Road trip

Angel rests her head in the car on the road trip to San Juan

After two years of not going to San Juan at all, I've been twice in three months. While Steve and Angel and Theresa were here, we took a road trip to Old San Juan to see the two forts, Castillo San Cristobal and Castillo San Felipe del Morro (El Morro). We were just there with our nephew Jordan at the end of February.

This was the first time I've actually been inside El Morro. What a place! You come in on the top level, which is Level Five and then work your way down to Level One at sea level. There are cannon batteries on every level, including the "water battery" at sea level. Cannons were placed here to fire at the hulls of wooden-sided ships.

To get out on Water Battery (that's as in gun battery, not "car" or "flashlight" battery) you have to pass through the oldest part of the fort, a tower that was built in 1539. There is a fragment of a 13-inch shell stuck in the wall of the tower. The shell was fired at the fort by the U.S. Navy during the Spanish-American War in 1898.

There is obviously a ton of history here. El Morro and San Cristobal were continuously occupied military installations through the end of World War II. You can see evidence of all the changes throughout the fort, from the Spanish sentry posts (which are the semi-official "logo" of Puerto Rico) to the concrete WWII observation posts built onto the walls.

Some of the architecture is fascinating. There is a spiral staircase in San Cristobal and a triangular staircase in El Morro. The compound curves under these stairs are amazing - and defy verbal description. (I tried and the person I was telling about just looked blank and said, "Uh-hunh.")

My photos of the two forts are really just a taste of what's there, certainly not an exhaustive photo essay. But that gives me reasons to go back. Someday.

You can see all the photos in this roadtrip set on Flickr.