Many have told us about the outstanding quality of the Ponce
Art Museum (Museo de Arte), but two large earthquakes in January 2020 changed
all that, when the main building was badly damaged and closed. They finally
reopened a section of the museum this year, and we decided to check it out!
After the earthquakes, the Museum displayed items at its gallery
in San Juan, and took to the streets with workshops to shelters and schools.
When COVID hit, it expanded its digital platform. Now it’s gradually opening
again while raising funds to repair the earthquake damage.
The museum still has very limited offerings, though we
really enjoyed what we saw. It costs just $6 to get in, half price for seniors.
Free guided tours are conducted at 10 AM (Spanish) and 1 PM (English).
If you’re searching for a good beach near Ponce, Puerto Rico, you
might want to visit Playas Clavellina and Jauca. In our most recent effort to
find that elusive quality south-coast beach, we followed the map to the coast,
east of the Ponce Airport, past the giant windmills, to these small gems in
Santa Isabel. They are located in a rich agricultural area that produces an
abundance of tropical fruits such as mangoes.
Playa Clavellina is good for one thing: kite surfing. It was so
windy we could only stay for a couple of minutes The sand whipping against our
skin actually hurt! But for kite surfers, it was likely a gift from God. And it
explained the location of the nearby wind farm.
Further down the same road, on the edge of the Punta Petrona
Nature Reserve, we happened upon mostly deserted Playa Jauca. It was a
black-sand beach with a few shade trees and a lot of mangroves, in quiet,
shallow Jauca Bay, well-protected from the wind. We spent a relaxing couple of
hours and even enjoyed a visit from the piragua guy!
The southern Puerto Rican city of Ponce (pronounced PONE-say)
has been celebrating its annual carnival for 165 years, making it one of the
longest-celebrated carnivals in the Caribbean. The festivities are brought to
life by vejigantes, a local folk character that wears a colorful paper-mâché
mask and a bright jumpsuit. Since we have commissioned a couple of vejigante masks
from renowned mask maker Miguel Caraballo, we were eager to see the colorful masks
in use during a carnival parade!
The event spans six days right before Lent. The carnival
parades includes King Momo's appearance and the Carnival Queen's coronation, a
masquerade ball, and the Burial of the Sardine, a simulated funeral marking the
beginning of Lent.
We were there on Saturday night for the kids’ day and Queen’s
Coronation activities, which included a family-friendly version of the main
event. It was a delight! (But thank God we brought our ear plugs.) Enjoy!
When we lived in San Juan 28 years ago, Bob and I journeyed
south to the Ponce home of Puerto Rico’s renowned carnival mask maker, Miguel
Caraballo. We commissioned a beautiful mask that dominated the dining room wall
of our homes for more than two decades.
That “vejigante” mask is now in storage in Colorado, and a
little bent at the tip of one of its horns. Since we spent a few months in
Puerto Rico last fall, we decided to commission another one. So last November,
we journeyed to Ponce again, and met Miguel Caraballo, his son and his grandson.
Caraballo’s masks are highly regarded. He has a mask on
display in the Museum of the Americas in Old San Juan, and another in the Smithsonian
Institution’s Museum of American Art.
These papier-mâché masks are typically worn by young men who
don the colorful costume of a vejigante, a character who roams the streets
during Carnaval de la Playa de Ponce, or the Ponce Beach Carnival, playfully
scaring children and other revelers. The carnival held each February, features
a huge parade, with the vejigante as a protagonist along with the kings and
queens of carnival.
Miguel Caraballo started making masks as an apprentice to a
woman in his neighborhood when he was 15, 66 years ago. The masks are made with
cardboard, newspaper and brown paper, pressed onto molds and held together with
a glue made of flour and water. His son makes masks now, and his grandson of
the same name does the family marketing.
We picked up our new mask five weeks after our visit. We
were delighted! But it was so big that we almost didn’t get it onto the plane
back to the States. We had to buy a very large bin from Home Depot to
accommodate all the protruding horns. Although the package weighed hardly
anything, the combined length, width and height exceeded Southwest’s size
limitations by 2 inches. It was only after we cut open the package and took out
the mask to show the ticket agent what we were carrying that he decided to seek
special approval from his manager. We had to pay $75 for the oversized item,
and the agent exhorted us never to try to fly with such a large item again.
We would have been heartbroken to have to leave such a
special item behind.
Now that we have purchased a home in Puerto Rico, we plan to
return to the Caraballo home to commission yet another mask!
We traveled south to Ponce, Puerto Rico, to visit Castillo (Castle) Serralles and learn about how Don-Q Rum is distilled. What we found was very different. No rum tastings -- and they didn't even let us take pictures! Lots of history, though.
