Puerto Rico Salsa Congress 2007

This was my first time to the world-renowned Puerto Rico Salsa Congress. The congress was held at El San Juan Hotel in Carolina in the Isla Verde area close to the San Juan Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport. Although the experience altogether has been very positive – listening to a number of great live bands and meeting a lot of local, excellent On2 dancers like Jhesus (fabulous dancer with only one arm), Edwin, Joey and Michael (DJ at after parties at Platos) – I must say that I was slightly disappointed in the congress. I’ve heard so much about it and everybody is raving about this world-famous congress so perhaps my expectations were set a little too high.

There were several famous live bands playing at the congress parties like Sonora Ponceña, El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico and Tito Rojas and this was of course a great experience. However, the floor was really bad (some kind of vinyl floor on top of a thick fitted carpet…), and has apparently been so for years which tarnished what could otherwise have been a fabulous congress. The floor was too ‘slow’, soft and sticky and annoying to most dancers who had a problem keeping their balance when doing fast turn patterns and spinning. I heard a lot of people complain about the floor and find it strange that such a well-known congress would not cater better to the dancers who come there. You really need a good hardwood floor when attracting some of the best dancers from around the world.

Sonora Ponceña

There were less international dancers there than expected, or perhaps I should say the regular European and US dancers that I usually meet at other congresses. Maybe they’ve already done the Puerto Rico congress for a number of years and now have decided to do something else.

Apart from Leon Rose and some other UK dancers, and an old friend from London named Edward whom I haven’t seen in a couple of years since he lives in Sydney, Australia these days, I met a different crowd at this congress. There was a mix of local dancers from Puerto Rico, people from different parts of the US – to name one of them Luis from New York who surprisingly enough has only danced for a little over a year but was already very good and I actually believed he had been dancing for ages – and from the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina and other countries in Latin America. There was also a big group from Spain supporting Adrian and Anita who competed in the World Salsa Open, a bunch of Italians (I danced quite a lot with a guy named Stefano), the Dutch dance team Los Intocables, and some French.

Edward & I

Edward, his friend Steve from Sydney, and I made a habit of eating breakfast at Edith Café close to El San Juan Hotel after the congress parties. In fact, Edith Café drew lots of salsa dancers both for breakfast and dinner and one night when I had dinner there with my Swedish friends from Stockholm, Laia and Alberto, we saw Eddie Torres (famous New York instructor and usually referred to as “the Mambo King”) and his wife there. They also performed at the congress the night after. Laia, Alberto and I were the only Swedes at the congress, as far as I know.

Alberto and I at Edith Café

The first few days they had an exhibition of paintings outside the congress hall at El San Juan Hotel to celebrate the famous Puerto Rican salsa singer Héctor Lavoe, who died in 1993. The collection was quite strong and impressive and the various artists had depicted some famous songs like El Cantante. See some samples below.

World Salsa Open 2007
Every year, there is a big salsa dancing competition in Puerto Rico. This year it was presented by Jayson Molina, a famous salsa dancer from Puerto Rico. They had a Junior competition for max 18 year-olds, two rounds of eliminations, semi-finals and finals for adult couples – all having been through elimination processes and won national competitions in their home countries – as well as a separate category for dance teams. They all performed on stage against the colorful backdrop facade resembling colonial street houses, characteristic for the Puerto Rico Salsa Congress and used since its start 11 years ago.

Alberto and Laia had won the Swedish competition held at the salsa club La Isla in Stockholm earlier this year, and were in Puerto Rico to compete in the World Salsa Open and represent Sweden. The competition was however fierce and they did not make it to the semi-finals.

Semi-finalists after 2nd Round Elimination

Dinner at Edith with Alberto and Laia after 2nd Round Elimination in World Salsa Open

Finalists

Three top couples – winners of World Salsa Open 2007 in the middle, Anita & Adrian from Spain

After parties
There were two different after parties being arranged between about 3 or 4am when the main congress party ended to 5 or 6 am or so during five of the nights in conjunction with the salsa congress. It was a little unfortunate that they hadn’t coordinated this and just had one official after party since this meant competition between the two venues and splitting up the dancers.

