Happy Three Kings Day!
January 6, San Juan, Puerto Rico — A farewell shot of Miami, where I spent Wednesday with friends from the last world cruise. Here’s the view from their condo overlooking Biscayne Bay. Spent considerable time with Steve at T-Mobile, straightening out my email accounts on my new phone. And I’m not even a T-Mobile customer! Steve sweet-talked the salesman into helping me — for THREE hours. I’ve upgraded to an iPhone8Plus, just to get the better camera with what I call a superzoom. Today I finally got my ‘comments app’ set up on this blog, so you all can WRITE TO ME here; just scroll all the way down to Comments. Have I mentioned, I hate technology?
Now. At last. The game is afoot! Here’s my home away from home for the next 4+ months, the elegant Viking Sun at the pier in San Juan.
View (below) from my cabin — my first palm trees! Around these parts, the forecast calls for a high of 80 degrees and a low of 77. I’ll take it. Puerto Rico is known for its trade winds, and they were welcome.
I didn’t know until now that San Juan is not a city on the island of Puerto Rico. It is its own island, across the water from the island of Puerto Rico — which was where most of the devastating damage from Hurricane Maria occurred. I saw no damage in San Juan, and the city was very clean (see dumpsters below). A UNESCO World Heritage Site, it is among the oldest European-founded cities in the New World. By noon the streets were crowded, not only because there were three cruise ships in town, but because it was ‘Christmas Sunday’ — our guide greeted the National Park ranger at the Castillo San Cristobal fort with ‘Happy Three Kings Day.’ The Magi were conspicuous by their presence.
Christopher Columbus (below), who discovered PR on his second voyage, in 1493, has lost his shine in the U.S. Well, imagine what the Puerto Ricans think of him. The peaceful, welcoming and helpful native Taino were brutalized and enslaved. Today’s population combines Taino, Spanish and African, the latter from the slaves brought here once the locally available slaves had been nearly annihilated by the Spanish, including from the diseases they brought to the New World — small pox and measles. The Taino queen who was especially hospitable to Columbus and his men was taken prisoner and offered a choice: become a concubine, or be hanged. She chose hanging.
Ponce de Leon (below) has a less sullied reputation. He was the first Spanish governor (1508). Puerto Rico was acquired by the U.S., as a territory, after the 1898 Spanish- American war. According to our guide, Puerto Rican citizens — who are American citizens — can vote in the U.S. primaries... but they cannot vote in the general election. Because it is a territory and not a state, PR’s rep in the House of Representatives is a ‘delegate’ with limited voting privileges.
Stopped in to a church I passed along the way, where as the faithful went up for communion, a good guitarist accompanied several good singers on ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful’ in Spanish. Great colors! Great acoustics!
The aforementioned Castillo San Cristobal, the largest fortress in the New World.
Guard tower of same.
Back at the pier, this is El Galeón Andalucía, a replica of a 16th-17th-century ‘treasure ship.’ These took plundered Inca and Aztec silver and gold back to Spain and Portugal — unless they sank. One lecturer told us that $500 billion in loot went from the New World back to Portugal. And ‘history’ tells us that of the 11 galleons that were lost (how do they know there were 11?) only one has been found. So there are 10 more lying on the ocean floor, with cargoes worth around $200 million each in today’s dollars!
As a total non sequitur: 70% of the rum sold in the U.S. comes from Puerto Rico. Which reminds me, I think I’ll have a Mohito later. Yesterday there was a provisioning snafu: instead of umpteen kilos of pineapples, the provisioner delivered umpty-ump kilos. All the staff, including the officers, were press-ganged into coring and peeling pineapples. Barkeeps walked through the World Café plying everyone with piña coladas — anything to use up all the pineapples! (Photo courtesy of my Rockland, Maine friend, Susan T.)
I decided to check out the Laundrette (since I have to do my own this trip). Someone else had already tried it out. Oops... guess their teeth won’t be any straighter after this voyage.#
