2020-06-01_Travel+Leisure

86 TRAVEL+LEISURE | JUNE 2020

During Maria, those waves had reached the hotel, drowning its

landscaping in salt water, pulling beach chairs out to sea, and

filling the pools with fish, crabs, and sand. But as I wandered

the grounds, it was as if the hurricane had never happened.

Guests lounged about—in the windswept beachfront cabanas,

in netted hammocks slung between palms, in the half-in, half-

out lounge seats around the pools—while koi and swans swam

laps in the shimmering pond and a peacock made its rounds.

PUERTO RICO IS a joyful place: a quality hard-won through the

resistance of its people. In the streets of Old San Juan—where,

just a month before my visit late last summer, hundreds of

thousands of protesters had gathered to demand Governor

Ricardo Rosselló’s resignation—flowers and bright vines hung

from balconies. The breeze was warm and ocean-licked, and

colonial architecture struck my eye in bright

pastels. Patches of city walls shone with the

gloss of touch-up paint, half-covering graffiti

reading “4,645”—a number that has become a

sort of political rallying cry. The official death

toll after Hurricane Maria was declared,

implausibly, to be just 64. A Harvard study put

the number closer to 4,645. Since then,

additional studies have placed the count around

3,000, but 4,645 has lodged itself in the public

imagination as a symbol of the ills the island has

long suffered at the hands of colonialism,

corruption, and mismanagement.

I met Leslie Padró at Café Cuatro Sombras, a

high-ceilinged place with an ivy-covered indoor

Heirloom-tomato

salad with mango,

shishitos, and

tomato sorbet at

1919 Restaurant.

Spanish-colonial

buildings line

the streets of

Old San Juan.

TAL0620_F_PuertoRico.indd 86 FINAL 4/21/20 8:27 PM