A Day in Puerto Rico
After spending a day in Puerto Rico, I fell in love with the island.
My time there was brief, but memorable.
I went to Puerto Rico in 2019, and I haven’t forgotten it since. Puerto Rico has been one of the favorite places I’ve been to so far, and is my favorite island, along with Curaçao, in the Caribbean.
Our time in Puerto Rico was extremely brief—like a day brief—but we hit up everything in the city. There was art, brightly colored pastel buildings, and live music everywhere. As we traversed through the galleys of Castillo San Felipe del Morro, it felt like history was literally living beneath my feet. The ocean waves slammed against the decaying walls of the fort, and the sky was grey. On the other side of the port, all of San Juan could be observed, the pastel yellow, blue, and pink buildings a sea of its own.
We went to the rainforest next. El Yunque is considered to be the only rainforest registered in the United States, and while I’ve been to other rainforests in the Caribbean, this was the first time we were freely able to roam about. There was an old abandoned watchtower at the top of the mountain, one that my parents and sister climbed. I have a major fear of heights, so I lingered at the bottom, observing worn and faded Spanish posters against poisonous plants and monkeys.
The final stop was the main street, the one we see on Instagram a lot, because there’s umbrellas hanging from the lines. I didn’t get to see them, but I didn’t care. The street itself was beautiful because of the mix of cultures. In one shop, I bought homemade ceramics from Haitian refugees, ones that I would later put jewelry in. The ceramics were a style traditional to Haiti, and I delicately wrapped them so they wouldn’t break on the flight home. Spanish pop trickled through the openings of the shops, and we stopped to take pictures of the Puerto Rican flags hanging from the window.
My only other souvenir from San Juan were three jams. I bought three homemade jams: guava, passion fruit, and mango. I’d crack them open in the United States, and man were they delicious. I felt a sense of sadness, though, when I left Puerto Rico. It was such a brief visit, but I wanted to know more about the locals, about the culture. I’d never met a Puerto Rican before moving to New York City, and then to go straight into the heartland was such a moving experience to me. I hope that one day I will be back, to see the beautiful island once more.
