Puerto Rico: Exploring the Interior, 2007

Some of Puerto Rico's tourist booklets encourage the visitor to "explore beyond the shore." One of the ways to explore is by taking some of the twisting mountain roads. The "Luis Munoz Marin" panoramic route, named after a former governor of the island, crosses the length of Puerto Rico from west to east, and would take a few days to cover well.

I started on the western side near Mayaguez and continued to the areas directly north of Ponce, which was manageable in an afternoon. For me, the highlights of the trip were the cute churches and other buildings, the quiet, the abundant plant life, and the occasional view of coffee fields and valleys.
I even ran into a young man on horseback.

I stopped at a local bar in the area between Maricao and Yauco and was told that a great time to visit Puerto Rico is during Christmas time, when the whole interior explodes in music and celebrations.

See my webpage on Puerto Rico at http://www.latinandcaribbeantravel.com/puertorico.html

Caribbean: Saba, Netherlands Antilles, 2002

These are some of the 1,064 stone steps that lead to the top of Mt. Scenery, the tallest mountain in the entire Kingdom of the Netherlands. The mountain is on the island of Saba, part of the Dutch Windward Islands, which includes St. Maarten and Statia (aka St. Eustatius).

Mt. Scenery is about 3,000 feet high and towers above the small town of Windwardside, which is small and picturesque. I started my walk at 5:15 AM just as the sun was coming up and arrived at the top beside the radio tower around 7:00 AM. The top was covered in clouds, as it often is, and the highlight of the trip is not so much the occasional view but rather the rich plant life of the cloud forest. I was back down at the starting point at about 9 AM.

Saba is unique among Caribbean islands. It is small - only 5 square miles - but is like a large rock protruding out of the water, so much so that it does not have any beaches, with the exception of a beach in Well's Bay that is submerged most of the year. It is a favorite spot for divers, who enjoy exploring the marine life around the island.

You can get to Saba by plane or ferry. The plane ride is 15 minutes from St. Maarten and the runway is one of the shortest in the world at 1200 feet, on the only flat part of the island. The pilots are skilled in landing there and when I flew there the pilot only used half of the runway - you feel like you're in a cross between a plane and a helicopter. The ferry ride is longer - over an hour - and the crossing tends to be rough. If you don't mind either of these trips, you'll find that Saba is a quiet, relaxing place and an antidote to the hectic pace of the modern world.

Visit my webpage on the Caribbean at http://www.latinandcaribbeantravel.com/caribbean.html

Colombia: Reservoir in the Highlands near Bogota, 2006

People who are not familiar with the mountains in Colombia will often assume, when I tell them that I'm traveling to Bogota, that the weather will be hot. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, the temperatures usually are in the upper 60s during the day and go down to the 40s at night. Outside of the city, you can go into highlands (I would guess about 1000 feet above Bogota's elevation of 8500 feet above sea level) where the temperatures are even cooler. The area around this reservoir didn't seem to be much above 50 degrees, with a cloud cover that made it feel cooler still, and a cold wind blowing constantly. This is great weather for the growing of potatoes, a staple in the Colombian diet.

Visit my webpage on Colombia at http://www.latinandcaribbeantravel.com/colombia.html

Colombia: Picture of the Nevado del Tolima volcano, 2007

After we finished a day trip from the city of Pereira to the Parque del Cafe ("Coffee Park"), a theme park in the heart of Juan Valdez coffee country in central Colombia, we saw that the Nevado del Tolima volcano was visible. This volcano is the more peaceful neighbor of the Nevado del Ruiz further north, best known for the terrible mudslide in 1985 that killed about 25,000 people and buried the entire town of Armero (it hadn't erupted for 500 years before that tragedy). On a clear day in Bogotá, the Nevado del Tolima can be seen in the distance.