The first thing I notice upon arrival at a Caribbean destination is the airport. Usually, it's a little building, about the size of the Hyannis, MA municipal airport, with one runway and two gates. In contrast, San Juan International is a major hub of the Caribbean, with more than forty gates and a harried pace more like Miami than the islands.
From the airport, nine of us piled into three rental cars for the ride from San Juan to La Parguera, a ride of about 110 miles. We were immediately impressed with the topography of Puerto Rico-there is a rather significant mountain range down the middle of the island, the highest point being about 4,400 feet.
I was impressed by the relative prosperity of the island. Many Caribbean islands are dirt-poor, with tropical "paradise" being more an unrealized ideal than a reality. But Puerto Rico looks positively upscale. San Juan looks like a smaller and cleaner version of Miami, with Spanish architecture and some classic Art Deco.
La Parguera, on the other hand, is rather down-scale as resorts go. There's no swimming beach there, so the tourist hordes mainly bypass the place. On the weekends, it attracts a clientele of local Puerto Ricans, out for a weekend at the shore. As we arrived on Saturday, the place was busy, but by Monday most of the restaurants had closed for the week.
Our hotel, Parador Porlamar, has been described by others as a "wannabe resort", which is an apt description. They have a dockside tiki bar, that's rarely open, cable TV that gets six randomly selected channels, running water that sometimes runs hot, toilets that sometimes flush, and service that is almost always slow.
However, the dive operation is first rate. I first met Angel, the owner, in the dive shop the day before our first dive. Based on his surfer dude good looks and fluent colloquial English I assumed that he was a mainlander, but after talking to him for a while I noticed a trace of an accent. It turns out that he took over the dive shop from his father, a local legend: Navy Seal, trained biologist. Matt, the divemaster is an expat mainlander, having sailed down from Florida with his wife (on a 1961 Cheoy Lee 35, in case you're interested).
The dive boat is a brand new purpose-built 30 footer with room for 14 divers. Unfortunately, we were diving with about 14 divers all week, so it was a wee bit crowded. Rides to the various dive sites averaged about 45 minutes, enough time for those inclined to lose their breakfast to do so. I thought the seas were pretty smooth, but some disagreed-at least the first day, before taking anti-seasickness drugs.
The boat had two safety features that other boats ought to have. First, it had two regulators hanging off the boat at about 40 feet, in case of an out-of-air emergency. Second, it had a box of weights hanging from the "hang line". That could be really helpful for a diver who doesn't know how much weight to use. I myself reduced my weight belt by two pounds.
La Parguara is a bit off the beaten path, so there are only two dive operators in town. We never saw the other guys once. Partly due to low traffic, the reefs are in excellent shape. There was lots of new coral growth with lots of sponges, fans, etc. Fish life was abundant but not prolific. On a five point scale I'd give it a 3½.
Visibility was mainly excellent. I'd say 80 feet or more most days. Air and water temperatures were about 82 every day. Overall, the fish weren't very large, but on the night dive I did see the largest angelfish I've ever seen-as big as a trashcan lid! I mentioned to Matt that black durgeons appeared to be the signature fish or Puerto Rico, and he sort of scowled. He said that black durgeons are fast swimmers, as are yellow-tailed snappers. Both species tend to dominate the reef, except that snappers are also tasty, and durgeons are not.
The hotel provides breakfast every day, starting at 7:30. We were supposed to be on the boat at 8:00, but in practice is was closer to 9:00. It appears that the cooking staff arrived at the restaurant around 7:30, and it took a while for coffee to arrive. One day, we had a substitute waiter who spoke not a word of English. He brought out our coffee in half-full cups (I guess we were supposed to fill them with hot milk). No amount of hand signals could convey to him that the Gringos like FULL cups of BLACK coffee.
But hey, we weren't really in a hurry. Getting back to the dock at 1:30 was no real hardship. Sandwiches were served onboard, so waiting until 2:00 for lunch was perfectly ok. We had lunch several times at the Karakol (we don't think that's really the name of the place, but that's what the sign says in big letters). Karakol La Cana. Anyway, they have these really nice deep-fried whole red snappers that were really tasty. They also have a nice cheesecake with guava amaretto sauce. The local beers, Medalla Light, are $1.25. There's no evidence of a Medalla regular, or any other local beers, for that matter. The Medalla Lights are low carb beers, so I was happy to drink them.
The other hotspot in town is "Dave's". We were there for the first round of the NFL playoffs, and the two bars that advertised themselves as "Sports Bars" didn't have cable TV. Dave's seems to cater to the American expat community-if you can be an expat in an American territory. A rotating group of five of us spent Sunday afternoon in the bar watching the end of the Steelers / Jets game and the entire Patriots / Colts game. Our bar tab came to (drum roll please) $22.25. Dave's also has free high speed Internet access, so we spent a lot of time there. It didn't hurt that our twenty-year-old waitress was so pretty that we called her "Miss Puerto Rico".
Our hotel deal included two $25 vouchers for the Parador restaurant in the hotel. The restaurant is really good, but expensive. A lot of the main dishes were more than $25, nevermind drinks.
Thursday afternoon, we took a drive up the road, stopping first to drop off some film at the one-hour processor in Lajas. Lajas is a pretty depressing little town, so we ventured further to San German, which is home to one of the oldest churches under the American flag (1606). The church has been de-consecrated and is now a museum of religious art. Most of the art was primitive carvings.
Being about 4:00 in the afternoon, we were hungry but most of the restaurants were closed. Part of our group ended up at a tapas restaurant, and my part of the group ended up at Don Pedro's, said to be the finest restaurant in San German. I had a perfectly lovely meal of filet mignon in red wine sauce, but the other group had such wonderful accounts of their meal at the tapas place that we decided to pay it a visit the following day.
After our morning dives, we started driving the beach road out of La Parguera and out to the lighthouse at Cabo Rojo. The lighthouse sits on a high bluff with a spectacular view of the sea, the limestone cliffs, and a little secluded beach behind a breach in the cliffs. Back in the car, we drove through Boqueron, a nice little beach community on the west coast and then through the town of Cabo Rojo. Since I've been back, I've been looking at real estate on the web, and you can buy a nice little bungalow in Cabo Rojo for about $135,000. I might be interested.
The tapas meal in San German was very nice-it made me think I should do this more often at the various tapas restaurants in DC. I told my mother that I had eaten at a tapas restaurant and asked her if she knew what I was talking about. She said, that's when the waitresses are topless, right? Well, not exactly.
Thursday night, we went out for a boat ride to the bioluminescent beach. Evidently, it's a semi-famous tourist attraction. I thought it was kind of disappointing, possibly because the moon was bright. However, it was a nice boat ride and well worth the $5.00. On the boat, we met an older American guy who had just bought real estate at Rincon. He was very bullish on Puerto Rico. He said he had doubled his money in three years and was looking to buy more land.
On Saturday, we left early, hoping to spend some time in Old San Juan. There was a major traffic mess in San Juan, so we had less than a half hour to drive around.
Back at the airport, the place was crowded with people from cruise ships-the restaurants and bars were packed way beyond capacity. We sat next to a couple, who were waiting for a 4:30 flight to Detroit-already delayed by snow. We had a relatively short two hour wait, and our flight departed on time. Next time, I'll buy my rum at the airport. The Barrelito three star was only $13 at the airport, compared to $18 at the grocery in La Parguara.
When I got home, I looked in my book "Best Dives of the Caribbean" by John Huber. He rated the La Parguara dives at three stars, but other sites on the island rated the maximum five stars. So I'm thinking of making a return trip to Puerto Rico to dive the best sites and scope out some real estate.
Bruce Baker