I lived in Puerto Rico, at the Roosevelt Roads Naval Station, during my senior year's summer training program as a cadet at the United States Coast Guard Academy. I was stationed on the Vashon, a 110-foot Coast Guard cutter. Our mission was to do drug enforcement, immigration enforcement and search and rescue in the Caribbean. I also helped train coastguardsmen in Granada, Saint Lucia, and Saint Kitts and Nevis. It was as a U.S. Coast Guardsman that I first experienced the enchanting island paradise of Puerto Rico.
ABOUT PUERTO RICO
The appeal of Puerto Rico began long before its beaches, cuisine and culture became magnets for international tourists. Its initial appeal, like that of most of North America, was gold. On November 19, 1493, on his second voyage to the "New World," Christopher Columbus stumbled across the island. There, he found the island populated by as many as 50,000 Taíno or Arawak Indians. The cordial Taíno, however, made a mistake when it came to dealing with Europe
