Getting there was easy; the airport is in fine working order. My boneheaded assumption that lodging would be ample, though, couldn’t have been more off base. When I tried to book a few days before my trip, every hotel room in the “up-and-running zone” of Old San Juan and the nearby beach area of Condado was already sold out — a combination of, I’d later be told by locals, many hotels operating at a fraction of their capacity (either because of damage or the limits of their generators), and being filled with relief workers.

I don’t know how it happened, but the Airbnb apartment I did find, for under $80 a night, was in an ideal location: in Old San Juan, right across the street from La Factoría, the bar and nightclub made famous when Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee filmed their video for “Despacito” there — the most-watched YouTube video of all time with almost 5 billion views. The outside is a nondescript brown wall without any signage. Inside, the place just keeps going and going, with a large bar leading to a tiny cocktail lounge, which leads to a salsa room, which leads to a nightclub filled with colored lights and couples dancing as closely as couples can dance.

The kitchen was closed, so I sidled up to the bar in the 10-seat cocktail lounge for an expertly made margarita from a bartender, Christian Ortega, who still stands out to me as the sexiest man I’ve met this trip. A smattering of tourists was there, but most customers seemed to be Puerto Ricans from the sin luz zones looking to blow off steam. My conversation companion for much of the night was a young waiter and aspiring comedian, Victor Emmanuelli, whose opening salvo was about his bar stool: “It’s wobbly, like life.” He had no end of devastating stories to tell, in between recreating his favorite stand-up routines from Dave Chappelle.

“I lost my house, I lost everything,” he said. “I didn’t know where my family was, my grandma, my aunt, my cousins, nobody. You want to cry because you didn’t know where your family was and there was not a signal to call them and there was no gas. You had to walk to where you think your family is. I didn’t find them till three months later.”

He also had choice words for President Trump, who he felt ought to stop scolding the territory for being over budget and do something about it. He lived 20 minutes from Old San Juan, and had only intermittent running water. “Sometimes,” he said, “I take a shower in the river.” (He recently told me his light and water have returned.)

Every morning, I woke up in Old San Juan to cobblestone streets dappled with sunlight, and Spanish colonial buildings painted in every color: pink next to yellow next to green next to orange. It was every bit as charming and beautiful as a city established in 1521 should be. I had electricity and running water that I drank from the tap (likely unwise; most of the island is under a boil water advisory and the Puerto Ricans I met only drank bottled water). My street was not one for quiet contemplation — music from bars and restaurants started blasting at noon and didn’t stop till 4 a.m. — but I found the liveliness comforting.

I also loved how during the day I could walk for blocks and barely see another person. When I told Rebeca Rivera Vázquez, a 27 year-old high school science schoolteacher, and Ms. de Lataillade’s stepdaughter, she was horrified. Winter is supposed to be San Juan’s high tourist season, when its seasonal businesses make all their money. “That’s no good!” she said. “You shouldn’t be able to walk in the streets. Old San Juan should feel like the middle of Fifth Avenue right now.”