Let's Travel: Ruta Panoramica, Puerto Rico

Hi all;

This post is about a loooong long road trip we had. 

After enjoying the goodness of the Western part of the island (Aguada and Rincon), it was time to explore the South-Eastern end, the famous Luquillo-El Yunque area. Of course, we decided to use the scenic beauty - Ruta Panoramica to get there and stop by the most famous coffee house in all Puerto Rico, Hacienda San Pedro.

We woke up and had a nice breakfast before hitting the road. We had a long road trip ahead (you can see our route marked on the map below), but as the driver, I was energetic enough and hubby had all sorts of music arranged to entertain us. :)

First hour was great, sun was shining, birds were singing, road was somewhat wide and not so winding. We even had such entertaining moments as sharing the road with unusual vehicles - ahem - horses I mean :-P
Encountering horses is so usual for most parts of Puerto Rico we have seen, horses are not even afraid of cars. I wonder if PR has a set of traffic rules adapted to horses as vehicles and special toll rates for them. :)


Ruta Panoramica is magnificent with all its lush greens, fruit trees, bird sounds, and breathtaking views. You can see two pictures of it below.
By the way, the road you see is a two way road and there is no way you can see who is coming from the other side. If you plan to drive there make sure to go very slow (max 20 mph), turn on headlights at all times, and open the windows so that you can hear if another car is coming.

Going slow is necessary for another reason: Potholes! They are everywhere. Of course it is very difficult to maintain a good road shape in such areas, they are difficult to reach even for small cars, I cannot imagine how big paving trucks can get there.

Since we had to go very slow, the whole thing took a long time. We arrived Hacienda San Pedro around 4pm in the afternoon. It is a lovely coffee shop, and has even lovelier surroundings, the coffee plantations.

Above, you can see a picture of Hacienda San Pedro's entrance.   On the left, you see how the coffe shop looks like on the inside.       On the right side, there is a picture of their coffee plantations. They grow their coffee beans right next to the restaurant and your cup of espresso comes directly from plantation into your cup (after a short processing time). 

We first had delicious, freshly cropped, freshly brewed coffee inside the shop. I even spotted a Turkish made industrial coffee grinder/roaster in there (You can see its picture on the right, the brand is "Has Garanti"). 

It was such a pleasant surprise, I haven't seen those for so long. It instantly took me to my childhood... 

When I was growing up in Ankara (the capital city of Turkey), every nuts&seeds store ("kuruyemisci" in Turkish) had one of these outside the store, they were the source of an amazing roasted coffee bean (and sometimes roasted chickpea ("leblebi" in Turkish)) smell. 

Hope you enjoyed this post.

Next one will be on El Yunque National Forest.

Take care :)