Cathedral of San Juan Bautista - Puerto Rico

The Cathedral of San Juan Bautista, or St. John the Baptist, is located in Old Town, San Juan, Puerto Rico and is the second oldest cathedral in the Americas and the seat of the Archdiocese of Puerto Rico. The first cathedral was Santa Maria la Menor in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. 

This area of Old San Juan is full of beautifully colored houses.

The cathedral is the white building to the right. 

San Juan Bautista was built in 1521 of wood, then destroyed by a hurricane. The current structure was built in 1540, although it has been remodeled and reshaped many times over the course of the last four and three-quarters centuries. It fronts the the very narrow Calle del Cristo. It was named a basilica in 1978. 

This narrow street fronts the cathedral (the top of the facade is visible to the upper right). 

The front facade.

Looking at the back of the front facade.

The main altar.

Inside the dome.

The dome and a side altar.

The tomb of Juan Ponce de Leon is within. He lived from 1474 to 1521, the year the cathedral was originally built.  Ponce de Leon was a member of Christopher Columbus's second expedition to the New World in 1493. When they landed on the island of Puerto Rico it was called San Juan Bautista and the main settlement was known as Puerto Rico. In 1508 Ponce de Leon was given permission to explore San Juan Bautista and the next year he was named governor of the island. In 1513 he led an expedition north to discover new islands and was the first European to discover Florida, which he named. He may have landed in St. Augustine, although that conclusion is contested. He returned to Florida in 1521 in an attempt to established a Spanish colony and was wounded in a skirmish there. The colonization attempt was aborted and the wounded Ponce de Leon died in Cuba. That year the name of the island and main settlement were switched and the island became known as Puerto Rico and the main settlement as San Juan Bautista. Ponce de Leon's remains were held in San Jose Church from 1559 to 1836, then his body was exhumed and transferred to the Church of San Juan Bautista. 

Tomb of Ponce de Leon

Although the search for the fountain of youth is believed to be a myth, the tomb seems to perpetuate that myth with a woman sipping from a large goblet.

Stained glass near Ponce de Leon's tomb.

There are other important elements of the church, but none that grabbed my attention like Ponce de Leon. 

The remains of St. Pius are held in a ceramic form in the cathedral, a gift from Pope Pius VII. In 1848 Bishop Mariano Rodriguez-Olmedo of Puerto Rico visited Rome and asked the pope for a relic that could be taken to Puerto Rico. Pope Pius gave him his choice of relics. It appears that St. Pius may be more legendary than real, but he is said to have been the Bishop of Rome from 140 to 154 and the brother of Hermas, author of the apocryphal Shepherd of Hermas. The remains are held under a beautiful stained glass window of the Last Judgment. 

I really like the art used in the Stations of the Cross. It appears to include three dimensional figures on painted backgrounds, full of bold colors. 

Station 1 - Christ before Pilate.

Station 8 - Christ sees his mother.

Station 10 - Christ's robe is removed.

Station 11 - Christ is nailed to the cross.

Station 13 - Christ is removed from the cross.

Station 14 - Christ is placed in the tomb. 

Other odd n' ends from the cathedral:

I love these gold/yellow stained glass windows. 

Church of Immaculate Conception - Basseterre, St. Kitts

The Jesuits built a church on St. Kitts in 1670 dedicated to Our Lady (Notre Dame) that was located where St. George's Anglican Church now stands. It was burned in 1706 during the Anglo/French War and rebuilt by 710 as an Anglican church and called St. George's. That church was damaged by an earthquake in 1842 and by a hurricane in 1843 and replaced by the structure that is there now.

Church of the Immaculate Conception as viewed from the tower of St. George's Anglican Church. 

The conquering English forbade Roman Catholics to worship in public beginning in 1713, but in 1829 that ban was reversed. In 1856 the Church of the Immaculate Conception was built on East Square Street (the street on the east side of Independence Square) in Basseterre. In 1927 that church was razed and rebuilt by the structure that is there now. 

