Travel Blogging III

Dateline: San Juan, Puerto Rico. San Juan is probably the largest city in the Caribbean, given that construction has continued here and has been, I think, stagnant in Havana during the Castro regime. San Juan is not particularly high-rise, but spreads over considerable real estate. It is not a bad looking city, nothing of which to be ashamed. Some of it feels like a U.S. city, some like the better parts of a city in Central or South America.

Supposedly Spanish and English are the official languages here, but Spanish is certainly dominant in signage and in conversations on the street. Puerto Ricans can look like any race, except Asians are rare. There are Africans, Native Americans, Europeans, and all the various mixtures thereof; in that respect they resemble Cubans.

We didn’t have nearly enough time to explore the hilltop citadel-turned-national-park that glowers over San Juan, and didn’t see anything that was outside San Juan. Because it is a large island, Puerto Rico would be a good place to which to return, rent a car, get a nice hotel room, and spend a week poking around. I suppose the same would have been true of Cuba in the days when Americans were welcome there.