Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
San Juan Highlights
Savor a night of colonial luxury in the exquisite
Gran Hotel El Convento
(
Click
here
)
Feel the rhythm of Puerto Rico at a late-night
Nuyorican Café
(
Click here
) per-
formance
Fly and land as you
kitesurf
(
Click here
) and live to tell the tale
Play sentry in the colonial tunnels of
Fuerte San Cristóbal
(
Click here
)
Explore bike paths, beaches, ramshackle restaurants and precarious coastal eco-
logy in down-to-earth
Piñones
(
Click here
)
Sample the creative fusion cuisine at one of the many
SoFo restaurants
(
Click
here
)
Dance till you drop at
Latin Roots
(
Click here
), the salsa epicenter of Old San
Juan
Cheer on the home baseball team as the San Juan Senadores knock it out of the
park at
Hiram Bithorn Stadium
(
Click here
)
Tour the hidden urban waterways of the
Caño Martín Peña
(
Click here
)
History
It's hard to believe that San Juan was once a deserted spit of land dominated only by dra-
matic headlands and strong trade winds, but such was the picture when the Spaniards first
arrived with their colonization plans in the early 1500s.
Unable to stave off constant Indian attacks or mosquito-borne malaria in the lower lands,
they retreated to the rocky outcrop in 1521 and christened it Puerto Rico (Rich Port). (A
Spanish cartographer accidentally transposed San Juan Bautista - what Spaniards called
the island - with 'Puerto Rico' on some maps a few years later, and the name change stuck
permanently.)
The gigantic fortress of El Morro, with its 140ft-high ramparts, quickly rose above the
ocean cliffs.
The Catholic Church arrived en masse to build a church, a convent and a cathedral. For
the next three centuries, San Juan was the primary military and legislative outpost of the
Spanish empire in the Caribbean and Central America. But economically it stagnated, un-
able to prosper from the smuggling that was pervasive elsewhere on the island.
That all changed after the Spanish- American War of 1898. The US annexed the island
as a territory and designated San Juan as the primary port. Agricultural goods such as sug-
