No return visit to Old San Juan would be complete without a look at the ships. I don’t mean the large cruise ships that dock in San Juan Bay. I mean ships on a much smaller scale, artistic endeavors created under the starkest of circumstances.
Old San Juan: unscathed city walls and damaged pier
In general appearance, the seven square blocks of narrow streets and colonial buildings that comprise Old San Juan seem little changed after the hurricane. In fact, Old San Juan has changed little since its time as one of the most important cities in the Spanish Empire during the 18th and 19th centuries, surviving any number of hurricanes. Founded in 1521, it is the second oldest permanent European settlement in the New World, site of brightly painted urban mansions, sprawling government buildings, lovely churches and cathedrals, carefully laid out squares, and massive fortresses and city walls.
Tourism is alive and well.
The day I was there, passengers from a cruise ship made their way around the city, visiting the forts, shopping in boutiques, and enjoying refreshments in outdoor patios and small air-conditioned restaurants. Roofs had been repaired and buildings appeared freshly painted. The most notable hurricane damage was a damaged pier and buckled cobblestone streets, apparently due to flooding.
San Cristóbal sentry box
After looping around the city, I decided to make a final detour into San Cristóbal Fortress before hailing an Uber back to Ocean Park. A small fort in the mid-1600s, by the late 1700s Castillo de San Cristóbal was transformed into the largest fort built by the Spaniards in the Americas. Protecting the city from land attack, it featured a multi-level maze of small forts, moats, tunnels, gunpowder magazines, trenches, mining galleries, barracks, a chapel, and cisterns that could store more than 700,000 gallons of rainwater. Much of that remains for visitors to see today. The hurricane was no match for the fort’s massive walls, made of stone, brick, and mampostería, a concoction of limestone, sandstone, and clays.
The intense tropical sun beat down on the batteries and glistened off the ocean. With relief, I headed down one of the dimly lit tunnels. Partway down, a small side tunnel dead-ends at a wall with a narrow slit that lets in a pinprick of sunlight. This is the dungeon, perhaps four feet by 12 feet, cramped quarters for the fort’s wayward soldiers and other law breakers. Here, some unlucky soul with an artistic bent drew several ships on the whitewashed walls. It is fascinating to realize that his attempt to pass the time in the dungeon – no one knows for how long – provided a piece of graffiti that is admired by hundreds of fort visitors every day.
One of the ships