The best dance floor (flat, clean stone floor which was very easy to spin on), bar service and atmosphere were to be found at Platos, a local bar where the drinks were very cheap ($ 2.50 for a beer) and the local DJ Michael played some very good music. I had the pleasure of dancing cha cha cha with Stacey Lopez, another well-known and famous Puerto Rican dancer and instructor, there one night. The first after party night Laia and I were the only two female dancers there and naturally enjoyed the full attention of some 10-15 fabulous male dancers. :-)

The other after party venue was Brava, a nightclub at El San Juan Hotel. This club has a crap floor but played great music, the first night by local DJ Masoz (not sure about the spelling) and the second night by the famous DJ from New York, Henry Knowles, who came there over the last weekend.

After ten nights of dancing in a row, I finally had to leave the beautiful island of Puerto Rico and fly home. Unfortunately, my Puerto Rico vacation trip ended on an annoying note. Due to poor weather conditions, the landing in New York was delayed and I ended up missing my connecting flight from New York to Stockholm. After an hour’s wait at the Continental Airlines’ very slow customer services desk, I was rebooked on a flight to Stockholm 24 hours later! Since I was stuck in New York over Sunday night and they were going to put me up on a hotel, I was hoping I would be able to go dancing at Jimmy Anton’s social or at Wish on Manhattan that night. But after another five hours’ wait at the baggage retrieval conveyor belt (with no luck and the retrieval service finally closing for the day), I had to give up on the idea of going dancing and was put up on a hotel in New Jersey at 2am… The only sensible thing I could do at that point was to wash away the frustration by having a beer in the hotel sports bar with a British teacher, funny enough also named Marie-Louise…

If you ever plan on going to Puerto Rico, a good starting point might be http://www.gotopuertorico.com/ – the Puerto Rico Tourism Company sponsored the salsa congress and since the presenter of the semi-finals and finals of World Salsa Open was forced to repeat this web address over and over again, it was difficult to miss it…

Chillin’ in Puerto Rico

I came home from my vacation in Puerto Rico this past Tuesday. I had a great time – very relaxing, lazy and intense at the same time. I was staying at the Courtyard Marriott Isla Verde (see photo to the right) in Carolina. I had a fabulous view overlooking the beach below and the Atlantic Ocean from my hotel room and balcony.

Puerto Rico is located in the northeastern part of the Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic. Carolina is Puerto Rico’s fourth largest city, located close to the capital San Juan. Puerto Rico's most famous baseball player, Roberto Clemente, elected into the Hall of Fame in 1973, was from Carolina.

View from my hotel room / balcony

The hotel had a casino, the Banana icecream and pizza/snacks bar, the Picante cocktail bar, the Salsa restaurant which served breakfast, lunch and dinner buffets, and the outdoor ocean-view Sirena restaurant, which is where I took my breakfast to enjoy the very soothing morning view of the beach and ocean with the occasional jogger in the waterline before heading to the rainforest (see separate blog post). The hotel also had a very nice pool area, a fitness center with treadmills, a stair-master and weightlifting machines and handles – and believe it or not, I actually used the fitness center once during my vacation and it felt good, although it rendered me a terrible muscle ache in my calves for days afterwards.

I was dancing ten nights in a row in Puerto Rico, of which eight of them were at the Puerto Rico Salsa Congress (see separate blog post).

There were salsa bands playing in the Picante bar area on the ground floor of the Courtyard Marriott Hotel every afternoon and evening. This was a very pleasant distraction. When you came in from the pool or the beach you could always sip on a glass of white wine or a rum drink and chill before going to the room to get ready for the congress parties. Puerto Ricans are very family oriented, it seems. In the pool area you always saw them in groups with several children and the adults were always very loving and playful with their kids, being very proud of them, judging by their faces. In the Picante bar there were always older couples drinking cocktails and enjoying the bands playing. As soon as the band started playing a slow bolero, all the older couples were up on the dance floor, closing their eyes and holding each other tightly, many of them having to lean forward due to their potbellies to be able to put their cheeks against each other, and seemingly really enjoying the dance. Very endearing.

