We woke up to rain and when we looked out at the golf course behind the condo and discovered that it had become a pond! Yikes. No iguanas out there today, though I've heard that they do swim.
John had the morning off today, so we went back to Old San Juan to visit Castillo San Cristóbal, the other castle in Old San Juan. It’s just down the street from El Morro, and the two castles worked together to defend San Juan.
We parked at our favorite parking garage (favorite for being closer to the edge of the old town and right next to a trolley stop) donned our rain gear, since it was raining, and managed to just catch the trolley. We got on the old trolley that has the wooden seats inside, like park benches. It’s really cute.
Here it is after it dropped us off. It took a minute to get the camera out and get the umbrella up. It reminded me of the old F-trains in San Francisco.
We went in the main entrance, which is located in a bunker built onto the fort in WWII. They had some displays in what were called the “gas chambers”, which were used for decontaminating soldiers who had been gassed, and they pointed out, should not be confused with extermination gas chambers. After going past the front desk, you could go up to the main battery deck, or down through the tunnels. Since the tunnels are one of the things I was most looking forward to in San Cristóbal, we went through the tunnels. And they did not disappoint!
This is one of the three tunnel entrances into the Plaza de Armas (the main plaza in the fort).
They were old and creepy, and off the middle of one of them was the dungeon! Even though the dungeon was in a tunnel with other rooms off of it, it was creepier, darker, and smelled worse than the other rooms. I tried locking them in and running off, but I felt bad and let them out.
There were some drawings on the walls that were covered with glass and they had this sign next to them:
(If you can't read it, it says: GALLEONS: The ships drawn on the wall may be the work of a Spanish captain held here to await execution for mutiny)
We wandered around looking at this and that, and stumbled across this iguana just sitting on top of one of the walls on the top of one of the buildings. It was a long way down the other side. Can iguanas climb walls?
This is one of the wells. They had enormous cisterns in the bottom of the castles which collected rainwater. The entire castle was designed to direct rainwater down to the cisterns. Each one of them holds 145,000 gallons of water, and when they were all full, they could sustain the fort for months. The Spaniards were very concerned with keeping their water supply clean, and animals were not allowed in the forts to help keep the water clean. Even today, the park service uses one of the cisterns for non-drinking purposes, like keeping the toilets working when the water supply from San Juan is cut off. They have occasional tours of the cisterns, but they weren’t going on today and I think you have to make arrangements in advance.
These are the three banners that fly over the forts. The Spanish military flag, the Puerto Rican flag, and the U.S. flag represent the three nations who have ruled over the fort: Spain, Puerto Rico and the U.S.
This is the opening to a spiral staircase that goes from the barracks up to the battle stations on the roof.
Here we have the view from the WWII observation station. From here you can see all the way to El Morro. You can see the lighthouse and can see the wall meandering from San Cristóbal over to El Morro.
There were more garditas (I can’t remember if I mentioned that they’re really called garitas, and gardita is slang), so we had to take more pictures. This is one of the few remaining garitas which have not been restored. Most of them have been restored to some degree, but this one is all original. I think they said there are three that haven't had any work done on them.
We left out of the historical entrance.
It has a long ramp leading up to it. That's it zig-zagging from the left right in front of the camera, then going straight up to the gate. Hard to launch a sneak attack up the ramp.
Squig doesn't let me take many pictures of her, so when I get a chance, I take it. The elastics on her braces are Caribbean blue in honor of our trip.
On the way back to the parking garage, I took a picture of one of the streets using the vibrant color setting on my camera. It kind of makes up for the lack of sunshine.
If this rain doesn't let up, it's going to be a very long two weeks. I'll probably be getting the Wii out tomorrow. Anyone up for some Mario Kart?
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