San Juan Puerto Rico

Okay so I have some catching up to do. Yesterday we ended up getting off the boat in Puerto Rico (San Juan) by 4 pm. I learned that Christopher Columbus discovered San Juan but he wasn’t so nice to the indigenious people. The Island is named for St. John the Baptist and there are several statues of him around locally.

We took a tour of a fort at the mouth of the Harbor, then we walked basically back to the ship. Our tour guide Bistello was very good. And funny too. We walked past important historical sites, various churches and monuments. The most interesting was the church where the remains of Pons de Leon was buried, a totem dedicated to indigenous Indians and a cool statue that was dedicated to the salvation of the island. Its really cool looking. There’s an evil person with claws which represents those who want to destroy the island, a naked woman representing the island and then another figure who represents the good who’s tearing the woman away from the evil one. Interesting.

We learned that the blue cobble stones were actually ballast for the Spanish ships. They had a problem with people knowing where their ships with gold went down because they were always the ones lowest in the ocean so they issued an edict that every ship needed to carry ballast so the gold filled ships would not be so easy to find…..not sure why they would care it seems in those days it would be difficult to get that deep anyway!
Everytime an empty ship would come it would unload it’s ballast on the docks and take on supplies. After a while there was a lot of it so they put it to good use and paved the streets with it.

We ended up at the Chapel of the Miracle. There were horse races through old San Juan. And during one of them the Lt. Governor was in the balcony of a house at the end of a street at which there was a wall that had a HUGE drop to the ocean. He noticed a horse going out of control and the horse running up the street past him. As the horse lept over the wall with the rider, the Lt. Governor said, “Christ Our Savior, Save him.” The horse died but he man lived with no injuries so they constructed a chapel at the end of the street in that spot. Tradition is that people visit there to thank God for the miracles in their lives. A wonderful place to end the trip.

Then Glenn and I walked about ½ mile down the shopping street to the ship. At the base of the street (they all go up and down, it’s mountainous) was an artistans fair. By the time we got there it was late and most had closed up. So I looked a bit and then ate a “Tripeleta”….wonderful…grilled ham, chicken and steak on a roll w/ lettuce, tomato, mayo, ketchup…..yum.