SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO

Puerto Rico, beach during the day and crazy nite life? Mmmmm ... maybe. But not for me. I have three days to spend here in Puerto Rico, and I am not planning neither the beach nor the nite life. Boring? Maybe. But I was really curious to visit the old city of San Juan (Viejo de San Juan). The city is today one of the UNESCO World heritage sites, and basically it was used to be a small city functionally built around the Spanish fort that was controlling the harbour. San Juan, Puerto Rico and Santiago de Cuba, Cuba were the two most strategic points of the Caribe. Whoever was controlling them was able to control the colonies of the New World. So Spain invested all the necessary money in order to make these two harbors safe. Spain ruled here from 1493 (Columbus landed here during his second trip) to 1898 (when US liberated / conquered Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines and ended the Spanish colonial era). Anyways this city fort was a serious piece of civil and military engineering. England and Holland tried to conquer it more than once, but they pretty much always failed. Actually the English managed to conquer it for few months, but the diarrhoea defeated them, and they had to retreat. This diarrhoea story sounds like a joke, but apparently it is true. Reading about the history of San Juan, made me think a lot. And I concluded that, even if I don't like it, I have to admit that greed and fear are the two fuels of the human society. Good for me, I didn't just read and think all day, but I also took some pictures ...

Today the city forts are a US National Site. They are definitely nice, but believe me the heat today was hitting really hard on me. I was told by the locals that it is an unusual hot May. The good thing is that San Juan is definitely blessed by a continuous trade wind, and if you manage to find some shadow you can really relax and even feel it ... :)