Salsa band playing in the Picante Bar

The night after my arrival, I was dancing till 3 am in the Picante bar and made friends with Edgardo, a local engineer in his 50’s who has been to the congress for a number of years – I saw him every night there trying to work off his potbelly by dancing and sweating intensively for hours… ;-)

On the Friday before the congress, there was a salsa band playing in the lobby of El San Juan Hotel. I had e-mailed the organizer and president of the Puerto Rico Salsa Congress, Elí Irizarry (his regular job is tour manager for El Gran Combo!), and learned that there would be a few dancers there. Elí was a very friendly and nice person, buying me drinks at the bar and introducing me to some early arriving dancers, including Brian Libier & Mechteld Sterk running the Salsaddiction dance school in Holland and competing in the World Salsa Open a few days later (although they actually were disqualified since the rules stated a time limit of each performance of 2 min and their routine was 2 min 44s…such a shame they hadn’t checked the rules – the audience gave them standing ovations after their performance!), and Patrick, another Dutch dancer from the dance group Los Intocables (see a video on YouTube of all of them). Saturday was the congress welcome party and Patrick’s birthday so he was in a good mood and we ended up partying to mostly reggae ton music (yuck) in the Brava nightclub at the hotel.

Elí Irizarry

Apart from the nightly salsa dancing I was very lazy in Puerto Rico. I slept late (when dancing till 3, 4 or 6 am every night for ten days you get a little worn out…), went to the pool and beach, read a book in the hammock and watched the sunset over the beach. My salsa friends Alberto and Laia from Stockholm came and joined me at the Courtyard a few times, enjoying the pool, beach and restaurant with ocean-view (see photos below).

Laia and Alberto at the Sirena restaurant

Pool area at the Courtyard Marriott Isla Verde

Visit to Old San Juan
One of the afternoons, I went with Alberto, Laia and a young dancer from Brazil, Gustavo, to Old San Juan. After a visit to a reggae music and paraphernalia store where Laia and Gustavo to the owner’s amusement started dancing while listening through a bunch of CD’s, we went to see fort San Cristóbal.

This was quite an interesting visit. Christopher Columbus (‘Cristóbal Colón’ in Spanish) discovered the island of Puerto Rico in 1493, and in the 50 years following, Spain built a vast and lucrative New World empire that helped it become the leading European nation at the time. The conquests of Mexico and Peru provided the Spanish treasury with dependable sources of great wealth in precious gems, gold and silver. Spain sent two armed ship convoys to the New World every year to assure safe delivery of these riches, and the Caribbean Sea was a vital passage-way. It was however also a dangerous maze of islands with few harbors of refuge, and Spain’s authority and territorial rights to the Caribbean were constantly challenged by pirates and the traditional European enemies (England, France and Holland). San Juan was established in 1521 as “the key to the Indies” at the most strategic location on the island of Puerto Rico, and Spain built massive fortifications in the San Juan harbor and other key harbors in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico to safeguard New World possessions and maintain its trade monopoly.

There are two forts in Old San Juan, Castillo de San Felipe del Morro (“Castle of St. Philip of the Headland” – see video here>>) and Castillo de San Cristóbal (“Saint Christopher Castle”). Laia, Alberto, Gustavo and I entered the latter, built 1634-1678 and the largest fort built by the Spaniards on the island. These two massive stonework defenses are the oldest European-style fortifications within the territory of the United States. Unlike El Morro, whose main job was to prevent enemy ships from entering the harbor, San Cristóbal protected the land approaches to San Juan from the east. It’s an example of the “defense-in-depth” principle, meaning that each part of the fort is supported by one or more other parts. If a fort has a single barrier and the enemy breaks through it, its defense is broken. But if a fort has several barriers, each higher and stronger than the one in front of it, and the enemy breaks through one of them, the attacker can still be driven out by fire from the barriers behind it. Both of these bastions and batteries are impressive remnants of Spain’s historic power in the New World. Read more about the history of Puerto Rico here>>

You’ll find a selection of photos from Castillo de San Cristóbal below.

