Camuy
Camuy's Taíno-explored caves became Puerto Rico's third-largest underground river system—2026 tests whether repeated hurricane closures (Maria 2017, Fiona 2022, ongoing 2024) permanently break tourism's fragile economic model.
Camuy exists because the Río Camuy carved what neither humans nor hurricanes could destroy: the third-largest underground river system in the world. Over millions of years, water dissolved limestone into more than 10 miles of mapped caverns containing 220 caves and 17 entrances—and experts believe 800 more caves remain undiscovered. This geological inheritance made Camuy not just another coastal municipality but a portal to a subterranean world.
The Taíno people understood this first. Archaeological evidence shows indigenous inhabitants explored these caves centuries before Spanish colonization, leaving petroglyphs in Cathedral Cave that survive today. When the Spanish established settlements in the 16th century, they built their economy above ground—cattle ranching and sugar cultivation across the flat valley floor of the Quebradillas. The cave system remained largely unknown to outsiders until 1958, when formal exploration began mapping its scale.
The transformation came through tourism infrastructure. In 1986, Cueva Clara—a single chamber 700 feet long and 215 feet high—opened to the public as Parque Nacional de las Cavernas del Río Camuy. The Tres Pueblos Sinkhole, 650 feet in diameter and 400 feet deep, became an iconic image of Puerto Rico's natural heritage. At peak operation, the park drew 1,500 daily visitors at $18 per person.
Present-day Camuy demonstrates the fragility of tourism-dependent economies. Hurricane Maria devastated the park in 2017, requiring years of restoration before a March 2021 reopening. Hurricane Fiona closed it again from September 2022 to February 2023. As of December 2024, the park is closed once more—four months without tourists and counting. The underground river continues flowing, indifferent to the economy it was meant to support.
By 2026, Camuy faces a recurring question: can geological wonder support economic stability when climate disruption closes the caves repeatedly? The municipality's slow-paced rhythm and authentic Puerto Rican culture survive each closure, but the $18 entrance fees that funded infrastructure do not. The caves will outlast any hurricane, but the tourism economy built around them may not.