exotic, cheaper than Floridian equivalents but reminiscent of their quieter past? A quick scan of real estate sites showed that you could buy a beach-view condo here for less than half the price of one in Ft. Lauderdale. Escalating values had priced my mother well out of the traditional family turf of Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. She could have afforded to retire here.
We found all the Anglos when we stumbled into Richie's Cafe. Nestled near the top of a hillside, this peak-roofed, open-walled pavilion has jaw-dropping views. Rio Grande bay below, the town and bay of Luquillo beyond, the peninsula of Fajardo and some of the Spanish Virgin Islands on the horizon. Behind us, the slopes of El Yunque loomed and, as the sun set, the distinctive song of the local coqui frogs filled the warm, moist night. (To hear them, go here ... this is the sound of Puerto Rico.)
It's a friendly beach-style bar with even friendlier service, and it was as white and English-speaking as our condo complex what Spanish and brown. Our fabulous server explained. Mark was a midwestern guy who'd followed his Puerto Rican partner (who'd become his spouse just a week earlier) down to Puerto Rico, so he had a foot in both worlds. Yes, the Anglos liked Puerto Rico, but traditionally they stayed within the reliable confines of big resorts. The Rio Grande area was dominated by the Westin hotel and time share complex, with its own shops and restaurants. He said he'd started to see a bit of this change as sites like airbnb and VRBO gave people like us a chance to go local. But most visitors saw little of Puerto Rico besides their ride to and from the airport, and perhaps a day up at the National Park once they'd settled into their American corporate colony.Restaurant owner Richie had figured this out years ago, laying on a free mini-bus to ferry guests to and from the Westin. They got a little adventure to a "local" restaurant with a great view, Richie got clientele. Clearly, clientele with more money than the average Puerto Rican, because Richie's prices are exorbitant, while his food is well below average.
The stuffed snapper special sounded good and looked great. A whole fish, filleted from the top to remove the entire rib cage (a tricky bit of knife work), deep fried, then the cavity filled with a shrimp and conch salad. Unfortunately it was badly overcooked, rendering the snapper chewy and almost tasteless. At $45 for the plate, it was the price of a course at Nathan Outlaw's Michelin-starred London fish restaurant ... a laughable comparison. Piers' tomato allergy made the menu tough to negotiate. He settled on jumbo shrimp, which emerged from the kitchen as a few medium-sized prawns, grilled without any particular skill and unembellished, plopped next to a pile of fries.The food here was the worst value-for-money we've encountered in many years and many countries. If you find yourself in this part of the world, it's worth paying a premium for the view ... but spend your money on drinks and move on. We'd been planning to do the same, but so Anglo was Richies that college bowl games were on the jumbo TV screens above the bar, and we'd stumbled quite by accident onto the Northwestern Wildcats in the Pinstripe Bowl. Having watched the game to its victorious purple conclusion from a great table while the place filled up behind us, we got lazy and ordered dinner. Our Puerto Rican neighbours had warned us ... this place was for outsiders who weren't serious about local quality. To get that, we should have gone where they went: the ramshackle roadside BBQ places.
Sadly, we didn't get a chance to try any of these. Because by the next evening, we had a refrigerator full of freshly caught deep-sea fish to cook our way through. For more on that, read on...
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