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Casa Bacardi Visitor Center

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jonbarb709
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4 out of 5
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2
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Editor Pick

Yo Ho Ho! Tour the Rum Factory!

Yo Ho Ho! Tour the Rum Factory!

Bacardi has a huge rum distillery just outside of San Juan, billed as the world's largest. They offer a free tour of it, complete with two free rum drinks.

We were driving back towards San Juan from Arecibo and decided to stop off for the tour. Even though it is not very far off the freeway, it took us a long time to get there because we must have driven past the place 3 times before we finally figured out where to turn. (And this was before having any of the rum!) Plus we had to wait for some odd parade of every police vehicle belonging to the Catano locality (and they have dozens!).

Yes, we took our teenage daughters through a rum factory.

While waiting on our tour we enjoyed our free drinks (non-alcoholic for minors, of course) in their open air bar-pavilion which was really nice and relaxing. From there, you wait for your tour group to be called and then ride off on little trams like the ones at Disney parking lots.

The tour itself is a little disappointing because you don't actually get to see the insides of the factory, just exhibits in a visitors center. But as visitors centers go, this was a very nice big one, and was actually interesting and entertaining. They show you a nice film about the history and family of Bacardi. You get to walk around some old casks and try some little "what's behind this door" quizzes and smell the different varieties of rum. There might have been a little more, but it isn't anything terribly grand. Then its back on the tram to the bar/pavilion.

If you really need to spend $85 on a special bottle of rum not-available-anywhere-else, then you can also stop by their gift shop.

In summary, the tour isn't anything great, but we had fun and learned a little and it was on our way back to San Juan. The drinks were free! Don't feel bad if you come to Puerto Rico and miss this, though.

As an aside, during the film, they show a bunch of video commercials for Bacardi rum. It is sort of interesting how blatant the "drink rum, be one of the beautiful people" message is. It was a fine example to point out to our underage daughters to help them see through what advertisers want you to see.

From journal Sunny San Juan

Casa Bacardi Visitor Center

  • July 30, 2006
  • Rated 5 of 5 by jonbarb709 from The Villages, Florida
A beautiful park, a quick tour through the plant, some history, some explanations on how drinks were named, and, finally, two free drinks. They also have a gift shop. Worth a trip. We drove.

From journal Puerto Rico for the First Time

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