Alberto

From left to right: The Spanish colonial flag (the “Burgundy Cross”, 1516-1556), the Puerto Rican and US flags

Gustavo & Alberto

Me, Gustavo and Laia on the bastion wall

Gustavo, Alberto and Laia in dungeon and catacomb

Iguana lizard

The two forts San Cristóbal and El Morro lie within a mile of each other with a strong city wall in between. We took a walk along the wall and the scenery was beautiful with ocean waves hitting the cliffs below and some houses built on the outside of the city wall. San Juan’s soldiers and settlers once grew food on small plots inside the great walls. Plátanos (plantains), a banana from Africa, and West Indian crops such as sweet potatoes, pumpkin, yucca, malanga and yautia supplemented regular military rations. These fruits and root fruits are common still today in Puerto Rico and my personal favorite was mashed yucca filled with shrimps and a Puerto Rican red sauce with lots of garlic which I was served at Edith Café in Carolina.

Most of Spain’s New World colonies revolted and gained independence during the 19th century and by the 1890’s only Cuba and Puerto Rico remained part of the once so powerful Spanish empire in the Americas. Spain lost Puerto Rico to American troops in the Spanish-American war by the end of the 19th century, as already mentioned in my blog post from the trip to the rainforest.

Colorful colonial style buildings with overhanging balconies pave the cobblestone streets in Old San Juan. The town is very picturesque with inner patios, courtyards, and small town plazas. We hit a Puma store with discounted prices and I bought a cool new bag. The visit to Old San Juan was ended with a cold Medalla Light beer at an outdoor bar before we headed back to Isla Verde and El San Juan Hotel to watch salsa dance performances.

Streets of Old San Juan

Who wouldn’t want to play basketball in this kind of environment with the Atlantic Ocean and palm trees on one side and the medieval city walls of Old San Juan on the other?!

Plaza

El Yunque rainforest – Puerto Rico

I am now in Puerto Rico for the first time and will be spending in total 11 days here. I must say that I am already enjoying the Caribbean life immensely after only two days. I am staying at a hotel on the beach in the Isla Verde area in a town called Carolina, just outside the capital San Juan along the northeast coast, see map below (more about the hotel, beach and other casual activities some other day).



I took a guided tour with Rico Sun Tours to El Yunque rainforest today. Our tour guide and bus driver for the day was an energetic and friendly fellow named Josué (not sure about the spelling but it wasn’t the regular José). That guy was a living encyclopedia! He was an excellent story-teller; knowledgeable about everything from history to social studies and culture to political science – all while being charming and entertaining. I learned a lot from him about Puerto Rico and am very pleased that I decided to take this tour. It makes a world of difference for the experiencing and appreciation of a new place and culture when you know a little of its past and present. If I could only remember one tenth of what he told us, it would make a very interesting summary of the island’s history, culture, population and sauna.

Anyhow, here’s what I remember:

There are three ethnic origins of the people of Puerto Rico: the native Taíno Indians, Spanish conquistadors and African slaves. Today there are 4 million people living in Puerto Rico and the first language is Spanish. The biggest populations of Puerto Ricans outside of Puerto Rico reside in New York, Chicago and San Francisco.

Puerto Rico has belonged to the US with ‘commonwealth status’ for over a hundred years, and has contributed to the US military armed forces, fighting to defend democracy together with US troops since the First World War. After the Spanish-American War in 1898 the island passed to the United States, and in 1903 the US officially proclaimed the Luquillo Forest Reserve which is where we were headed. Timber, bananas, subsistence crops and coffee were once harvested on the forest's lower parts. An 1899 hurricane prompted abandonment of some farms in this area. Subsequently, the Forest Service replanted trees and lands were allowed to return to rainforest. Today, there are only a few houses left in the National Forest and the people living in them have to abide by the Forest Reserve’s strict guidelines in order to preserve the rainforest and its wildlife.

Although Puerto Rico is governed by US federal laws and is an important port and point of trade with Latin America for the US, it is not an own state. Puerto Ricans are not allowed to vote in the Presidential elections. They have to move to any of the other 50 states first and register to vote in order to participate. In order to become the 51st state of the union, the majority of the Puerto Ricans would have to vote yes in a referendum, and the rest of the states in the union accept to let them in. Since Puerto Rico is mainly Democratic, the Republicans would not be too keen on letting in a new state where they’d basically always lose Presidential campaigns in that state. Puerto Rico is also the second most densely populated island in the world (only Singapore has more people per square mile) and if I understood what Josué said correctly, this would mean that they therefore would get more votes / influence over US politics and legislation than other (scarcely populated with lots of land) states that have been part of the union since its start, e.g. Wyoming, which would probably not be seen very favorably by those states.

