102 TRAVEL+LEISURE | JUNE 2020
(Puerto Rico, continued from page 89)themselves and their community.
After Maria, there was a San Juan
message thread on WhatsApp. “It
became a kind of bulletin board
where shopkeepers and residents
could talk about safety, water, power,
and flooding to each other and to the
authorities. The community was
trying to get through a hardship
together.” I asked what she has
learned since moving to Puerto Rico.
“You have to choose to be happy.”
Mofongo, I found, made me
happy. The dish, which has roots in
West Africa, features fried plantains,
garlic, oil, and pork rinds, all mashed
with a mortar and pestle and shaped
into a dome. I enjoyed hearty
mofongo at the artsy El Patio de Solé
restaurant, in Santurce, and room-
service mofongo stuffed with beef at
the Caribe Hilton. My favorite was at
the cozy Casita Miramar, where piles
of the stuff encircled a small cluster
of shrimp, and garlic oil soaked
through every bite.NO MATTER WHAT DAY of the week it
is, Puerto Ricans are out dancing.
When it opened in 2013, La Factoría
was credited with remaking San
Juan’s cocktail culture, and seven
years in it’s still packed most nights.
The space has bars nested within
bars. The first, with a checkerboard
floor and velvety chairs, feels hip and
upscale; down the hall, Latin trap
music plays overhead, and with the
peeling paint on the walls, the feel is
thrillingly grungy; another hall leads
to a salsa room; a little farther and
you’re in a full-fledged nightclub. Iwas there on a Monday night. No
matter—a 12-piece band was playing
Puerto Rican salsa, and the diverse
crowd of regulars and tourists gave it
their all on the dance floor.
I was sitting with Pablo Rodríguez,
one of the bar’s founders, drinking a
Lavender Mule—a concoction of
house-made ginger beer and lavender-
infused syrup. As with so many
conversations on the island, talk soon
turned to Maria. Rodríguez told me
that once people had gotten access to
clean water and food, he saw it as his
civic duty to reopen La Factoría, as a
step toward normalcy: “When people
experience music together, and you
share that over drinks, it’s medicinal.”
We went back to the live band to get
some medicine. In the dark, pierced
by colored lights, my arms went up,
my hips swayed, and I lost myself.I HAD PLANS TO VISIT El Yunque, the
28,000-acre national forest about
30 miles from San Juan, but then, as
can happen, our collective attention
shifted to the weather. Hurricane
Dorian was tearing an erratic path
toward the island. Every TV screen I
glanced at seemed to be flashing the
same graphic—a neon-green swirl,
red and yellow at its center, making
its way across the sea. Puerto Ricans
were advised not to panic, but
businesses were shuttered, and
everyone was out gathering supplies.
El Yunque, still on the mend after
Maria shredded its canopy and
damaged up to 60 percent of its tall
trees, was closed because of the
impending storm, so instead I
ventured to the jungle just outside the
park’s perimeter. There, the earth on
the path glittered—gold dust,
explained my guide, Guillermo
Rodriguez. He showed me the rocks
and clay the original people of Puerto
Rico, the Taíno, used to mark their
bodies; then we went to a waterfall
and jumped into aquamarine water.
The weather was sunny, the skies were
clear. A storm seemed unimaginable.
As we dried off after our swim, I
mentioned a story I’d heard a fewdays earlier outside the ruins of the
colonial fort. I had met a tall forest
guard named Norman Rutherford,
who told me about the Puerto Rican
parrot. There used to be around
200 cotorras—the only parrot species
native to the island—living in
El Yunque, he explained, but after
Maria, biologists could account for
only two. It had been Rutherford’s job
to escort scientists into the jungle to
search for surviving birds. He told me
how he’d watched biologists place
fake nests in the trees, trying to coax
the pair to mate. But cotorras mate
for life. If the two remaining parrots
had lost their mates, what were the
chances of rebuilding the population?
I asked Guillermo Rodriguez
whether he had seen any parrots. He
shook his head sadly. Perhaps they
had flown to nearby islands, he said.
As I stared into the sunlit foliage, he
described the birds: emerald green,
with a bright red forehead stripe,
their eyes ringed in white. I imagined
in that moment what it must have
been like: the two parrots, finding
perches in a ravaged forest, looking
down at an unrecognizable place.BACK IN SAN JUAN, the news of
Hurricane Dorian fluctuated—
ominous one moment, nothing
to fear the next. I went out to take
in some art in Santurce, a hip
neighborhood that was transforming
from an auto-shop center to a gallery
hub, but with the storm on the way,
this cultural center was eerily
deserted. I wandered along the quiet
alleys, looking at the murals and
street art that are hallmarks of that
part of town.
I spent what felt like hours
gawking up at a mural by Dominican
artist Evaristo Angurria—on a wall
painted black, two women, one blue-
skinned, the other purple-skinned,
embrace. It was beautiful—joyful.
High up on a lamppost, a can of spray
paint had been hung like a planter,
sprouting with ivy. I watched an old
man struggle with a 24-pack of
bottled water. As he got close, ITAL0620_F_PuertoRico.indd 102 FINAL 4/21/20 8:28 PM