The Old Sugar Mills & Plan­ta­tions of PR, Part 3

As men­tioned in my 2 pre­vi­ous posts, the area in South East PR was home to the last Sug­ar­cane hacien­das (plan­ta­tions) and sugar mills.

If Guayama was the epi­cen­ter of this cli­matic chap­ter in PR’s his­tory, then Arroyo was its ‘port of call’ on the coast. The com­mer­cial port at Aguirre Cen­tral did not come into being until the early 1930’s.

The ‘Wel­come to Arroyo’ sign is a sculp­ture com­mem­o­rat­ing buc­ca­neers of the sea and days gone by.

Prof­i­teer­ing & smug­gling were very much a part of its past!

As per the last post, we were there on a Thurs­day. It was hot and humid but there was a lit­tle bit of a breeze down by the sea. That did take the edge off the +90F heat.

Arroyo is a sleepy lit­tle town about 1/4 the size of Guayama. It was for­mally founded on Christ­mas day, 1855, but was a Span­ish set­tle­ment long before that. Its always been a pop­u­lar rest stop on the way to other des­ti­na­tions. How­ever, Arroyo has a check­ered past. Leg­end has it, that a ship wrecked indi­vid­ual washed up at Arroyo. They thought he had Cholera so they tossed him back into the sea. At the time, Cholera was wide­spread across the island. Another story claims a local known for his gen­eros­ity, came down with Bubonic plague and was report­edly burned alive to pro­tect its cit­i­zens. It was known back then as ‘Pueblo Ingrato’. These events have haunted Arroyo ever since. Hence its desire to clean up its rep­u­ta­tion and declare itself, Pueblo Grato.

Believe it or not– Samuel Morse set up the first tele­graph line on the island and all of Latin Amer­ica, here in Arroyo. It stretched from Hacienda La Enri­queta (his daughter’s home), a sug­ar­cane plan­ta­tion, down to the docks at Arroyo. Morse did this while vis­it­ing his daugh­ter and son-in-law in 1859. This event inspired the gov­ern­ment of PR to run tele­graph lines con­nect­ing the rest of the island and was com­pleted in the early 1870’s. Well before the Spanish-American War of 1898.

We drove on down to the boat har­bor in hopes of scor­ing a cou­ple of Cervezas (beers) to cool us off. As luck would have it, there were sev­eral bars to check out. We stopped at ‘Bar El Barco’. It had a juke box in the cor­ner blar­ing out up-beat Latin bal­lads. The Puerto Rican gal behind the bar spoke per­fect Eng­lish and seemed to be amused by our pres­ence. With all the doors swung wide open, there was a nice breeze through the place.

The mid after­noon sun is quite harsh. The locals always avoid this time of day.

As a gringo (well, Scurvy Dog) in Par­adise, it was a per­fect time to shoot. I had the place to myself.

The small shel­tered har­bor across from the bar looks like it’s slowly fill­ing in with sand. Thanx to Global Warm­ing, that may not be much of a prob­lem. Arrg!!! As can be seen in the wide shot, small fish­ing boats still tie up here. It was a beau­ti­ful spot.

There were signs of seri­ous infra­struc­ture improve­ments going on. A series of cement kiosks were being built along the board­walk, includ­ing a rather inter­est­ing cement sculp­ture down at the far end. I guess this area gets more traf­fic in the evenings.

Arroyo’s beaches are very pop­u­lar and draw large crowds on the week­ends too.

From here, we headed up Morse Street a cou­ple of blocks to the newly ren­o­vated U.S. Cus­toms Office. It’s a museum in its own right, Museo Antigua Adu­ana. We were some­what pressed for time, but I did stop and take the oppor­tu­nity to shoot it.  It has a gor­geous facade around the front door, an inter­est­ing steel sculp­ture in the front yard and a very nicely main­tained pri­vate gar­den in the back. The sculp­ture looked like a water foun­tain of sorts, but was not turned on. Just inside the entrance are sev­eral old pho­tos from Arroyo’s past.

