Lonely Planet Puerto Rico

Liza Prado, Luke Waterson

Description

Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisher Lonely Planet Puerto Rico is your passport to the most relevant, up-to-date advice on what to see and skip, and what hidden discoveries await you. Follow Old San Juan's labyrinthine laneways, laze on the sand at Playa Flamenco, or kayak into the bioluminescent bay at Vieques -all with your trusted travel companion. Get to the heart of Puerto Rico and begin your journey now! Inside Lonely Planet's Puerto Rico Travel Guide: Full-colour maps and images throughout Highlights and itineraries help you tailor your trip to your personal needs and interests Insider tips to save time and money and get around like a local, avoiding crowds and trouble spots Essential info at your fingertips - hours of operation, phone numbers, websites, transit tips, prices Honest reviews for all budgets - eating, sleeping, sight-seeing, going out, shopping, hidden gems that most guidebooks miss Cultural insights give you a richer, more rewarding travel experience - cuisine, customs, music, arts, landscapes, wildlife Covers San Juan, El Yunque, Luquillo, Fajardo, Culebra, Vieques, Ponce, Arroyo, Guayama, Pozuelo, Rincon, Mayaguez, Manati, Arecibo, Dorado, Caguas, Bosque Estatal de Carite and more The Perfect Choice: Lonely Planet Puerto Rico, our most comprehensive guide to Puerto Rico, is perfect for both exploring top sights and taking roads less traveled. Looking for more extensive coverage? Check out Lonely Planet's Caribbean Islands guide for a comprehensive look at all the region has to offer. About Lonely Planet: Lonely Planet is a leading travel media company and the world's number one travel guidebook brand, providing both inspiring and trustworthy information for every kind of traveller since 1973. Over the past four decades, we've printed over 145 million guidebooks and phrasebooks for 120 languages, and grown a dedicated, passionate global community of travellers. You'll also find our content online, and in mobile apps, video, 14 languages, 12 international magazines, armchair and lifestyle books, ebooks, and more, enabling you to explore every day. Lonely Planet enables the curious to experience the world fully and to truly get to the heart of the places they find themselves, near or far from home.TripAdvisor Travelers' Choice Awards 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 winner in Favorite Travel Guide category 'Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.' - New York Times 'Lonely Planet. It's on everyone's bookshelves, it's in every traveller's hands. It's on mobile phones. It's on the Internet. It's everywhere, and it's telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.' - Fairfax Media (Australia)

Sujets

• Puerto Rico
• Puerto Rico (homonymie)

Informations

• Publié par: Lonely Planet
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781787012325
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 47 Mo

Extrait

Puerto Rico

Contents

Plan Your Trip

Welcome to Puerto Rico
Hurricanes Irma and Maria
Puerto Rico's Top 17
Need to Know
First Time Puerto Rico
If You Like
Month by Month
Itineraries
Eat & Drink Like a Local
Puerto Rico Outdoors
Travel with Children
Regions at a Glance

On The Road

San Juan
Sights
Beaches
Activities
Courses
Tours
Festivals & Events
Sleeping
Eating
Drinking & Nightlife
Entertainment
Shopping
Around San Juan
Catano & Bayamon
Pinones
Beaches
Loiza
El Yunque & East Coast
El Yunque
Luquillo & Around
Fajardo & Around
Naguabo & Around
Yabucoa & Around
Culebra & Vieques
Culebra
Vieques
Ponce & South Coast
Ponce
Guayama & Pozuelo
Bahia de Jobos
Playa Salinas
Coamo
Yauco & Around
Guanica & Around
La Parguera
Rincon & West Coast
Rincon
Mayaguez
Cabo Rojo Area
Playa de Joyuda
Boqueron
El Combate
Refugio Nacional Cabo Rojo
San German
Isla Mona
North Coast
Dorado
Arecibo
Around Arecibo
Isabela & Around
Aguadilla
Central Mountains
Caguas
Bosque Estatal de Carite
Aibonito & Around
Barranquitas & Around
Reserva Forestal Toro Negro
Jayuya
Adjuntas & Around
Maricao
San Sebastian & Around

