Photo by Elisabeth Hadjis | Families spend an afternoon in the sun at a beach in Piñones, Loiza.
By Amanda LaRiviere
PONCE, Puerto Rico — Caroline and Rob Hammock, accompanied by two international students they were hosting from West Africa, perused a mega gift shop in Ponce, Puerto Rico’s second largest city. T-shirts and souvenir flags decorated the walls of the shop, named Utopia. Shelves were stocked with artisan crafts, mugs and other tchotchkes. But unlike the bustling shops flooded with cruise-ship tourists and spring breakers nearly 76 miles north in San Juan, Utopia was almost empty.
“We like the idea of coming to a place that’s recovering,” said first-time visitor Caroline Hammock, who lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. After researching day trips from Old San Juan, the Hammocks decided to visit Ponce, a museum-rich city on the island’s southern coast in the midst of a rebuilding effort after a series of earthquakes in 2020 ravaged much of the area’s infrastructure. Many businesses and restaurants closed, and “for sale” signs remain posted on windows.
The Hammocks explained that neither the prospects of a city in recovery nor the obstacles to reach it would keep them from getting there. “I listened to a podcast about Puerto Rico before coming and it mentioned a lot of potholes,” said Hammock. Although they were able to rent a car from the island’s limited supply, many tourists find it daunting to travel to the other side of the island. “I think the driving here is a little crazy, so I’m making my husband drive everywhere.”
Tourists like the Hammocks are enticed by Puerto Rico’s abundant attractions—bioluminescent bays, a tropical rainforest, Caribbean beaches, mountainous terrain, cruise ports at coastal cities and historic sites. Despite so many attractions across the island – which is only 110 miles long and 35 miles wide – travelers do not have many affordable transportation options to get anywhere outside of the capital city, San Juan. This leaves destinations like historic Ponce to the south, Rincon to the west, known for its world-class surfing, and Vieques to the east, a small island famous for its bioluminescent bays, struggling to recover economically from a lack of tourism following twin hurricanes, subsequent earthquakes and COVID-19.
Photo by Maria Bonnemaison | A public bus drives down a street in tourist-heavy Condado.
“When people get here, they’re stranded in Old San Juan, and there’s other people on the island that could benefit from the money,” said Daphne Barbeito, who has more than 30 years experience in the travel industry, is a brand specialist for five major cruise lines and served as a tourism development advisor in Ponce.
An estimated 5.2 million people visited the island in 2019, according to Discover Puerto Rico, the Commonwealth’s official destination marketing organization created in 2017 by the Puerto Rican government. To protect the island’s tourism sector and restore economic growth, lawmakers passed the “Act to Promote Puerto Rico as a Destination.” With the timing of its establishment, the non-profit organization played a significant role in revitalizing the economy after the 2017 hurricanes swept through the island. In 2019, a report from the World Travel and Tourism Council stated the tourism industry contributed 5% to the island’s gross domestic product (GDP), generating $5.17 billion.
As a result of trip cancellations after a 6.4 magnitude earthquake in January 2020, and restricted travel during the COVID-19 pandemic, these numbers drastically decreased. In 2020, the tourism industry only generated $1.74 billion, representing 1.8% of the GDP. Over 10,000 people also lost their jobs in the tourism sector, which had previously constituted 10.1% of total employment on the island in 2019.
As COVID-19 restrictions eased and federal funds were used to restore buildings damaged by hurricanes and earthquakes, heavily trafficked areas like San Juan have slowly recovered from the sudden drop in tourist activity. But other segments of the industry, and other locations, are experiencing long-term and to some, devastating effects.
“Not having a proper transportation segment is harming the economic growth and diversification of the island,” said Barbeito, who also works for the mayor of San Juan as an advisor on economic development and tourism. Because the island lacks adequate public transportation, she added that tourists are faced with expensive alternatives: rental cars, rideshare vehicles, taxis or individual transportation companies.
Photo by Sofía Pérez | The Caribbean sun radiates on a row of vibrant buildings in Old San Juan.