Immaculate Conception is the Co-Cathedral of the Diocese of St. John's - Basseterre which is a Latin Rite diocese. The other cathedral is The Holy Family Cathedral in St. John's, Antigua. The diocese covers 13 parishes in St. Kitts & Nevis, Antigua & Barbuda, Montserrat, Anguilla and the British Virgin Islands. 

The main altar. 

View toward the entrance.

It has some intriguing Stations of the Cross made out of plaster that are chipped. Note the man to the left is missing his head. I love the bright colors and the compositions used in them. 

Basseterre seems quite poor and this church really seems to be a working church that is vital to the community with children coming and going. 

St. George's Anglican Church - Basseterre, St. Kitts

I fell in love with St. George's Anglican Church in Basseterre, St. Kitts, and I'm not sure exactly why. I think part of it was I envisioned my great great great grandfather visiting it when he visited St. Kitts in the 1790s (he was a sailor from the Isle of Man), but it turns out it wasn't built until 1858. Another part is its basalt construction - very rough and tough exterior. It looks like it is built to last. The grounds have fun grave stones and vaults. 

A view from near the street entrance. It was consecrated in 1858 by the Bishop of Antigua. It is on the site of an older church, built in 1672 by the Jesuits during the French occupation and taken over by the Anglicans when the British expelled the French in 1715. The old church was badly damaged in an earthquake in 1842. 

Another part is the climb to the top of the tower, up some very steep ladders. The view from the top is superb. 

The Isle of Nevis is in the background.

The high mountains of St. Kitts behind. 

The inside was relatively ordinary.

Christ hanging over the main altar.

A fun coat of arms.

St. George slaying the dragon. 

An example of the Stations of the Cross. 

St. Lucia Boa

While driving on the island of St. Lucia in the Caribbean we encountered a man holding a red-tailed boa off the side of the road. I had to stop and check it out. There are ten subspecies of red-tailed boas, also known as boa constrictors, and one of them is the St. Lucia boa, only found on the island of St. Lucia. It can get as long as 14 feet, and we actually saw one that was substantially longer and thicker than this one a short time later. 

They are lighter brown as juveniles and get darker brown as they grow older. The belly is yellow with black spots. 

They can be found in any habitat on the island, but are primarily found in the dryer areas on the central west and east coasts. 

Copper & Lumber and Dockyard Bakery - Antigua

The Copper & Lumber Historic Inn on Antigua is in a building built in about 1783. It was used to store copper and lumber used in ship building and maintenance and is in the heart of Nelson's Dockyard, which Admiral Horatio Nelson of the British Navy called home from 1784 to 1787. 

It is located just off English Harbour in southeastern Antigua and has been restored along with other period buildings and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site known as Nelson's Dockyard. Copper & Lumber is now an inn with 14 rooms, each named after one of Admiral Nelson's ships. We ate in the restaurant on our visit, situated on the back patio facing the harbor. 

We were eating under the canopy on the right side.

It was a relaxed, beautiful setting, outside under a canopy, looking out over the harbor. Judy got a tuna and pineapple sashimi salad with raw tuna, topped with sesame seeds, diced pineapple, pickled ginger, soy sauce, garlic, olive oil, a hard boiled egg and tomato on a bed of lettuce.

I got a lobster salad with Antigua spiny lobster with mayonnaise, onion, lime juice, olive, coleslaw, potato, three bean salad, pasta salad, egg and tomato. 

The salads were expensive, but pretty good, and it was a nice way to spend some relaxing time. Right next door is the Dockyard Museum, and behind it is the Dockyard Bakery. 

Dave is walking into the bakery/.

We stopped in right after lunch and I got a veggie pastie and an apple turnover. Both were in heavy pastry which kind of overwhelmed the fillings and were in keeping with the saying  that in heaven the French are the cooks and in hell, the English are the cooks. 

Inside the veggie pastie.

Inside the apple turnover.