On the other hand it’s unlikely that Puerto Rico would be ‘allowed’ to become an independent, sovereign state. USA would then risk losing its most important window to South America to Venezuela or Brazil. Puerto Rico has enjoyed a lot of positive trade effects and boosted economy by being part of the US commonwealth, so it’s perhaps not surprising that around 65% of the Puerto Ricans have claimed in recent surveys that they would vote for becoming a new state of the union. On the other hand, when push comes to shove, Puerto Ricans are very protective of their national heritage and one of their biggest national “sports”, cock fighting – which is apparently an 800 billion dollar per year industry(!) – recently became illegal in the last remaining state of the US, Louisiana, which is phasing this old tradition out by the end of this year. Therefore, Josué believed that the final say on the future state of Puerto Rico would not be determined any time soon.

The three main industries in Puerto Rico are pharmaceuticals, rum and tourism. In fact, Puerto Rico is famous for its premium rum (I can’t complain about the Mojitos I’ve had so far) and the quality is ensured by all rum being stored at least a year before it’s bottled and sold. There are 11 brands of rum; the Bacardi Rum is the no 1 brand in the world but not in Puerto Rico – here the Don Q (named after Don Quixote) is the no 1.

El Yunque rainforest was a fantastic experience. It was very humid and felt very hot and I would guess it was around 35° Celsius. After watching a 15 min film at the Visitor’s Center in the Luquillo Forest Reserve and checking out their exhibition to learn a little about different plants and animals in the rainforest, we stopped at the Yokahu Tower, an observation point some 480 m above the sea where you saw the whole east coast of Puerto Rico, including Luquillo Beach – see photos below, although they may not give justice to the colors in the rainforest. Unfortunately I was out of luck with my cameras today (or perhaps badly prepared is more correct) – first, I discovered that my analog system camera was out of battery before I had even taken one single photo (it’s been a while since I used it, since it’s so convenient to carry a small digital camera these days), then I ran out of batteries in my digital camera, so I was left with my Sony Ericsson K810 Cyber-shot phone for the entire rainforest excursion...(not too bad considering).


Yokahu Tower

We walked along paved trails in the rainforest and saw breadfruit, banana plants with beautiful flowers, thick vegetation of palm trees and bushes, some incredibly large trees, bamboo, tiny lizards (thankfully no snakes as far as I could see!), creeks and waterfalls. There were lots of sounds – birds and rustle in the underbrush – and I wished we could have seen some parrots but apparently the green Puerto Rican Amazon Parrot only lives on the higher altitudes and have long been an endangered species although it is now slowly picking up in numbers thanks to the relentless work of the Caribbean National Forest Reserve. There are however 105 species of Coqui (frogs famous for their ‘coqui, coqui’ sound at night, soothing to most Puerto Ricans but a nuisance to some other nationalities who are not used to them), of which 75 are represented in El Yunque rainforest.

Breadfruit

Banana plant with a flower at the end of the stalk

Condensed water in the moss on a tree

La Mina waterfall was a beautiful spot with a wooden bridge after about 20-30 min walk along a forest trail. Here people ‘cooled off’ in the warm water under the falls and played with their kids in the river.

La Mina falls

On our way back with the tour bus to Carolina we passed a couple of towns along the coast, the biggest one being Luiza with a typical town center with a Catholic church and directly in front of it a town square and next to it the City Hall. The coastal towns predominantly have black population with descendants from African slaves brought to Puerto Rico when the indigenous population of Taíno Indians had diminished and the Spanish colonizing the islands needed more labor. The biggest river in Puerto Rico is the Río Grande de Luiza, which we crossed and saw the river mouth in the Atlantic Ocean.

We also passed another little village just outside Carolina called Piñones with lots of little simple restaurants along the road and live music at night. I will perhaps go back there one evening, enjoy the local beer, Medalla Light, and see what the locals are up to. By the looks of it, they seem to enjoy horse race betting even if on a turn-wheel with miniature horses (I saw several of them within a mile of each other, with locals gathered around)…