Hacienda Buena Vista, also known as Hacienda Vives, was a coffee plantation located in Barrio Magueyes, Ponce, Puerto Rico. The original plantation dates from the 19th century. The plantation was started by Don Salvador de Vives in 1833.
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On PR 123 (a VERY narrow and winding mountain road with many potholes and single lane spots) you catch off of PR 10. Interesting historical site from the days of coffee plantations in Puerto Rico. Nicely restored hocienda, processing buildings and slave worker quarters. There is a fee for a tour - make tour reservations on-line prior to arrival. You can also walk around the site (for free?). We missed the tour but made a donation exceeding the price of a tour and the very nice employee in the shop ran through some of the details of the site and took us up into the hocienda (normally only visited on an organized tour). Cool to see historic water wheel/turbine and how the Canas River was diverted and used to power the equipment. Nursery area displayed coffee plants being raised before planting in forest. Don't expect to be walking around in rows of coffee plants as they are planted higher up in the mountains. Also, don't expect to see them harvesting/processing/roasting any actual coffee beans while you are there. They don't serve coffee here, but you can buy some bags of Puerto Rican coffee. Good parking (off the road) and restrooms. Small gift shop. Most displays were in Spanish. Not particularly handicap accessible. Note: If heading south to Ponce from here, continue south on 123 - do not backtrack north. The road is in better shape and much less winding...
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My dad and I bought tickets to an English language tour ahead of time.
When we got to the parking lot, we were greeted by an aggressive man who yelled at us until we backed in the car extremely close to another car. There wasn't really a need for him to act so aggressively towards us.
Later, we checked in at the visitor center with Raul who told us to go wait outside immediately with the other people. We had 15 minutes until the tour started and I wanted to look around the gift shop but Raul had other plans and he pressured us until we left. He also was really militant about getting us to sign a liability waiver. I was ready to sign it but no one ever gave us one.
We were waiting around for a long time and the tour started 30 minutes late. Our tour guide was Ana, who was in over her head. The tour turned out to be bilingual and it started with an unwieldy 26 people. More people showed up and it ballooned to 29 people.
The content of the tour was woke and boring. Too much content about slaves and not enough about history, economics, or architecture. We couldn't finish the tour because it was so boring and it was the first time we walked out on a tour.
We had to move fast when we left because we did not want Raul to come out from the gift shop to...
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Amazing history this place has. Staff was very accommodating as I had an extra person with me. Tour guide was friendly. It is a lot of walking so wear good shoes, bring water and a hat. Beautiful and well kept after all these year and hurrican Maria. Small shop woth all natural items including their coffee. Road is very curvy going and leaving ao be careful if your not use to. We did a spanish tour but there is English. Parking is limited. Advice is to arrive very close to your scheduled time as the other Tour need to leave in order to fine parking. I arrived half hour early but was lucky and there is an area ok wait. important! The online consent forms must be emailed prior to arriving. There is no service when...
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