Julio Lopez, an Uber driver for the last two years, said he rarely takes passengers further than the San Juan area. Occupying 77 square miles, the city is filled with clusters of tourists seeking short rides to restaurants, hotels or shops. From the oceanfront hotels in tourist-heavy Condado, a 10-minute Uber ride to Old San Juan can cost less than $10. But a one-way Uber trip from Condado to Ponce, located 73 miles away on the southern side of the island, can cost anywhere from $80 to $160. A private taxi company is even more expensive, with quotes pushing the $200 mark one way. And for both options, tourists risk not being able to secure a ride back to their hotel at the end of the day.
“In Ponce, there’s no movement. There’s no trips. It’s just easier to move around in San Juan,” Lopez said as he drove through a mountainous highway toward Ponce. “They need to fix the streets and add more security or police cars for if you need help with your car,” he said.
Lopez is not alone. Many rideshare drivers on the island agree with these sentiments, and prefer to work around areas with more tourists, like San Juan.
“Transportation companies were not able to get federal funds to help them survive the pandemic, so a lot of them closed or had to leave,” said Barbeito, noting that the emergence of Uber in 2016 only intensified competition in the transportation sector that previously consisted mostly of taxis and privately hired cars, as there is no subway system or extensive bus lines available anywhere in Puerto Rico.
There are rental car agencies in San Juan – which is how the Hammocks were able to experience Ponce – but other tourists may not have that luxury. José Ojeda, a tour guide of 17 years in Ponce, said most tourists must visit the exquisite, historical city with a rental car because there are no other options. However, eight cruise ships now dock here each year, due to efforts to expand cruise destinations beyond San Juan, where about 500 ships annually dock, carrying approximately 1.6 million visitors.
“The government needs to do something with the transportation,” Ojeda said, standing in front of Parque de Bombas, the island’s first fire station built in 1882. A group of four tourists marveled at the iconic landmark, boldly painted with dramatic red and black stripes. Even at one of the most photographed structures on the island, however, employees and tour guides outnumbered tourists. “We need more improvement, it’s really sad. When you get to San Juan, it’s hard to get to Ponce if you don’t have a car or haven’t rented one.”
Photo by Sofía Pérez | Parque de Bombas, the island’s first fire station, is an iconic landmark located in Ponce.
Although there is still evidence of earthquake damage in Ponce, Ojeda explained that the city has just as many open tourist attractions as San Juan. “Walking distance from here, about two blocks down, is a beautiful house from 1911,” Ojeda said, pointing away from the fire station. “It’s the museum of the history of music in Puerto Rico.”
The colorful center of Ponce was also lined with ice cream shops, hotels, parks, fountains and a casino. Yet, scattered throughout these blocks, some buildings still stood abandoned and several parking lots were filled with mounds of bricks and rubble. As San Juan is a well-traveled area, Ojeda explained the government has been slow to provide funding and repair the historic buildings damaged elsewhere on the island.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency and insurance companies must be managed more efficiently in order to reach Ponce, according to Ojeda.
Among the island’s cruise ship visitors are older patrons, who prefer cruises for the convenience of not having to travel much further than the port where the ship docks. Mary Black, an 84-year-old tourist from England, sat on a bench on a sunny March morning with her 89-year-old husband David in Old San Juan’s cruise port. As she adjusted a floppy hat, Mary said they had been waiting for 15 minutes in the hot Caribbean sun for a taxi to take them to shops only a few blocks away on uneven cobblestone streets.
“We literally just got off the ship,” said Mary Black, “but because my husband feels he can’t walk to the shops, we might just go back.”
The Blacks intended to visit more attractions, like the Casa Bacardí rum distillery across the bay from Old San Juan. But since their time in the area was limited as their ship was departing that same day, they were unable to venture further.
Photo by Elisabeth Hadjis | Tourists who docked in Puerto Rico shop at the cruise ship port in Old San Juan.
