DAY 68 Mar 21 - Ponce, Puerto Rico

Ponce is both a city and a municipality in southern part of Puerto Rico. The city is the seat of the municipal government. It has a population of about 200,000 inhabitants.

Puerto Rico officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (Spanish: "Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico" — literally Associated Free State of Puerto Rico), is a self-governing unincorporated territory of the United States.

The City of Ponce is the second largest city in Puerto Rico outside of the San Juan metropolitan area, and is named after Juan Ponce de León y Loayza, the great-grandson of Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León.

Ponce is often referred to as La Perla del Sur (The Pearl of the South), La Ciudad Señorial de Puerto Rico (The Noble City of Puerto Rico), and La Ciudad de las Quenepas (Genip City.

This City serves as the governmental seat of the autonomous municipality as well as the regional hub for various Government of Puerto Rico entities, such as the Judiciary of Puerto Rico. It is also the regional centre for various other Commonwealth and federal government agencies. The City is also the seat of a Catholic Dioceses.

The Municipality of Ponce, officially the Autonomous Municipality of Ponce, is located in the Southern Coastal Plain region of the island, south of Adjuntas, Utuado, and Jayuya; east of Peñuelas; west of Juana Díaz; and bordered on the south by the Caribbean Sea. Ponce is a principal city of both the Ponce Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Ponce-Yauco-Coamo Combined Statistical Area.

In 1883, Ponce was ravaged by an enormous fire. The fire threatened to destroy much of the south coast, but thanks to the firemen of Ponce (who operated from Ponce's Parque de Bombas fire station) Ponce and the south were saved. The Parque de Bombas fire station in the central plaza has since become a museum and tourist attraction. The station continued serving the Ponce community until 1990, when it was closed and the building's activities were entirely dedicated to a museum, which is still open to the general public.

Let me start by saying that I'm feeling a lot better this morning and thanks for the get well wishes. A good nights sleep seemed to have done the trick.

We picked up our pilot at about 6.30 shortly after the lights of Puerto Rico could clearly be seen in the distance.

It was still early but the temperature and humidity seemed much more acceptable here than in comparison with so many of our recent previous ports. It even felt relatively cool.

Our ship slowly came into what seemed quite a new industrial port that was relatively small in size.

After my own breakfast I disturbed Maria with her breakfast in bed, one of the last to be enjoyed by her for a while.

We were not in a hurry to go anywhere in particular this morning so Maria continued just sorting out bits and pieces and putting recently arrived laundry into cases.

One of our priorities in Ponce would be to find an ATM machine because our supply of US$ was at a perilous low level.

We wanted to dish out a few additional gratuities to those that had constantly served us well over the last 70 days. Indeed some of them have already received tokens of thanks as we have progressed round South America.

Gratuities for the crew are paid by all passengers on the ship on the basis of about $11 per person per day, so $22 per couple per day or a total sum of $1540 for the period of this long voyage.

Deductions are automatically made and charged to the passengers credit card although by booking early the company itself pays these gratuities on behalf of the guest.

The money is split between cabin stewards, dining room waiter, assistant waiters and the head waiter. It is an essential part of their remuneration package.

Beverage staff are rewarded in a different way as 15% is added to all beverage bills with that money being used to remunerate the beverage staff team.

Shortly after 10 we headed off the ship. It was much warmer than I expected and was probably in the high 70s and not as predicted 75 degrees.

The City of Ponce had laid on what seemed like a local school brass and drum band plus supporting majorettes to entertain us as we left the ship.

The band had three little boys playing drum and they were just so cute.

The whole troupe performed admirably and were a joy to watch and be entertained by. It was noticeable that the passengers were not just walking through as they usually do on these occasions but were all stopping to take in this music spectacular.

The majorettes ranged in age from very young, maybe 5 or 6 year old, up to girls aged between 16 and 17. They were very well rehearsed and extremely agile with their performance.

After progressing past these entertaining performers we came across two stands.

One offering free local rum drinks.

The staff claimed that Puerto Rican Rum was the best in the world and were out to prove it.

