Among the Stars, Below the Earth
Like many travelers, when thought of
Puerto Rico, he thought only
of rum, a world-famous fort, and maybe
West Side Story. A
trip to the
Arecibo Observatory and the Rio Camuy Caverns changed
everything.
Illustrations by Oksana Badrak.
The trolley rattled to a stop. It was a Disneyland-style tram with
open-air passenger cars, but I couldn't have been farther from the
Magic Kingdom. There was jungle all around me - real jungle, green
and moist, blotting out the sun, the heavy air smelling of decay
and rebirth. And just a few feet away from the trolley, the earth
was split, a great crack showing in the face of a limestone cliff.
This prehistoric maw was illicit, chilling, and strangely inviting.
I had heard a rumor that the cave's interior was vast and vaulted
like a European cathedral. Bats clung to the roof, and a secret
underground river threaded beneath the limestone floors, revealing
its chocolate-colored waters just long enough for them to whisper
an invitation to an even greater subterranean adventure before
disappearing, once again, into the bowels of the earth.
The juxtaposition was surreal: A throng of tourists stepped off a
tram in the middle of dense jungle with all the nonchalance of
shoppers entering a mall, while just yards away was the very real
danger of the world's third-largest cave network, a place where the
reckless had ventured and never returned.
Africa? The Amazon? The Alps? No. I was in, of all places, Puerto
Rico. I had come to peer beneath the core of the earth and then far
into deep space (and maybe, when all was said and done, to drink a
little of the local rum). So, beckoned by a tour guide who reminded
us that one wrong step could mean plunging hundreds of feet into an
abyss from which there was no rescue, I stepped through that great
crack in the earth and left the dank jungle air behind.
I like to run on
golf courses in the morning. The best time
is just before dawn, when the air is calm and dew still coats the
empty fairways. As a courtesy - and an acknowledgment that while
golf courses are some of the best and most enjoyable places on
earth to run, they are still
golf courses - I don't leave
footprints in sand traps or run across greens and tee boxes, and I
do, above all, avoid contact with any individual related to the
game of golf. This goes double at any course with
resort in
its title. Strictly speaking, it is apparently illegal to run on a
golf course, as any number of marshals, groundskeepers, and actual
golfers have informed me. Yet some of my best workouts are on those
morning runs. I also have seen and experienced some rather surreal
occurrences at that time of day.
But we'll get back to that later.
Where I'm going with all this, in a very roundabout way, is Puerto
Rico.
Situated in the Greater Antilles, it's the fourth-largest island in
the
Caribbean, after
Cuba, Hispaniola, and
Jamaica. First settled
by an Archaic culture known as the Ortoiroid over 4,000 years ago,
Puerto Rico became known to Europeans when Christopher Columbus
discovered it on his second voyage. Legend has it that the crew of
Columbus's fourth voyage, traumatized by that journey's brutal
nature, were so terrified of
sailing home to
Spain that they stayed
in Puerto Rico (which means "rich port"), thus becoming the
island's first serious colonists. In time, the port at San Juan
became a cornerstone of Spain's Caribbean empire. Vast citadels
were built to keep away intruders. And while the Dutch, English,
and French all made attempts to conquer the island over the
centuries, it wasn't until the
United States' successful invasion
during the Spanish-American War that Spain's long-held bastion
fell. Even now, Puerto Rico is a U.S. commonwealth; its citizens
carry American passports, vote in national elections, and use the
American dollar as their currency.
Puerto Rico's fringe areas are its least-known attributes.
Tourists, in particular, have long viewed bustling
San Juan as
symbolic of all things Puerto Rican. Travelers throng to its
colonial section, with its shops and restaurants and world-famous
El Castillo de San Felipe del Morro, the fort that kept enemies at
bay for almost four centuries. It is a city famous for its rum and
nightlife, making it a perfect stopover for the cruise-ship legions
meandering through the Caribbean.
But there is far more to Puerto Rico, a quiet and adventurous side
hidden deep within its interior. There are canyons, mountains,
white-water rivers, and places like the Caribbean National Forest.
