Sizzling San Juan's got it goin' on
SAN JUAN -- It would take a football team's offensive line to clear a path though the chandeliered lobby of the El San Juan Hotel & Casino on this summer Saturday at midnight.
Hip-swiveling dancers are undulating on almost every available patch of sienna-hued marble: sequined, skin-baring beauties in town for a salsa convention, mojito-swilling party people down from New York, booty-shaking Puerto Rican grandmas, even a man inexplicably attired in a feathered Indian headdress.
Taking a break at one of the lobby bars with her husband and sister, Xiomara Bowes explains the island mentality to a visitor.
"Puerto Ricans are raised with music all around them. I learned to dance in my mom's belly," says the vivacious 43-year-old with swinging gold earrings.
Islanders' passion for percussion-driven, trumpet-accented song infuses the new movie El Cantante ("The Singer"). The music is the real star of this biography of late Puerto Rican salsa hero Héctor Lavoe, played by Marc Anthony. In the film, Lavoe and wife Puchi (Jennifer Lopez) lead a dancefest in the cobbled streets of Old San Juan.
In real life, too, salsa, merengue, reggaetón and hip-hop spill out of San Juan clubs, hotel lobbies and bars seven nights a week. A trumpet player riffing on a street corner or a toddler boogeying on the beach aren't uncommon sights.
Known as one of the liveliest cities in the Caribbean, San Juan pulsates with non-stop nightlife. Slot machines ka-ching in the wee hours at casinos, the drinking age is 18, and partying is a local pastime.
Because the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory, no passport is needed to jet down on a whim for a weekend.
Miguelito Rodriguez — pharmacy owner in nearby Arecibo by day, salsa instructor by night — gets calls from hotel concierges and from tourists who have read about him in various publications.
"People come from everywhere to dance salsa," he says. "They want to know something they don't really have in their part of the world." Rodriguez, 50, offers private lessons for a reasonable $30 an hour for two. He also maintains a website dedicated to the island's salsa scene (noti-salsa.com) and makes the rounds of dance spots.
On a recent Friday night, dressed in jeans and a white polo shirt and sporting cropped gray hair, he takes a seat in the Picante lounge of the Courtyard by Marriott.
Salsa is a musical brew influenced by jazz, West African and Cuban rhythms that became widely popular in the '70s. It's Spanish for "sauce," Rodriguez says. "Like you take different sauces for eating, you have different rhythms in salsa." Sticklike instruments called claves that are struck together often set the beat.
On a stage under two green neon martini glasses, a five-man combo with a Cuban singer churns out an infectious tune punctuated with what Rodriguez calls the "kiki-po, kiki-po, kiki-po, ki-po" of a cowbell.
Rodriguez nods at Eunice Gil, 24, who has been eating a burger and rocking their 5-month-old son to the beat. Fingers snapping, the couple step onto the dance floor, moving forward and back in unison, then executing some deft and dazzling turns.
"Americans can't move their hips," Rodriguez says before heading home. "We have to teach them."
Not to worry if dancing isn't your forte. You can loll on beaches that border the city (not the best in the Caribbean, but there are long stretches of golden sand).
You can shop. Or gamble at casinos that, while not on the scale of those in Las Vegas or Atlantic City, are good-sized for the Caribbean.
And they're fun. On a Sunday at the El San Juan, a $10 blackjack table is populated with a mix of Mainlanders and Puerto Ricans who cheer one another on in English and Spanish.
"Suerte (luck)!" screams a frosted-blond Puerto Rican in a low-cut dress and model-perfect makeup. Sure enough, two at the table are dealt blackjacks and rake in chips.
You can eat at a smorgasbord of restaurants serving everything from $5 Cuban sandwiches to $7.95 Puerto Rican mofongo (mashed and fried plantain often mixed with pork or chicken) to $20 Peking duck nachos with wasabi sour cream.
If San Juan has a tourism downside, it's hotels. Choose carefully. While staffers are notably personable, lodgings can be more outdated than those on some other popular Caribbean islands. Luxury hotels in the Isla Verde section are so close to the airport that the sound of landings and takeoffs drowns out the soothing hum of native tree frogs.
Puerto Rico also doesn't have the cachet of islands such as St. Barths, Barbardos, Bermuda or Anguilla.
Maybe it's because tourist hub San Juan — a metro area of an estimated 2 million inhabitants that's a government, manufacturing and financial center — is not well-manicured. Buildings near hotels can be seedy-looking and unkempt.
Or maybe it's because of the outdated West Side Story stereotypes. (Sample lyrics about PR in the musical: "Always the population growing. And the babies crying. And the bullets flying.")
Meanwhile, change is in the breeze that wafts over the 16th-century fortress called El Morro that guards Old San Juan. Major hotel renovation and upgrading is underway.
More and more, lodgings, restaurants and clubs are aping their neighbors to the north in hip South Beach. White daybeds by pools. Euro lounge music piped everywhere. Minimalist décor, boutique hotels and martini lists designed to wow the now-influential twenty- and thirtysomething travel pack.
Caribbean Travel & Life publisher Sue Gilman is a fan of Puerto Rico, which she calls "a buzzing, humming island." San Juan "is not all about tourism," she says. "You are entering the Puerto Rican community, not just dropping in to go to the beach."
Jason Backman, 34, a bartender at the trendy Dragonfly restaurant in Old San Juan, moved here from Cambridge, Mass., a decade ago.
"I heard about some kind of test an English scientist did, and it found that Puerto Ricans are some of the happiest people in the world," he says.
Back at the El San Juan, Xiomara Bowes — "Call me Z," she invites — explains that though she grew up in New Jersey, her Puerto Rico-born parents instilled in her the island's culture. "Food and drink and parties, and then you serve soup at 5 a.m.," she says.
She now lives on Whidbey Island in Washington state, but she is back this weekend in Puerto Rico to visit family.
Bowes and her sister, who's sexy in a white spaghetti-strapped dress, volunteer to demonstrate how the salsa is done.
The key is to roll your hips to the beat, they say. "Listen to the conga (drum)," Bowes commands, tapping out the beat on a bar stool. "That's what you dance to."
By now it's 1:30 a.m., and the El San Juan lobby resembles New Year's Eve in Times Square, but with more exposed skin.
As weary tourists elbow their way to hotel elevators, Bowes and her party wave goodbye and carve out a space for a salsa nightcap.
E-mail: kyancey@usatoday.com