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Arecibo is a municipality in Puerto Rico named after the Taino Cacique Arasibo. Arecibo is also known as the Villa del Capitan Correa after the Puerto Rican hero Captain Antonio de los Reyes Correa, who as a member of the Spanish Army defended Arecibo from a British invasion.
It is known for its world-famous facility, the Arecibo radio telescope, where scientific studies have been carried out and Hollywood movies filmed (most recently GoldenEye and Contact).
Less popular is that there is at 18°29' N and 66°26' W since 1966 a facility for launching sounding rockets. Since 1966 several rockets of the types Nike Apache, Nike Javelin, Nike Iroquois, Nike Tomahawk, Black Brant, Taurus Orion and Terrier Orion were launched from there.
Arecibo is located on the north coast of the island, about 50 miles west of San Juan and the metropolitan area, or approximately a 1-hour trip by car. It has a small noncommercial airport, which has not had airline flights in about two decades. Arecibo's main shopping malls are Plaza del Atlántico and Plaza del Norte.
In sports, Arecibo used to have two professional franchises, the Lobos de Arecibo in baseball and the Capitanes de Arecibo in BSN basketball. The Lobos have had slightly better luck than the Capitanes, winning the 1983 national baseball championship and the 1983 Caribbean World Series, the only time the franchise won both titles. At that time, they had MLB prospect Dickie Thon, then also of the Houston Astros, on their roster. Thon then suffered a life-threatening and career-affecting eye injury during an Astros game in 1984. The Lobos ceased operation a decade later.
The Capitanes have not had much luck in their basketball tournaments, but in 2002, they started to turn things around, losing in 7 games in semifinals to the Vaqueros, after having a 3-0 game lead in the series.
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