Puerto Rico guide

The weather is gorgeous almost every day of the year, with average temperatures of around 82° Fahrenheit, Trade winds keep  the local humidity to a minimum. Like many of their Caribbean neighbors, Puerto Ricans routinely wake up and regard the sparkling sun and the tropical seawith a yawn and the adage, “Just another day in paradise.” However, there are actual seasons on the island – the wet season(June through October) and a dry season (November throughMay), whichare most evident in the mountainous and western areas. In general, theSouth Coast is driest. The East Coast is also predictably dry most daysyear-round. But you can get rained on any time of the year in the moun-tains. The lowest temperature ever recorded in Puerto Rico was 42° Fahr-enheit, measured near Aibonito in 1911. The west tends to get moredownpours during the wet season, when you can bank on a couple hours ofheavy rain each afternoon. Otherwise, it’s also blessed with glorioussunshine.As in the rest of the Caribbean, the meteorological celebrity known as thehurricane puts PuertoRican property owners on edge frommid-June untilmid-November.Hurricanes formin the doldrums, a narrowequatorial beltof the Atlantic and Caribbean waters, and can move northwest, north ornortheast. They often claim islands of the Antilles as their first victims.Tropical storms officially become hurricanes when wind velocity exceeds74 mph, and are categorized by strength from one to five. A category five
hurricane has wind velocities of more than 155 mph, and generally ripsapart anything in its path. Hurricane Hugo caused severe damage to Puerto Rico in 1989, and parts of the island have yet to recover fromdestruction wreaked by Hurricane Georges in 1998.

Visitors to Puerto Rico may have mixed feelings about comida criolla (local creole cooking). We heartily recommend it as the vestige of a culinary culture that is slowly getting buried under mushrooming fast-food outlets and restaurants serving nouveaux and international fare. At its worst, comida criolla can be greasy and unappealing. At its best, it blends the traditions of Taino, African and Spanish cooking to delicious result. Unlike many of the other Caribbean peoples, Puerto Ricans aren’t big on explosively spicy food (although most restaurants supply pique hot sauce – sometimes homemade – on request). The most typical spices used are cilantro (a large-leafed and more aromatic member of the parsley family), garlic, onions and peppers, used to make sofrito, the base of nearly everything that comes out of the Puerto Rican kitchen. Meat and seafood is usually seasoned with adobo – similar to a very mild curry powder.

The main island of Puerto Rico is about 100miles long and 35miles wide, roughly the size of Yellowstone
Park or the state of Delaware. It’s the farthest east of the four major islands that form the Greater Antilles, which includes Cuba, Jamaica and Hispaniola (Haiti and Dominican Republic). In terms of geologic time, the Caribbean islands are relatively young. A mere 200million years ago, as dinosaurs roamed the super continents, the tectonic plates of Northand SouthAmerica separated, and a rectangular chunk of the east Pacific plate – nowknown as the Caribbean plate – knotted itself between them. Over the epochs, the Caribbean plate began to shift north, creating pressure zones in the PuertoRican Trench, which, at 28,000 feet, is the deepest spot in the Atlantic Ocean. The result was a series of violent volca- nic eruptions depositing heaps of magma and ash over the ocean floor. Puerto Rico emerged from the sea about 135 million years ago. Ensuing tectonicmotion folded piles of debris into the mountains of the Cordillera Central,which forms about 60% of Puerto Rico’s land mass and runs like a spine fromthe rain forest of El Yunque to the hills of Rincón. Due to heavy rain-fall, most of the mountain range is thick with vegetation, including El Yunque, the only rain forest inUS territory. At itsmost dramatic, the Cor- dillera Central rises sharply into jagged peaks that would exceed Mt. Ev- erest in height, if measured from the ocean floor. From sea level, Puerto Rico’s highest peak – Cerro de Punta – measures 4,389 feet.Northeastern Puerto Rico is known as karst country, characterized by weird limestone formations and the thick, electric-green carpet of vegetation that covers them. Over the millions of years since Puerto Rico rosefromthe sea, rainwater has eroded the limestone rock into beehive-shaped mogotes, twisting caves, sinkholes, canyons and valleys. Occupying 617 square miles of karst country, the Río Camuy Cave Park is one of the largest networks of subterranean caverns, tunnels and rivers in theWest-ern Hemisphere. Much of the cave system remains unexplored. On the south side of the island, thewide, arid coastal plains spread fromthe cen- tralmountains to the Caribbean Sea, and give way to an area of dry tropical forest in the southwest, characterized by blackish sands, spiny cacti and other gnarled desert plants. Mangroves and white sand beaches ring the island, and there are a number of rich coral growths. The southwest and southeastern capes rise from the sea in red cliffs. Puerto Rico is often referred to an island (including, for the sake of simplicity, in this book),
which is technically inaccurate. It is an archipelago. Besides dozens of small cays, Puerto Rico includes four sizeable islands – Culebra and Vieques to the east and Isla Mona and Desecheo to the west.