Shopping

Special purchases are cigars, coffee, hammocks, rum, straw weavings, sculpture, santos (carved religious figures), festival masks and stringed musical instruments.

Shopping hours: Mon-Wed and Sat 0900-1900, Thurs-Fri 0900-2100, Sun 1100-1700 (shopping malls). Some shops open on Sunday if cruise liners are in port.

Go museum-hopping in the capital San Juan: Casa de los Contrafuertes houses the African Heritage Museum; Casa del Callejón is a traditional Spanish-style home that holds the Museum of Colonial Architecture and the Museum of the Puerto Rican Family; the San Juan Museum of Art and History is in a 19th-century building, its patio often used for concerts.

• Explore picturesque Old San Juan. Plaza de San José is a pretty area of small museums and pleasant cafes. The wonderful colonial Spanish fortresses of El Morro and San Cristobal are both perched on clifftops, and the early 17th-century City Wall follows the peninsula contour, providing attractive views of Old San Juan and the sea.

• See the beautiful town of Ponce, on the southern side of the island and connected to the capital by a toll road; it is also situated near many good beaches.

• Visit the excellent Museum of Art in Ponce, which contains more than 1,000 paintings and 400 sculptures, ranging from ancient classical to contemporary art. Its collection of 19th-century Pre-Raphaelite paintings is considered among the best in the Americas.

• Explore the Tibes Indian Ceremonial Centre, an ancient Indian burial ground near Ponce. A replica of a Taino Indian village has been built here. The Caguana Indian Ceremonial Park, south of the Arecibo Observatory, is also worth seeing; it was built by Taino Indians 800 years ago.

• Visit La Fortaleza in San Juan, completed in 1540, and now the governor's residence - the oldest of its kind in the Western hemisphere.

• See the second-oldest church in the Western hemisphere - San José Church (in San Juan) is where Ponce de León's body was interred until the early 20th century.

• Get starry eyed at Arecibo Observatory, site of one of the largest radar/radio telescopes in the world. Located in the unusual karst country of Puerto Rico, the 8-hectare (20-acre) dish is best seen from a small aeroplane flight between San Juan and Mayagüez.