Bacardi and Our First Venture Into Old San Juan

Today was a busy day. The hotel helped us rent a car from one of the local agencies. With that, we gained mobility to see the island. Assuming that we could rent a car, we brought our Garmin GPS Navigation system.

Bacardi Distillery

A little to the west of San Juan is the Bacardi Distillery. Believe it or not, Bacardi is a relative newcomer to distilling rum. They are only 150 years old. The making of rum has a 450 year heritage here in Puerto Rico.

The tour begins and ends here with the visitors center. When you buy a tour ticket, you also get a token for a free rum-based drink - using Bacardi rum, of course. Under the white roof, the ticket counter is the little corner on the left and the bar is the whole right half. They yellow building is a restaurant that is supposed to serve excellent food, with the outrageous prices to match.

Note the emblem on the restaurant. This bat is the trademark of Bacardi and it appears, in red, on every bottle they fill.

This building is part distillery and part museum and gift ship.

One of the main agricultural products of Puerto Rico is sugar cane. The year-round warm weather and plentiful rain fall provide perfect growing conditions for sugar cane. In bygone years, the sugar canes were harvested and shipped by rail to the distilleries and sugar packagers. Some was shipped as raw canes on flat cars, while others were processed into "liquid sugar" and shipped in tank cars like the train in this picture.

At the end of the tour, there is another chance at the bar. Here is our tour guide acting as barkeeper.

The tour exit leaves you &— Can you guess? — The gift shop, of course!

Old San Juan

Driving in Puerto Rico is a challenge. First, the GPS maps are out-of-date, even though we downloaded an update this morning. To confuse matters more, half the street signs are missing – all you see are the empty pole. One-way signs seem to be particularly missing. The side streets were built before the era of the automobile: they are narrow and hemmed in by buildings. This causes horrendous traffic problems.

We decided to visit the Castillo San Felipe del Morro in the National Park Service's San Juan National Historic Site. The seaward side of Old San Juan is guarded by two forts: Castillo San Felipe del Morro on the western end and Castillo San Cristóbal on the eastern end. Between them is a high wall.

First of all, we had to fight our way through traffic to get near the fort. Second, we had to find parking. There is no Park Service parking lots for visitors. You have to hunt for parking along the narrow streets of old San Juan. We had an advantage — we had the foresight to bring my wife's blue handicap parking placard. Handicapped parking is enforced, allowing us a much easier time finding a spot.

On the landward side, there is a large grassy field between Old San Juan and the fort. Many people were flying kites, playing catch, picnicking and what not on this lawn. As you approach the fort, you walk up to a causeway over a "dry moat" which was designed to make the walls appear higher and more difficult to breach. As with most National Parks and Historic Sites, there is an entrance fee. I pulled out my Senior Citizen National Park Pass and – voilà – we were in for free.

The following photograph, found on the National Park Service web site, shows the dry moat. On the right, you can see the causeway to the main entrance. At the top of the left end, there is a guard post where soldiers could look out over the grounds and, more importantly, San Juan harbor.

The fort has five main levels. The main entrance is on level 3. We walked up the ramps to level 5 at the top of the fort. Below is a photograph I took of the same guard post, looking at it from within the fort.

By the time we finished wandering around on level five, the rangers had closed off the lower levels. We hope to come back later in the week and explore this place more and also visit Castillo San Cristóbal.