Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 15, 1994 TAG: 9405170036
SECTION: TRAVEL PAGE: F7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: STEVE SILK THE HARTFORD COURANT
DATELINE: SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO LENGTH: Long
Puerto Rico's wealth stemmed from the haven it provided for fleets of treasure-swollen galleons hauling the gold and silver of the New World back to the vaults of Spain. This was the last stop before the long transatlantic run.
Somewhere along the line the names got confused. The port city came to be known as San Juan. You'd have to wonder why - it's still a rich port, loaded with freighters, and more impressively, fleets of massive cruise ships, lining the quays of Old San Juan, as the oldest part of the city is known, like seagoing skyscrapers.
Like those galleons of old, the cruise ships play a key role in Old San Juan today. But instead of offloading bullion, they disgorge passengers by the hundreds, the thousands and the tens of thousands. All those sightseers join with hundreds of others to take in the sites of what is one of the oldest colonial cities in the hemisphere.
To better showcase its past, the city is in the midst of a $100 million project to renovate many of its historic sites and refurbish its waterfront. Much of the work was completed last year, as the island celebrated the 500th anniversary of Columbus' first visit. The mariner anchored off the northwest corner of Puerto Rico on his second voyage across the Atlantic.
Old San Juan, a city since 1521, is easily the most popular tourist destination in the Caribbean, with upward of 2 million visitors a year strolling through its cobbled streets and beneath the towering ramparts of its massive protective walls.
This surprisingly cosmopolitan enclave has a host of foods from far away. There are Thai, Mexican, Japanese, Portuguese and Korean restaurants, as well as a Burger King, a Ponderosa and a Hard Rock Cafe. Shoppers can find anything from Caribbean spices, Ecuadorean paintings and hand-carved Puerto Rican santos to Ralph Lauren designer apparel sold in an icily air-conditioned boutique. You'll also see speeding squads of daring roller bladers, an occasional panhandler, sidewalk artists and vendors hawking sunny looking papayas, bristly pineapples and bundles of tiny bananas.
The whole mishmash of familiar and foreign is contained within a little seven-by-eight-block grid of streets that simply oozes history. The best place to launch your own voyage of discovery is along the Paseo de la Princesa, a broad battlement-shaded promenade curving along San Juan Bay. The 20-foot-thick walls - now speckled with lichens, dappled with opportunistic ferns and crowned with dangling fronds of flowering bougainvillea - protected this former Spanish stronghold from invaders since the walls' completion more than 200 years ago.
Strolling beneath the city-encircling murallas (among the most intact Spanish walls remaining in the New World) has historic resonance. This is the way mariners, whose ships lay anchored in San Juan Bay, approached the city. Like those seafarers, today's visitor can re-enter the city through the yawning pink Gate of San Juan, whose massive wooden doors slammed shut each night to seal the city.
Once through those portals, today's visitors emerge in the shadow of La Fortaleza, a former fortress and the oldest executive mansion on this side of the Atlantic. Tours provide a chance to look at Moorish-influenced fountains, flower-filled courtyards and a dank dungeon. But the schedule seems haphazard, and you could easily wait 45 minutes or so only to find out the next tour is in Spanish only.
If you'd rather not wait, follow tradition and make your way past ironwork balconies, shuttered windows and two- and three-story houses colored like Easter eggs. Follow the blue-gray paving stones up Calle San Francisco to the towering Cathedral of San Juan Bautista. Here, mariners of old gave thanks for safe arrival in San Juan.
The cathedral fronts what is perhaps the most popular and atmospheric street in all Old San Juan. Calle del Cristo passes right past the cathedral steps on its sloping route from the Parque des Palomas, a tree-shaded rampart-top refuge overlooking the bay, to the Plaza del Quinto Centenario, the starkly modern marble plaza overlooking the Atlantic.
Calle del Cristo's blocks are lined with some of the city's best shops and art galleries, shady plazas, a handful of cafes, a few bars (including El Batey, where the graffiti-covered walls enclose a close-knit fraternity of expatriates from the mainland), and the gleaming white walls of the San Jose Church.
The 460-year-old church, with its vaulted ceilings, sun-splashed nave and repository of colonial religious art, offers refuge from both the sun and the panhandlers working the plaza.
From outside the church, you can see the Atlantic. At the ocean's edge rises El Morro, the third fort the Spaniards built to protect the harbor and the first that did so effectively. Commanding the entrance to San Juan Bay, El Morro's monumental bulk is the very essence of the defended city, with walls rearing up 140 feet from a jagged and wave-lashed shoreline. The massive 20-foot-thick bulwarks are dappled with sentry boxes and sniper's nests and riddled with secret tunnels (according to local lore, all the major buildings and fortresses of old San Juan are linked by secret passageways) and hidden galleries.
Exploring the old stronghold is an adventure in itself. Inside its walls are deep dungeons, hidden cisterns and a cavelike chapel. Its various courtyards are linked by winding ramps, dark tunnels, saffron-colored arches and stone stairways.
To the east, a long wall stretches to San Cristobal, another shoreline fortress. In between, sandwiched between waves and walls, lies the barrio, or neighborhood, called La Perla. Though picturesque from afar, La Perla is a slum of battered shanties, some of which sprout satellite dishes. La Perla, while not grim by San Juan standards, was nonetheless squalorous enough to inspire anthropologist Oscar Lewis to pen La Vida, a dark ode to the disenfranchised. Today, it is best appreciated from a safe remove.
Back in the old town, some of the best places to wander are away from the main tourist drags. Along residential streets, bougainvillea and other flowers cascade from wrought-iron balconies. Oversize doorways hide life within. Baskets on long ropes are lowered from upper-story windows and filled with groceries by shoppers on the street. In shady, statued plazas, men gather to play checkers, silent save for the clicking of their red and black pieces.
Some of the older homes are charmingly restore. Others are in varying stages of disrepair - crumbling beams jut from pocked walls of rubble; sometimes a patch of sky can be glimpsed through a missing roof. Depending on your sensibilities, you may view these moldering ruins as either picturesque testaments to the passage of time or outstanding examples of urban decay.
While exploring this part of the city, retreat into La Bombonera, a pastry shop and cafe steeped in tradition. Inside, trays of tempting sweets line a picture window. Waiters in black bow ties and red jackets scurry about, squeezing fresh orange juice into pitchers and serving up hot mallorcas, toasted sweet rolls topped with confectioner's sugar. Along the pink formica counter, men in guayabera shirts sip strong coffee from spoons, as businessmen and women settle into breakfast.
Another refuge of tradition is La Mallorquina, reputed to be the oldest restaurant in Puerto Rico. It's a mannered place, steeped in tropical charm - spinning ceiling fans, wide-open wooden doors, archways, cascading plants. Looking into the ornately framed mirrors lining the walls is like peering into the past. The reflections of the old cafe, distorted by the aged glass of the mirror, almost recall the colonial ambiance of Puerto Rico - er - San Juan.
by CNB