Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico’s one of the action centers of the Caribbean, no doubt about it. Its cultural pedigree is as rich as can be: Here, African, Amerindian, and Spanish traditions interweave with some bold American accents. And you’ve got a dynamic spread of experiences and settings to explore: postcard beaches, old colonial architecture, urban nightlife, and raw West Indian rainforest. There’s no quick and easy summing-up of Puerto Rico: This Greater Antillean island’s too multihued and energetic for that.

The eastern frontier of the Greater Antilles, just a stone’s throw from the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico was “discovered” by Christopher Columbus in 1493, though the island already had Taino inhabitants. That Amerindian population took a devastating hit from European diseases, weapons, and forced labor, but indigenous blood remains part of the island’s ethnic palette. Commencing with a settlement founded by Juan Ponce de Leon, the Spanish era—which, as elsewhere in the colonial Caribbean, brought African slaves to the island—lasted until the close of the 19th century. As a result of the Spanish-American War, Puerto Rico was transferred to American hands and has remained a U.S. territory since.

The Taino rock carvings of El Yunque National Forest, the San Juan National Historic Site, the colonial quarters of Ponce and San Germán: There are plenty of venerable monuments for communing with Puerto Rican history. The living culture, though, is the flashier showcase for the island’s multiethnic heritage—from salsa to baseball, from Taino cassava to African plantains.

From the bars and art galleries of San Juan to the beach resorts of Playa Flamenco, Puerto Rico cooks up plenty of the cultured, the cosmopolitan, and the sun-drunk. There’s a more primal side, though: bioluminescent bays, vast caves, and ridgeline cloud forest. The El Yunque National Forest invites the hiker into the rainy Luquillo Mountains, where rivers tumble over cataracts, Sierran palms soar skyward, and 3,000-foot peaks bathe in the trade-wind mists.

Puerto Rico's often called the “Isle of Enchantment,” a Disney-ish nickname that doesn't exactly capture the grittiness of San Juan, or the sobering legacy of indigenous persecution and the slave trade. Open yourself to the island's complex heritage and culture, though, and you'll find plenty of honest-to-goodness enchantments to fall under the spell of.