The trip to Casa Cubuy is mostly by expressway. The last 15 minutes is by a paved country road that goes from sea level to 1500 feet in a series of elongated curves. People live along most of the way until the last half mile or so when houses thin out and the forest leans over the road in uninterrupted stretches . Most of the houses are modest concrete structures. Some few are large, well maintained homes with sloping green lawns. Some few are humble but neat and some others are poor and abandoned looking. If one house is close to another it is proabably a member of the same family. Back in the 1940's Puerto Rico was lucky enough to have an enlightened governor who decreed that the people in the country who previously were landless were given title to the land that they had lived on and farmed. When that generation died out the younger one did not farm any more but they kept the land to live on. It usually passes to the next generation and very few for sale signs go up. It is often hard to sell a property when title is held by so many heirs.
The part of State Road 191 that I am talking about is a distance of 5 miles. At the very bottom an earthen dam is under construction. It is a project that has been under way for two years and has another four to go. Then up at the very top of this stretch of road the U.S. forestry Service has built a passive recreation area. About a mile before the top a safe drinking water project has been under way for almost two years. This entailed burying very large pipes throughout the length of the road as well as building the supporting structures. All of the heavy machinery and trucks that have constantly transversed this road have caused heavy duty wear and tear. The 23 inches of rainfall in a two day period in October brought landslides here and there. Hopefully, by March, according to some authorities, the road will be repaired.