Also known as El Yunque, this dense jungle rain forest is riven by
waterfalls tumbling off black-granite cliff faces. It is a place
where parrots flit in the canopy and where the air is thick with
the oxygenated scent of rampant vegetation.
If the island's charms could be peeled away by layers - first
raucous San Juan and the hundreds of miles of pristine beaches and
then the rain forest of the rugged interior - you would find a
third layer that comprises a pair of secret gems that the island
reveals to very few. Ironically, those jewels transcend the island
itself, one reaching out into deep space and the other down into
the bowels of the earth.
It was the pair of treasures - the Arecibo Observatory, so vast
that space-shuttle astronauts can see it from outer space, and the
Rio Camuy Caverns, the third-largest caving network in the world -
that lured me to Puerto Rico. Not that I am a caver or an
astronomist, but something about these places forced me into a
paradigm shift. When I think of Puerto Rico, I think of rum and the
fort. And maybe of
West Side Story. The cave and the
observatory had a certain virtue, for lack of a better word. Their
timelessness and what they had to say about the earth and mankind
challenged my impressions of Puerto Rico. For this adventure, I
flew to San Juan, took an ocean-view room at the Embassy Suites
Dorado del Mar Beach and Golf Resort, and then drove west at the
crack of dawn, bound first for the Rio Camuy Caverns.
The tourist tram threw me, I have to confess. I had images
of donning a grubby coverall, hard hat, and headlamp, and then
wriggling through a pile of green guano to enter the cave. But
entering the Cueva Clara de Empalme, which is the largest cavern in
the Rio Camuy network, is as simple as stepping off the trolley and
walking down the cement path. At first I was a little put off,
thinking that following a set of handrails on a guided tour of a
cave would be unadventurous. But it wasn't. The instant we set foot
inside, I was glad for the walkway, for the cave was a vast
assemblage of stalactites, stalagmites, and sudden descents farther
and farther into the earth. The air no longer bore the pungent
whiff of jungle but was still and dusty. Sunlight filtered in
through the cave's entryway, giving the inside a ghostly feel. It
was as if we had not descended into the earth but somehow had
stepped onto another planet. The chatter among the tour group
stopped as we gaped upward at the ceiling, hundreds of feet high.
The only sound was that of rushing water, unseen but very close,
beneath our feet.
What must it have been like, I wondered,
for Russell
Gurnee to explore this cave back in the 1960s? It was Gurnee
who undertook the systematic mapping of the cave system and the
thundering Rio Camuy. The entire cave network stretches for miles,
formed by an endless continuum of galleries and passages. Most of
it is off-limits to the public, and much is still uncharted, but
the Cueva Clara de Empalme and the nearby Espiral sinkhole have
ample magnificence. It boggled my mind to hear the tour guide talk
about the composition of stalactites and stalagmites, none of which
we were allowed to touch. Each foot of growth on those rocky
spikes, some of which were dozens of feet tall, represented 1,000
years of water droplets slowly calcifying until they hardened into
rock. Even more mind-boggling was the notion that the caves are 45
million years old.
It is amazing to run those numbers through the head and then try to
imagine what that many years feels like. Civilizations have come
and gone, seasons, storms - and yet the caves have remained largely
the same.
Head spinning, I stepped out onto an overlook, where I could see
the Rio Camuy very far below. It shot forward from one hole in the
earth and then snaked along a narrow slot before entering the rock
once more.
How deep did it go? I wondered.
How fast was
that water raging? What would it be like to attempt that same
journey in a white-water raft, bobbing and surging ever deeper into
the cave before finally shooting back into the light?
Then, prompted by the guide, I continued making my way through the
cave of wonders, taking pains to keep my hands on the sturdy metal
rail and my feet on that wondrous concrete path.
To find the Rio Camuy Caverns, I took Highway 22 west from
San Juan, and then headed south on Route 129, following the signs.
