San Juan Waterfun, San Juan Metro /Frazier Nivens
Attractions & Sights December-2005, By:Travel and Sports Staff
The Best of Puerto Rico Guest™ 2005
Nature/Adventure, Beach Hopping, Diving, Fishing, Golf
The old year ends, the new one begins. The holiday season is a time to reminisce about the year gone by. We at Puerto Rico Guest™, Puerto Rico’s Signature Magazine®, have looked back over our 2005 issues and chosen some of our favorite images for this edition. Flip through these pages for a tour of what we consider the best of Puerto Rico Guest™ 2005.
Our February-March issue started the year with adventures in rain forests, river-hewn caves, bioluminescent bays and other natural attractions. For hiking, the Caribbean National Forest – El Yunque – offers the greatest diversity. For views of the Island’s highest peaks, visit Toro Negro in the center of the Island. Both forests shelter classic rain forest vegetation, a topsy-turvy world where some ferns grow to the size of trees and some trees are scarcely the size of plants. Along the coast, kayakers explore elaborate channels created by mangrove forests. At night, kayaks and electric boats skim across bioluminescent bays, where the water glows at the slightest movement. Karst terrain in the northern hills supports a lush landscape of cratered sinkholes, haystack-shaped hills, and vast cave networks. The Río Camuy Cave Park showcases one of the largest river cave systems in the hemisphere, and there are opportunities for rappelling, rock climbing and swimming in nearby caves and canyons. You’ll find horseback riding, bicycling, birdwatching – and experienced tour operators to get you wherever you want to go.
With more than 1,000 miles of coastline, Puerto Rico and its offshore islands have tropical beaches of all shapes and sizes, and in our April-May issue we hopped from one spectacular site to the next. You don’t have to leave the metropolitan area to find great beaches. Ocean Park Beach is long and lovely, and the public beaches at Escambrón and Carolina have become members of the European-based environmental Blue Flag program. If you do venture out on the Island, you’ll be well rewarded. Luquillo Public Beach is the grande dame of majestic island beaches, and Flamenco on Culebra Island is considered one of the most stunning beaches in the Caribbean. Both are also Blue Flag members. Others that cause you to “ooh” and “aah” when you see them include Seven Seas in Fajardo and Sun Bay on Vieques Island, Gilligan’s Island off Guánica in the south,
Cabo Rojo’s Boquerón and Añasco’s Tres Hermanos along
the west coast.
In the June-July issue we journeyed to the depths of the ocean for memorable scuba diving. Numerous accessible reefs populated by colorful sea creatures surround Puerto Rico and its offshore islands. Underwater visibility is good to excellent, waters are warm year-round, and there are dive shops and watersports operators just about everywhere. Some of the most spectacular diving in the Caribbean is found along the continental shelf, nicknamed La Parguera Wall, off the south coast. Dozens of sites feature immense coral gardens and multitudes of fish. Uninhabited Desecheo Island in the Mona Passage features pristine and abundant marine life. You can walk into great diving and snorkeling at Crash Boat Beach in Aguadilla, see underwater caverns at Bajura Beach in Isabela and sail to diving and snorkeling sites off Culebra and Vieques islands and the islets off Fajardo and Humacao.
In the August-September issue, we chartered a sleek fishing boat complete with experienced captain in search of the Caribbean’s big-game fish. Legendary blue marlin reach their greatest size at this time of year, and several tournaments have made San Juan internationally known as a game-fishing mecca. It also doesn’t hurt that the Puerto Rico Trench, the deep waters where large fish abound, is a short boat ride from the Island’s north coast. These waters also harbor blackfin tuna, mahi mahi and wahoo. Good fishing grounds are found off every coast. For those who prefer salt-water fly or reel fishing closer to shore, flat-bottomed boats wind through mangroves and along shallow coastal bays in San Juan and other Island sites. If you’d rather watch fish, you can board a catamaran for a day of swimming, snorkeling, relaxing and enjoying a buffet lunch. Many charter catamarans dock in the marinas of Fajardo, Puerto Rico’s boating capital.
In our October-November issue, when temperatures start “dropping” into the high 70s Fo, we played on Puerto Rico’s golf courses. Golf is an ever-growing sport here, and there are now some two dozen courses. They are of championship caliber, created by some of the best-known architects in the golf world. Not only challenging, they are also breathtaking, with views to turquoise seas or deep-green mountains. Basically, Puerto Rico has two types of courses. Non-resort courses offer fewer amenities, cost less, and cater more to local golfers. Resort courses pamper golfers with well-equipped clubhouses and well-stocked pro shops, and they are close to the restaurants and other amenities of a luxury resort. Arrangements can be made to play on resort courses even if you are not a guest.
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