Understand

Understand Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico Today
History
Life in Puerto Rico
Sounds of Puerto Rico
Arts
Puerto Rico Landscapes
Wildlife of Puerto Rico

Survive

Directory AZ
Accommodations
Customs Regulations
Electricity
Embassies & Consulates
Food
Gambling
GLBTI Travelers
Health
Insurance
Internet Access
Legal Matters
Drinking Laws
Maps
Money
Public Holidays
Safe Travel
Telephone
Tourist Information
Travelers with Disabilities
Visas
Volunteering
Women Travelers
Transportation
Getting There & Away
Getting Around
Language
Behind the Scenes
Our Writers
Welcome to Puerto Rico

Scented by slow-roasted pork and sea breezes, and colored by swashbuckling history, this sun-washed medley of Spanish and American influences is a paradise-seeker's pleasure dome.


Caribbean Beaches
Puerto Rico inspires Caribbean daydreams for good reason: it can satisfy both the lethargic beach bum and the budding big-wave surfer – all in a long weekend. Its coral reefs host a riot of fantastical fish and the shores shimmer like crushed pearls. On some beaches you'll have plenty of company. In other places like Vieques or Cabo Rojo you might have some of the world's best stretches of sand entirely to yourself. If the sands that rim the island tempt you to stay, you can opt for sizeable resorts or independent guesthouses for watching those seaside sunsets from your room.

Cultural Vibrancy
The island's culture is of the visceral kind. You'll need to search for it beyond the condo towers and congested roads, and sometimes it seems Puerto Rico does not wish to show outsiders its cultural magnitude. Then, suddenly, you'll smell it in the smoke arising from lechonera s (eateries specializing in suckling pig), or hear it in the intoxicating patters of salsa beats. You'll glimpse it as sunlight sparkles across coffee plantations, or in museums celebrating everything from failed revolution to classical European painting. Puerto Rican traditions have been shaped by generations of cultural synthesis, celebration and setback, and it emerges today as vivid and indomitable.

Happening History
Puerto Rico's present appears laid-back but its past brims with cannon fire and colonization, repression and revolt. Legend abounds: from San Juan's fortresses, scoured by siege, to the crumbling South Coast sugar refineries once powering the island's economy. European settlers built pretty plazas in harbor cities while political revolutionaries schemed rebellion in mountain villages. History enthusiasts can wander precolonial Taíno ruins or coffee haciendas. Even if your interest is scant, it's hard not to get immersed in Puerto Rico's tempestuous story in Old San Juan, where enticing echoes of bygone times – of colonists and swashbucklers and smugglers – reverberate still.

Forest Thrills
Even those who stick to the coast cannot escape the alluring shadow of Puerto Rico's thick forests, as knotted labyrinths of mangroves create crucial shoreside wildlife reserves and the green glint of the inland forested hills is rarely out of sight.
The island's dense foliage invites a perpetual mystery to blanket it, as coqui frogs chant among giant tree ferns and roots reduce so-called roads to rubble. The forests here are internationally important, such as El Yunque, the only tropical rainforest in the US. A journey into them guarantees to awaken the adventurer within.

Paseo de la Princesa, San Juan | SEAN PAVONE/SHUTTERSTOCK ©


Why I Love Puerto Rico
By Luke Waterson, Writer
The island seems to specialise in making seemingly run-of-the-mill experiences rapidly erupt into life-long memories. The first time I traveled along the ramshackle south coast, I remember expressing interest to some passersby in an off-shore cay and no sooner had the words left my mouth than the impromptu offers to take me out there flooded in. This epitomizes Puerto Rico for me: one moment a stroll along a crumbling sea wall and the next, a float in azure, mangrove-backed waters with a cold beer in hand.
Hurricanes Irma and Maria
In early September 2017, Puerto Rico anxiously prepared for two catastrophic hurricanes that threatened its shores. Hurricane Irma came first, wrecking the islands of Culebra and Vieques and causing serious damage and flooding along the country’s northeastern coast. Just a week later, Hurricane Maria made a more direct impact, becoming the strongest hurricane to hit Puerto Rico in 89 years.
The research for this book was completed and sent to print before the storms passed over Puerto Rico. The entire island splintered under Maria’s force, and it was left with massive destruction and serious flooding; its delicate electrical grid crumpled and thousands were left without power or water. Tourism is very important to Puerto Rico’s economy, but the extent of the damage makes it hard to predict when the island will be back open for business; before you travel, check advice from state travel entities for information on any restrictions or significant closures.
Puerto Rico's Top 17

