His family's home for more than 250 years, the elegant Casa Blanca, has been exquisitely restored (as has much of Old San Juan) as a museum depicting the life of a prosperous man in the 16th and 17th centuries. He was appointed by the Spanish king as the Caribbean island's first governor in 1508, soon after it was discovered by Christopher Columbus, and he is buried in the city. Juan Ponce de Leo'n, as I subsequently learned, is an honored founding father of Puerto Rico. But in Old San Juan, the historically intriguing capital of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean's busiest cruise port, he seemed a rather heroic presence, standing - as he has for a great many years - in the lovely Plaza de San Jose'. My childhood schoolbooks had pictured him, as I recall, as a luckless, somewhat comical 16th-century Spanish explorer who had ventured into the wilderness of Florida in a futile search of a "Fountain of Youth" - a sort of Don Quixote of the swamps, armor and all. No one could have been further from my mind, and I didn't immediately recognize him - dressed as he was in armored vest and plumed hat under a hot afternoon sun. I bumped into Ponce de Leo'n the other day, quite by surprise.
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