Some Further Reflections on a Mid-Winter Stay in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico

Seen with the eyes of a tourist, Puerto Rico is as lively and thriving as ever: The beaches have lots of bathers, the restaurants are often full, and the big Walgreen’s drugstore near where I am staying is packed with shoppers identical to its counterparts back home. Were it not for the occasional product described in Spanish on the packaging, you could swear you were in Miami.

And yet I am told that the economy of Puerto Rico has slowed; that unemployment is at 14%; and that numerous residents are leaving for a better life on the mainland. It all goes to show that the out-of-touch visitor (myself) is often oblivious to real conditions but accidentally contributes to an economic recovery simply by showing up on the scene.

And there are plenty of us here, on a very impressive tropical island. No matter how many times you have seen it, Old San Juan (Viejo San Juan) is awesomely beautiful, a tribute to the aesthetic sense of the Spanish grandees who began constructing it as early as 1508, when Juan Ponce de Leon first came to explore and to build. Head for El Convento in Old San Juan, the re-constructed convent made into a stunning hotel, and order a small bowl of gazpacho at its garden cafe, and you’ll fall into reveries, as I did yesterday.

The island has enjoyed remarkable development in the past ten years. As you move from Old San Juan to Condado to Santurce to Ocean Park to Isla Verde to the Airport, you pass literally dozens of new resorts and condominiums (the largest-ever resort, the Vanderbilt, is now in construction) and when you pause for lunch at the famous El San Juan in Isla Verde, you look up and down a curving, two-mile-long, white-sand beach lined with high-rises presenting a scene that looks identical to Miami Beach. This is the new Miami Beach, with the advantage of guaranteed weather: it is almost always hot.

If you’re intent on staying in a modern, high-rise condo overlooking the sea, then I’d definitely suggest you choose Isla Verde against Condado; the latter has become too-jam-packed with a solid wall of buildings. But best of all is where I am, in laid-back Ocean Park, a partly-residential area with no high-rises but one guesthouse after another. In the one where I’m staying, in a seaside apartment on the third floor of its guest quarters, I’m surrounded by impressive and quiet private homes that would do credit to any equivalent neighborhood of America.

This is the beachfront neighborhood described in a famous, user-generated website as "like Times Square" by one disgruntled contributor.

"Like Times Square!" You have to be awfully angry over some perceived slight to mis-describe a place in such an extreme manner. From my guesthouse, I have to walk for three residential blocks before I reach even a single bodega, one of those tiny Hispanic grocery stores. I walk another block to reach the sandwich shop visited by President Obama in 2011, where there’s a touching placard commemorating the historic pork-and-pickle sandwich he wolfed down. And if you walk another block, you reach a giant Walgreen’s with every convenience (and a quiet, Spanish-speaking clientele), where you then encounter the start of a commercial district of small stores. Some Times Square!

I’m enjoying my stay, and the only drawback to this sunlit paradise is that high winds are creating such strong surf that the white-capped waves knock me over when I go wading out into the sea. But they knock me down, with such unexpected force, into waters that seem like a warm bathtub in comparison to the frigid seas you find at mainland beaches of the USA.

Though the Puerto Ricans have much to complain about, in terms of their domination by the United States (see Sonia Sotomayor’s "My Beloved World" for a well-balanced portrait of the U.S.-Hispanic relationship; I've just finished reading this fascinating autobiography), one nevertheless feels a bit proud of the fact that today’s Puerto Rico is considerably more prosperous -- poor economic conditions and all -- than most of the other non-U.S. islands of the Caribbean.

 One tourist after another tells me that they flew here for round-trip costs of only $300 from their home city in the US. You might want to do the same.