Evocative Old San Juan
Even those limited to a quick visit find it easy to fall under the beguiling spell of the cobblestone streets, pastel-painted colonial buildings and grand fortresses of Old San Juan . From the ramparts of El Morro, the allure of this place is evident in every direction, in the maze of crooked lanes and in the endless sparkle of the Atlantic. By day, lose yourself in historical stories of blood and drama; by night, tap in (and tap along) to the condensed cluster of bars and clubs constituting the neighborhood's nightlife.

Calle San Justo | DDAVID MADISON/GETTY IMAGES ©


Top Experiences
Glorious Beaches
The rub of sand between your toes, the dazzling shimmer of turquoise water and the rhythmic shush of cresting waves – Puerto Rico’s beaches possess all the qualities of a daydream. Take your pick from the golden, crescent-shaped heaven of Culebra's Playa Flamenco (considered among the world’s best beaches); the embarrassment of riches on Vieques; the coconut-oil-scented crowds of Playa Isla Verde, San Juan’s own little slice of Brazil; the secluded, mangrove-shaded hideaways in the south; or the roaring surf of the west, culminating in isolated bays like Playa Santa.

Beach at Palmas del Mar | FRANZ MARC FREI/GETTY IMAGES ©


Top Experiences
El Yunque Tropical Rainforest
Lush forests, verdant hills and crashing waterfalls attract visitors to El Yunque , the only true rainforest in the US National Forest System. It’s a place to embark on hikes (short and sweet, with information boards and tourist hoards, or long and lonely, with coqui frogs for company) through the oxygen-rich mist and gawk at Jurassic-sized ferns. Bring a raincoat and binoculars, too; of the 26 species found here and nowhere else on Earth, you’ll want to keep a sharp eye out for the Puerto Rican parrot, one of the world's 10 most endangered birds.

DENNIS VAN DE WATER/SHUTTERSTOCK ©


Top Experiences
Ponce
Ponce , the so-called ‘Pearl of the South,’ boasts a wealth of museums with enough diversity to satisfy the most intellectually rapacious museum hunter. The city is rightly proud of its action-packed past: sample its glory days at ornate Casa Wiechers Villaronga, its grimmer days at poignant Casa de la Masacre de Ponce, and beeline to the Caribbean's best art museum, Museo de Arte de Ponce. Then absorb the island's premier indigenous site, Centro Ceremonial Indigena de Tibes, and round off your historical romp in the beautiful Plaza Las Delicias.

Fire truck on display at Parque de Bombas | FRANZ MARC FREI/GETTY IMAGES ©


Top Experiences
Architectural Gems
If you tried to savor every single example of colonial grandeur – all the fountains and historic squares, every dignified plantation house and buttressed 19th-century municipal hall – Puerto Rico’s architectural gems would demand a stay of months. But if just one location outside of Old San Juan earns time on your agenda, take a stroll around Ponce and its historic main square . In the west, Puerto Rico's second oldest city, San Germán, dates to 1511, an age that blows away anything in the continental US.

Architectural detail, San Germán | WALTER BIBIKOW/GETTY IMAGES ©


Top Experiences
Catching Some Baseball
The bleachers at island béisbol (baseball) stadiums reveal a lot more than nine innings of play – they offer a glimpse at the Caribbean love affair with this sport. Even if their numbers are sometimes small, Puerto Ricans love the low-key games and dirt-cheap tickets that get fans right up to the Winter League Baseball action. Witness upstart farm leaguers looking for the