Most people who visit the island of Puerto Rico hear that they shouldn’t leave without a visit to El Yunque, the only tropical rainforest of the U.S. National Forest Service. Spanning 28,000 acres, El Yunque, can be reached in less than an hour’s drive from San Juan. With rich biodiversity, more than 200 tropical plant species, hiking trails and rushing waterfalls, the rainforest offers the island’s tourists a brief escape from the blistering San Juan heat.
But in 2017, hurricanes Irma and Maria changed the way tourists visited the rainforest. Landslides crashed down from higher slopes, devastating trails with debris. Trees collapsed onto the parking lots, and the visitor’s center located near the rainforest’s entrance suffered severe water and roof damage.
Today, taxis and Ubers are generally not allowed to drop off or pick up customers at the rainforest because of spotty cell service, which could cause people to get stranded. Tourists either have to rent a car to visit or pay an expensive tour company, which includes transportation to and from the area, but not much else.
“It’s sometimes hard to visit the forest on your own because many of the rental car companies after Maria sold part of their inventory,” said Andrea Torres López, a tour guide for Puerto Rico Access EcoTours, which charges $85 for transportation to and from the rainforest from San Juan, plus two short 30-minute walks around the facility on stone dust paths. López stood in the open-air lobby of the visitor’s center, El Portal de El Yunque, as tourists wandered around or read exhibits nearby. Closed since the 2017 storms, El Portal opened to the public again in January 2022. “So there’s not a lot of cars available on the island and they’re very overpriced, so a lot of tourists decide to stay in San Juan.”
Photo by Kylee Hendrie | Andrea Torres López, a tour guide for Puerto Rico Access EcoTours, smiles in front of the endangered Puerto Rican parrot.
López said the lack of tourists to the rainforest has not only affected the visitor center’s revenue, but adjacent businesses as well.
“People living in the lower outskirts of El Yunque opened their own little food shops and souvenir shops to make money off the forest tourism,” López said as she climbed up a dirt trail with iridescent blue peacock ferns on either side. “But the hurricanes hurt the families and businesses whose lives depended on tourism.”
In order to attract more tourists to the rainforest, unregulated tour companies began offering cheaper rates and services. Barbeito said these illegitimate companies made tourism recovery efforts complicated. According to López, they still do.
“A lot of accidents have been happening because they don’t have proper safety equipment, like helmets, and locals can put out their own experiences without liability waivers,” said López. Without extensive knowledge of the rainforest, López said these companies will bring tourists to places that aren’t safe. In February, Arlington, Massachusetts, resident Beth Callahan suffered a brain injury after jumping from a waterfall in El Yunque with an unlicensed tour group, López explained. “Because of COVID and hurricanes, the tourism industry hasn’t been on top of their game with licenses and permits.”
Employees of El Yunque remain optimistic about the visitor center’s grand reopening, however, saying that it will begin to turn things around.
“In the first two weeks it was a boom with local people,” said Yunielis Clemente Ortiz, a park ranger for the U.S. Forest Service at El Yunque. Standing near an exhibit that detailed the eco-friendly restorations for El Portal, Ortiz said a $18.1 million investment from the U.S. Department of Agriculture was used to redesign the facility and rebuild it from the ground up. Wooden exhibits and information desks were constructed with mahogany from trees that fell in the parking lot during the hurricane. The flooring was replaced with hollow boards which recollect rainwater and disperses it to the facility’s fountains.
Photo by Amanda LaRiviere | Tourists walk around El Portal, the newly renovated visitor’s center at El Yunque National Forest.
“We will get about 1 million visitors, that’s the estimate right now,” said Ortiz, approximating how many people will visit the rainforest in 2022. “It’s the second biggest tourist spot in Puerto Rico after Old San Juan.”
Despite the tourism industry’s unreliable transportation segment, efforts have shifted to encourage domestic tourism through the launch of “One Island, 78 Destinations,” a marketing campaign by the Puerto Rico Tourism Company.
“The Puerto Rico tourism passport started during COVID to encourage people to get out and move the economy locally,” said López, explaining that locals partaking in domestic tourism can obtain a mock passport, which will be stamped by participating tourist attractions in each of the island’s 78 municipalities. “Locals not being able to work realized they might as well discover their own locations.”