Every now and then a vacation away from home, the weather, the kids, hobbies, and everyday things is needed. My wife and I just finished an 8 day eastern Caribbean cruise aboard Royal Caribbean’s Radiance of the Seas. Along the way we stopped at several popular eastern Caribbean ports including San Juan, Puerto Rico where I stumbled across a touch of railroad history. After Columbus discovered many of the islands of the Caribbean, the Spaniards, French, Dutch, and others established sugar cane plantations. What’s the best way to move the cane to port and factories? By rail of course!
Today though the transportation infrastructure (err, roads) on most islands is pretty good so the use of rail over such a short distance isn’t practical. The railroad on Puerto Rico ceased operation in 1957, but thanks to the fine people at Bacardi a small bit of it is preserved.
After shooting this photo of railroad remnants we were whisked away to have our two free rum drinks. Nothing like rum and trains! That was it for the railroad content on the cruise, in fact the rest of the trip looked quite similar to this photo from the beach at Phillipsburg, St. Maarten.
The 962′ long, 13 deck, 90,000 gross tons Radiance of the Seas is docked at one of the three cruise ship docks in old San Juan, Puerto Rico.
And now back to your Northwest winter already in progress….
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