Carlos and Ashley didn't spend the entire week with us. This morning, we drove them to the airport, said our goodbyes, and drove into Old San Juan to do some more touristing.
Except it didn't work out that way. We tried to visit the San Felipe castle, but we got so frustrated trying - and ultimately failing - to find a place to park, that we changed our plans. We decided to come back the next day for a walking tour, and do something else this day.
The "something else" was a drive to the town of Ponce (w), on the southern shore of the island:
Puerto Rico is, of course, a tropical island, and as such, is very green, as you've seen in some of the previous pictures. However, as we got further into the southern part of the island, I started seeing less green and more brown. I later found out that this was the part of the island most affected by the hurricane.
One reason for our interest in Ponce was that we had read about the Ponce Massacre (w) in 1937. To quote Wikipedia:
The Ponce massacre was an event that took place on Palm Sunday, March 21, 1937, in Ponce, Puerto Rico, when a peaceful civilian march turned into a police shooting in which 19 civilians and two policemen were killed, and more than 200 civilians wounded. None of the civilians were armed and most of the dead were reportedly shot in their backs. The march had been organized by the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party to commemorate the abolition of slavery in Puerto Rico by the governing Spanish National Assembly in 1873, and to protest the U.S. government's imprisonment of the Party's leader, Pedro Albizu Campos, on sedition charges.
We had also read that there was a Ponce Massacre Museum in Ponce, and wanted to visit it. Alas, when we got there, we discovered it was closed due to damage sustained in the May 2020 earthquake. So we decided to check out the Ponce History museum, only to discover that it was also closed. So we went to find the Museo de la Música Puertorriqueña (Museum of Puerto Rican Music) (w), only to find... but you've guessed.
Thoroughly disgusted, we went into a pizza restaurant across the street, where we were told that the museum was just closed for lunch. So we ate a pizza while we waited. (Yes, I know what I said earlier about eating local. Don't bother me.)
At the museum, we found a very pleasant gentleman who escorted us around the museum and showed us the exhibits. He was also very gracious about allowing Terry to feel the items on display (those that weren't protected behind glass). Here are some pictures:
A mural depicting several Puerto Rican musicians
Primitive instruments
Percussion instruments
Stringed instruments
Contemporary instruments
Some albums by Puerto Rican musicians
Three Carnaval masks
After leaving the museum, we drove up to take a look at Cruceta del Vigia (The Watchman Cross) (w). This is a large (100 ft) concrete cross standing on a hill overlooking the city. I neglected to get a picture, but the Wikipedia article has some good ones. However, I did take a picture of the view from the top of the hill:
At one point on the drive to the cross, I made a wrong turn and found myself at a dead end. So I turned around and went back... and found myself at another dead end. So I turned around and went another way, and damned if I didn't hit a third dead end! I took a deep breath and told myself not to panic, and reminded myself that if there was a way in, there had to be a way out. I found it, and we proceeded.
Next door to the Cruceta was a very nice Japanese Garden:
Somewhere during the day, I also took this picture of Catedral Nuestra Señora de La Guadalupe (Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe):
One thing that we had wanted to do in Puerto Rico was to find a place to listen to some live Salsa music. On Tuesday, while I was walking around by myself, I stopped into a tourist information center and got the names of some restaurants featuring live music. So after driving back from Ponce, we went to one of the restaurants. Alas, this was Thursday, and the live music was on Friday. And the restaurant only served bar food. So we walked a block to a Colombian restaurant, where our waitress turned out to be from Fresno!
(Yes, I know Colombian isn't "eating local." But at least it wasn't Burger King.)