A few more blocks on up Morse was Arroyo’s cen­tral Plaza. It was on the small­ish side. There was a cen­tral water fea­ture with a cou­ple of bronze plaques. One of them was ded­i­cated to Morse by the Daugh­ters of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion. Go fig­ure. Sev­eral large trees with park benches rounds out the Plaza.

On an adja­cent cor­ner is a most mag­nif­i­cent Catholic church. In fact, the grounds of the church are larger than the city’s Plaza. The small gar­dens out front were beau­ti­fully main­tained. Ser­vices are held here weekly.

As we headed out of town, Morse Street becomes Hwy 178. We took this to La Valentina, then a right onto ‘Camino Veci­nal’ which turns into Calle Can­gre­jos (street). I spot­ted yet another aban­doned sug­ar­cane mill so I stopped to check it out.

Great shots!!

Fur­ther on down, we hit the open beaches. No facil­i­ties, but per­fect for a pic­nic or bar-b-que. By this time, it was start­ing to rain. We did run on down to the guard shack just out­side Faro Punta de las Fig­uras (light­house). Since the weather had gone bad, we decided to turn around and go home. There is a beach resort located a lit­tle fur­ther up the road. I’ll have to come back for that another time.

Rem­nants of the last nar­row gauge rail­road on the island can be found if you know where to look.

All the com­mer­cial travel guides make ref­er­ence to the ‘Tren del Sur de Arroyo’ sug­ar­cane train tour (estab­lished in 1984). They also state that its cur­rently sus­pended for ‘ser­vice’. I did get a peek at the facil­ity and it looks like it’s been aban­doned since it was shut down in 2005. Grass was grow­ing in the park­ing lot and shrubs were tak­ing over. One of the lit­tle nar­row gauge diesel elec­tric Ply­mouth switcher engines is on dis­play out­side the fence.

It was rain­ing pretty hard by the time we got there (on our way back home) so I was lim­ited with what I could do. You can just barely make out the train engine on the far right of the panoramic shot.  Of the many pho­tos I saw online from folks who did get to ride the train, it looked kind of ‘rugged’.

Not the ‘Six Flags” ride most folks are famil­iar with.  It still seems like some­thing worth res­ur­rect­ing, if only on a smaller scale.  Cur­rent plans are in play by the Insti­tuto de Cul­tura Puer­tor­riqueño to do just that.  I’ll update as I find out more.

Unfor­tu­nately things went bad after we hit the high­way on the other side of Guayama.

The Isuzu shred­ded a fan belt, over heated and blew a hose.

No kid­ding!

We were stranded on the side of the road until I flagged down a cop. He called a ‘Grua’ (tow truck) for us. It showed up about 40 min­utes later. All together, we lost 2 hours on the side of the road. The oper­a­tor was a real nice kid in his late 20’s. He was dri­ving an old Chevy wrecker from the late ’60’s. A real clunker.  The thought of a tow truck, tow­ing a tow truck crossed my mind. It took another hour to get home from there. It was a lit­tle after 8PM by the time we pulled into the dri­ve­way. The tow set me back a $100. I had all three fan belts replaced for a total of $60.

Cram­ming two towns into one trip was a bit much.

I plan to come back to Arroyo for a 2nd pass at the boat har­bor, beaches, light­house, museum and aban­doned sugar pro­cess­ing facil­i­ties.  Whew!  There is plenty to see if you make the time.

ARRGGG!!!!!

My Name is Earl: This post was made early on Mon­day, ahead of the the impend­ing arrival of Hur­ri­cane Earl. It should pass well North of San Juan so us folks on the South coast are pretty safe. That said, the power goes out in Puerto Rico on a weekly, almost daily basis (as does the water). I antic­i­pate it going off any time. Inter­net ser­vice will be spo­radic at best. Things should be back to nor­mal by the end of the week. The Scurvy Dog, Arrg!

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