It was hard to get passed the stand without being 'forced' to have a slug even at this early hour of the day.

Shortly passed here was another stand offering free Pina Coladas.

Wow this could be an interesting last port of call.

A shuttle bus was then available to take us the short distance to the board walk where stalls selling a variety of nick knacks had been set up by local traders.

It was at this point where we noticed a group of easily identifiable girls and boys from the local University. They all displayed on their T-shirts visitponce.com

Their job was to ensure we had maps and information about their town and they would even arrange taxis to take us there should we so wish. The fare was $10 each way.

Of course the language of the island is Spanish and many of the inhabitants of Puerto Rico don't speak English.

These young people, in bright orange T-shirts, were available to assist us at strategic points all over town and especially in the town square area where the picture above was taken.

Once we were in the centre of this clean and smart Caribbean town we asked another group of smartly turned out boys and girls from visitponce.com (see photo above) where the nearest ATM was and we were soon relieving it of some much needed loot.

The town centre is well served with banks so getting money out is not a problem

The centre of town, Plaza las Delicias (Plaza of Delights), is very pleasant and dominated by the very beautiful twin towered cathedral.

It is a whitewashed building and just looked so pristine clean compared with the majority of the other cathedrals we have seen in the past few months.

Opposite the cathedral in the main town square is the local legislature building that has been completely renovated and was looking in excellent shape.

Parked along the street outside were a few horse and carriages available for hire although we did not venture on one.

Just off the square is the historic old Ponce Fire Station now turned into a lovely museum.

This was a major stopping point for most people off the ship including ourselves.

The City ran a trolley bus tour that we were pleased to sign up for at $2 each for a 45 minutes tour of the City.

The whole town can be proud of what it has to show off and how well it has been looked after.

I think we are one of the first cruise ships to visit this side of Puerto Rico and on this evidence Ponce will become a very popular stopping point for many ships in the future.

The old town is currently being renovated with grants from the local gover-nment.

The refurnished buildings look beautiful and when the project is complete this whole area will be an outstanding place to visit.

An interesting area of the town we rode past was where the local fire fighters have their homes.

These compact dwellings were all uniform not only in shape and size but also in colour, all of them painted a bright red. It was an amazing sight to see a whole street of red painted homes.

Once we had completed the tour we made another visit to the Cathedral where a high mass, being celebrated by the bishop, was in progress and a soloist soprano lady was singing.

In town we met Henk and Lucia who were on our tour trolley and also saw Gerry and Gary doing the sights and next cabin neighbours John and Barbara in the old fire station.

We headed back to the ship at about 12.30 and on the way stopped at the Pina Coladas free drinks stand and had a slug of the local rum followed by some Pino. Very nice too.

The free rum stand was also doing a roaring business in the supply of drinks with a selection of 10 different types of local rum available. A variety of mixes were on hand to enhance the taste of this rather pleasant rum.

The whole show had been put on and paid for by the city, hoping, no doubt, to convert a few of the passengers away from competing products.

There is no doubt that HAL has found a little gem with this port of call.

The Mayor was very much on hand at the port and although we didn't personally meet her we did catch her digitally on the camera.

Here she is on the left of the picture with some of her family and friends enjoying seeing the Prinsendam visit her municipality.

On returning to the ship we lunched in the Lido where we drank loads of cold drinks after our morning exertions.

Unlike many other cruise ships HAL offer a wide selection of fruit drinks from a help yourself dispenser. Flavours include orange, pineapple, grape, cranberry and apple to mention a few. This is in addition, of course, to iced water and iced tea.

Later it was on deck for the sail-away party which is always fun.

We were pleased to see that most of our friends were around and we all enjoyed a good exchange on the days exploits.

We were unanimous in our warm feelings towards the city of Ponce.

I wonder if the free drinks available all day at the port inhibited in any way the bar sales at the sail-away party?

I managed to take a lovely picture of Jennifer and her brother-in-law George taking in the whole ambiance of the sail-away.

It was a beautiful evening for a party on the aft deck of the Prinsen-dam, our very last sail-away party on this 70-day Grand Voyage of South America. We would remember the evening for being what it was.