We took a tour of Hacienda Muñoz in San Lorenzo, half an hour up the mountains from San Juan. Its coffee has won the Best Coffee People’s Choice Award at the Puerto Rico Coffee and Chocolate Expo for three years running. Is it really that good?
The tour focused on the coffee-growing industry and its history, as well as the methods used to grow, process, and roast coffee. The detail was sometimes excruciating, as we stood on the hillside in the hot sun listening to our impassioned guide go on and on and on.
While small, it’s a much larger operation than Hacienda Iluminada, the small hacienda we toured last fall which focused its tour on sustainable practices and integration into the forest. Here, we saw neat rows of coffee plants planted in full sun. In addition to its coffee fields, Hacienda Muñoz operates a small café, where we enjoyed fresh turkey sandwiches on baguettes, and a larger restaurant.
Lisa bought a bag of medium-roast coffee, and it was indeed exemplary.
The cost for the tour was $20, or $10 for kids and those over 60. It included a tasting.
Join us for a tour of Puerto Rico’s first agricola (farmer) rum estate distillery!
San Juan Artisan Distillers (Destilería San Juan) in Vega Alta is the only rum factory in Puerto Rico that makes its rum from sugar cane plants, inspired by the island’s tradition. Most rum distillers import molasses from other countries. But at this plant just half an hour west of San Juan, we got to walk through sugar cane fields, visit the barrel room, see the distillation tanks, learn what experimental flavors are brewing in the lab, watch staff label the bottles, and of course taste the various flavors of rum!
A family-owned company that launched in 2011, San Juan Artisan Distillers produce handcrafted ron caña (sugar cane rum) of exceptional quality infused with local tropical fruit, natural flavors and spices. The distillery makes six fruit-infused rums under the brand Tresclavos—Ginger Spice, Sweet Piña, Passion Parcha, Rumba Mango, Coco Loco, and Bili Quenepa—as well as an award-winning signature rum called Ron Pepón.
It’s the only rum distiller on the island that can offer a tour of the rum process from the sugar can plant all the way to your lips!
Thank you, Monica, for the informative — and delicious! — tour.
While trying to enter Ocean Lab Brewing Company from the beach at Carolina, Puerto Rico, we were stopped by a burly security guard. He told us we couldn’t walk through this private club named Vivo, and pointed us around the building to the street side to enter the restaurant from the parking lot with the rest of the lowly non-members.
Well, exc-u-u-u-u-se me! (Fellow Boomers will recognize that reference.)
Our table on the third-floor balcony at Ocean Lab gave us a bird’s eye view of the Vivo Beach Club, so we googled it. It calls itself “the hottest private beach club in town.” You can join, or pay $40 for a day pass. This video shows you what you get.
After lunch, Bob tried to sneak through the club again to get out to the beach. Despite putting on his very best I-belong-here-don’t-mess-with-me act, he was stopped by the alert security guards and rerouted to the pedestrian exit. Foiled again!
As Messy Suitcase makes the rounds of rum distilleries across Puerto Rico, we discovered a new boutique one in Old San Juan and decided to pay a visit. Scryer Rum Barrelhouse & Rooftop is a small-batch, pot-distilled sipping rum distillery in a gorgeous historic building.
Sipping
“Sipping” is industry-speak for expensive – the good stuff you drink on its own, as opposed to the cheap stuff you pour into a cocktail.
Scryer was founded by a couple of buddies shortly before the pandemic. Garrett, who led our tour, started his alcohol education in whiskey and brought that expertise to rum distilling. But while the partners have created a delicious sipping rum, a lovely bar and a delightful rooftop, they have a lot to learn about running a good tour! They missed out on a lot of opportunities. Find out why in this video.
(Sorry in advance for the loud music in the background – they conduct the tour right next to the noisy bar.)
No trip to Puerto Rico is complete without going deep underground to explore Camuy Caverns, officially known as Rio Camuy Cave Park. It’s located in the karst mountains of northwestern Puerto Rico, where the towns of Camuy, Hatillo, and Lares come together. It was fascinating to see what nature wrought over millions of years, as well as the huge impact of Hurricane Maria.
