PR7: Castillo de San Cristóbal

Having felt like I had seen as much of El Morro as I could see, I decided to make my way across town to the other fort, Castillo de San Cristóbal. I had a couple hours still before I had to get to the airport, and this fort promised to be just as interesting as the first.

This one had more of a proper "visitor's center," although in general I am definitely not a fan of visitor centers...in my mind they seem to waste space while creating a contextual distraction from the thing that I came to see, although sometimes they can be very creative uses for otherwise useless space, depending on the site. The VC for Castillo San Cristóbal seemed overly spacious, but was an interesting enough use of an already extensively remuddled space to capture my interest.

I rarely look at exhibits or signage during my first visit to a place like this, preferring rather to explore the whole site first. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that the VC at Castillo San Cristóbal was placed in a section of the fort that had already been turned into a concrete bunker for WWII.

Lots of hand-railings and people-access are also a big turn-off for me though, even though it's pretty much mandatory:

Oh hey, an iguana, and a lady picking her nose:

And then suddenly I found myself in some unexpectedly extensive tunnels...

Not sure I've ever seen a fort with tunnels so long that didn't have a casemate or something every few feet, which made me wonder what the purpose was...

Well this next photo was a room of some sort, labelled by the sign as the calabozo, or "dungeon:"

They covered a large section of the wall with glass, to preserve the graffiti of some prisoner from the 1600s claiming to have been a captain of all these vessels he drew:

If only my outlandish spray-painted claims of prowess and delusions of grandeur found on the walls of the Packard Plant were not only to be believed, but also enshrined by the National Park Service!

I guess we will see in 400 years, when the Packard Plant is renovated.

More WWII concreteness:

This one I got to go inside of:

The views from Castillo de San Cristóbal are superb, perhaps better even than El Morro's...

Speaking of which, there it is off in the distance:

You can tell by the lighthouse that I didn't get to go into...

The collection of homes in the foreground of that last shot is the neighborhood known as La Perla, considered "the ghetto" of Old San Juan, and which is warned against in all the tourist literature that I saw online or in books. It is also seemingly cut off from the normal avenues of travel that one might be passing down (not to mention the giant cliff and castle walls), so getting there is a bit of a trick. This link however provides a seemingly fairer appraisal of the true La Perla: sanjuanpuertorico.com/la-perla/

I think all of the warnings were mainly intended for the well-heeled cruise ship tourists who are in town for a few hours to shop for diamond necklaces or $500 handbags, and whose eyes are easily made sore by things like blight or poverty. Historically, La Perla was where the servants and slaves were made to live, but now that waterfront property is highly prized by the upper class, there is a huge interest in gentrifying it after it was ravaged by Maria. Those who live there have held on tightly to the meager homes passed down from their ancestors and are tenaciously resisting the forces that would turn this into another paradise for the wealthy. Apparently the most popular music video of all time was also shot in La Perla, right after Maria... cbsnews.com/news/despacito-made-this-neighborhood-famous-but-hurricane-maria-ravaged-it/

I didn't make it down there, but now having read those two articles I sort of regret not giving it a try.

The view to the rest of San Juan to the east was pretty damn good too:

And you can see the Capitolio again, as well as an outer fortification of San Cristóbal that I couldn't manage to get to:

These garitas are one of the most-photographed things in Puerto Rico:

In fact their image is also emblazoned on Puerto Rico's license plates.

Looking back toward the fort from inside the garita:

Looking down into Old San Juan, the fancy blue house is the historic Governor's Mansion, if I'm not mistaken:

More view west:

Looking south to the port area:

Ramp to the highest level:

Overlooking the plaza:

Again, the U.S., Puerto Rican, and old Spanish flags flying over this fort / National Park:

It was a pretty big gun that was mounted here:

View to the east and El Capitolio:

More casemates:

A stone spiral staircase:

The cylindrical structures here are old wells for drinking water:

More casemates:

I've never seen a fancy wooden bannister inside a fort before.

One minor sally port that led to an out-work:

Walking along in the plaza...

The fort's chapel, to the right:

Under the stucco, this is what the masonry looks like:

The decorative tile on the floor of some of the casemates was also a first for me:

Another WWII-era tunnel led me back out.

After being spit out of the visitor center tunnel I checked out a few more outer works of San Cristóbal, before finally admitting that my time here was concluded and I had 10hrs of traveling to get back home.

Time for another water break though...

Before throwing in the towel I finally sat down to a big splurgy meal that was worthy of a photo, since I guess they don't feed you on airplanes anymore, and since it would be pounding snow and 32F when I got back home.

This is mofongo, a Puerto Rican specialty that consists of fried plantains mashed into a thick bowl shape, filled with meat, gravy, veggies, or whatever. Mine had shrimp and steak, because that was on special. Friggin delish. I also realized as I was eating this that the tostones I'd had the night before with a pork-choppy sort of thing were not actually potatoes, but plantains. So now I know what plantains taste like.

Thanks for reading.