That same road leads to the Arecibo Observatory. So it is that a
small jungle highway with very few amenities connects the core of
the earth and the conduit to deep space. The Arecibo Observatory
must be seen to be believed, but imagine that an artificial lunar
crater has been carved out of a jungle's limestone peak. The
depression of the crater houses the largest radio telescope on
earth, capable of peering far beyond our galaxy and into the
billions of others galaxies that are said to lie somewhere out in
the great beyond.
I'm not much of a science geek, so I don't have the talent to
properly appreciate terms like
light years and
multiple
aperture telescope, but I can comprehend the enormity of a
concave structure 1,000 feet across, beaming signals into outer
space. The radio telescope has been used to determine, for
instance, the rotation rate of Mercury, the accurate location of
spy satellites, the exact image of asteroids, and the existence of
pulsar and extrasolar planets. And it's also made a pair of fine
cameo appearances inI and in the James Bond film
GoldenEye.
So what does one do when visiting a radio telescope? Well, gape,
for starters. Gape at the immensity of the structure. Gape at the
knowledge that the signals beeping forth from the place where you
are standing will soon be bouncing around the cosmos, and gape at
how small this makes the earth suddenly seem. Visitors are not
allowed inside the actual control booth, but from a viewing
platform just outside, I looked down into the vast white surface
that those space-shuttle astronauts observe and watched as a
massive boom was extended out over it, housing the technical
apparatus from which the signals are bounced into space. A sonorous
ping reverberated throughout the facility, the very signal that
would soon echo throughout the heavens. Sure, there's a gift shop
(rather, a Galaxy Shop) and a hands-on interpretive center where
visitors can learn exactly how the telescope works, but like the
Rio Camuy Caverns, sometimes the best moments at a place like the
observatory come from taking time to ponder the height and breadth
and depth of this space and time continuum that we inhabit. It is a
place where one realizes that we often think on too small a scale
and that anything really is possible.
Which brings me back to my running on the golf course. The
morning after my visits to the caves and the observatory, my head
still ringing with questions about the meaning of life, I was out
running on the resort's links. The layout took me along an
oceanfront cliff before plunging through a row of condos and then
out into a series of low hills lined with palm trees. I had the
course to myself. It was quiet. I was lost in thought.
Then, literally, out of the blue, a golf ball fell to earth just
two feet away from me.
I stopped and looked around. There were no golfers, and no passing
bird had dropped the ball.
There was no explanation whatsoever for that golf ball thumping to earth by my feet. I like to think that one of those great pings being emitted over at Arecibo had seen a response, that someone out in the great beyond had chosen to drop a golf ball from the heavens.
I had come to Puerto Rico for a paradigm shift in how I viewed the place, to be stunned and amazed. And so, in several previously unlikely ways, I was.
If You Go Puerto Rico’s main hub is the city of San Juan, located in the island’s northeast region. My journey began there. I stayed at the
Embassy Suites Dorado del Mar Beach and Golf Resort (787-796-6125), 45 minutes west of San Juan in the beachfront community of Dorado. To reach the
Radiotelescopio de Arecibo (787-878-2612), follow Highway 22 to Route 129, and follow the signs. Operating hours are Wednesday through Friday, noon to four p.m.; Saturday, Sunday, and holidays, nine a.m. to four p.m. The new visitor center hosts an interactive exhibit for all ages and a 20-minute movie about the observatory. The
Rio Camuy Caverns (787-898-3100) are just a short drive from the observatory. Operating hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. If you’re up for more adventure, Puerto Rico has many fine tour operators that cover activities ranging from horseback riding to
kayaking.
AdvenTours (
www.adventours.com) offers excursions for those who enjoy cultural history, outdoor sports, mountain biking, jungle trekking, and stargazing.
Legends of Puerto Rico (
www.legendsofpr.com),
Aqua Frenzy Kayaks (
aquafrenzy@hotmail.com), and
Aquatica Dive and Bike Adventours (
www.aquatica.cjb.net) also offer a complete range of outdoor activities.