Make sure you stay till the end: There is surprise bonus material you won’t want to miss!
Crashboat Beach has something for everyone — a gentle surf that beckons children in donut floats as much as adults drinking piña coladas, shady areas for relaxing, warm sand for sunbathing, a fascinating old pier jutting out into the water that teens love to jump off, food trucks with pinchos (kebabs) and smoothies, and amazing sunset views. But what Lisa found most interesting was UNDER the water!
Caribar, the beautiful bar inside the Caribe Hilton in San Juan, boasts that bartender Ramon ‘Monchito’ Perez invented the piña colada there in 1954.
Piña colada at Caribar
No, wait, that’s Barrachina a Spanish restaurant in Old San Juan, where traditional Spanish bartender Don Ramon Portas Mingot created the original recipe in 1963.
Piña coladas in Barrachina
Neither side is backing down. Which bar is the birthplace of Puerto Rico’s iconic drink? That may never be settled. So in our opinion, the real question is, which bar makes the best piña colada?
And can either version approach the deliciousness of Lisa’s piña colada recipe? Bob gives them the taste test! Enjoy the video:
Caribar‘s address is Calle Los Rosales, San Juan, on the lowest level of the Caribe Hilton Hotel. Barrachina is located at 104 C. de la Fortaleza, Old San Juan.
A hike in the nature reserve around the Cabo Rojo Lighthouse (Los Morrillos) served us up spectacular vistas, with stomach-dropping white and red cliffs, fascinating rock formations, crystal-clear Caribbean Sea, and even cacti!
We found the loop trail, part of the Cabo Rojo National Wildlife Refuge, on the All Trails app. It took us around the rocky coastline of this peninsula, then past the salt flats, before dumping us out on Playa Sucia, or La Playela, a gorgeous beach.
It’s located on the southeastern point of Cabo Rojo, on the Morrillos Peninsula, in the southwest corner of Puerto Rico. Learn all about this destination at the Discover Puerto Rico website.
Make sure you come between 9 AM and 5 PM, because the park rangers lock the gate!
It’s a new year — thank God — and despite the inconvenient evolution of Covid-19, Messy Suitcase plans to forge ahead with our traveling life this year, as safely as possible. We hope you will come along for the ride! We plan to continue helping our friends and followers stay abreast of what we’re doing with our creative retirement.
Whether you love to travel or just want to live vicariously through our adventures, we hope our journey will inspire you to think differently, to look at life through the prism of possibility, to get out there and explore!
Where are Bob and Lisa now?
We’re in Washington, DC, till mid-January, enjoying holidays with family and college break with our son Gavin and his cat, Ellie, and exploring the Nation’s Capital.
When Gavin goes back to Champlain College in Vermont, we will return to Puerto Rico. Why? Because international travel is just too difficult with Covid spiking, and Puerto Rico is a warm, lovely space to spend the winter. We lived here in the mid-1990s, and being back this past fall has felt like returning home.
1st Stop: Cabo Rojo We will spend our first month living in the beach town of Cabo Rojo, on the SW coast of Puerto Rico. Cabo Rojo puts us within a short drive of a number of stunning beaches with excellent snorkeling, La Parguera with its bioluminescent bay, towering limestone cliffs, idyllic nature reserves, creative restaurants, and so much more! It will also give us a sense of really town living, Puertan Style. the town square is just around the corner.
2nd Stop: Isabella After a month, we will travel to Isabela, on the northeast coast. We will stay in a resort condo community right on the ocean, with a cycling trail nearby, and access to a number of surfing and snorkeling beaches.
3rd Stop: San Juan We are just not done with San Juan. We barely scraped the surface of our to-do list of activities and places to visit in Puerto Rico’s capital city, with its diverse combination of awesome beaches, historic sites, and urban culture. So we will be back in Punta Las Marias in mid-March for another month of city and urban beach exploration.
