Puerto Rico - the home of Bacardi.
We sailed overnight to San Juan, the capital of Puerto
Rico, an industrial port nestled under the tall hills of the island. You are not allowed to get off your boat
until customs have visited, so we called them up and an hour later a very tall
Customs officer arrived, Mr Santana, and he got very concerned about our 90 day
visas. Several phone calls later he
decided that we could stay, thank goodness, and we were cleared in. I had a flight booked on the 7th
for a visit home, so it was a relief to be safely anchored near the
airport. John went off on his bike to
discover that there used to be an airport bus but the taxi drivers kept
slashing its tyres, so it is no more. A
return taxi trip was not much more than car hire for the day, so a car was
arranged giving us the chance to try and get the West Marine order that never
made it to the Canaries.
8th May – 21st May Sara spent in
the UK, returning for Charlotte & Matt’s engagement party, very
exciting. I had a wonderful time
catching up with lots of family and friends, but not everyone as there was not
time, I am sorry. A race around the UK
via Kent, Wales, Scotland, Yorkshire & Lincolnshire plus a visit to the
hospital (‘all clear’ for me) and, of course, the party, made for an eventful
13 days and it was not long enough!
I flew back to be met by a happy pair –despite many days of torrential rain they had sailed
round the coast to Salinas in the south. The highlight of their 2 weeks was
seeing manatees in the National Marine Park and they even had a mother and calf
surface beside the boat.
A snorkel off ‘monkey island’ (Cayo Santiago) sounded fun. In 1939 a collection of rhesus monkeys were brought here from India to create a controlled colony for scientific experiments. They immediately got TB and then nearly starved during WW2 when there was no funding. Now there are about 700 of them on the island and they are looked after by the university and a group of scientists who are observing them in their natural habitat – not using them for experiments. No-one is allowed to land but the monkeys come down to the beach when you are snorkelling so they can watch and shout! No photos of manatees or monkeys as the total number of photos taken while I was away – zero.
A snorkel off ‘monkey island’ (Cayo Santiago) sounded fun. In 1939 a collection of rhesus monkeys were brought here from India to create a controlled colony for scientific experiments. They immediately got TB and then nearly starved during WW2 when there was no funding. Now there are about 700 of them on the island and they are looked after by the university and a group of scientists who are observing them in their natural habitat – not using them for experiments. No-one is allowed to land but the monkeys come down to the beach when you are snorkelling so they can watch and shout! No photos of manatees or monkeys as the total number of photos taken while I was away – zero.
The easterly wind gets up to 25 knots during the day and
dies down at night, so we have been sailing fast along the coast beside the
layers of hills rising up to over 1000 metres, looking like the foothills for a
vast invisible mountain range, and the coast lined with reefs interspersed with
long, low-lying mangrove islands. Ponce
is the second largest town and having collected half of our order from the West
Marine store in San Juan we arranged for the balance to be delivered to Ponce Marina
and Fishing club. A box arrived with
some, but not all of the order, so the gas fittings for the stove are here but
not the new hose, and half the bits to service the aft loo, etc.
Sport fishing boats are hugely popular - we are tucked in between them in Ponce marina.
Boqueron has miles of golden beaches, a safe anchorage and a busy holiday village.
The island is about 110 miles long and so far every place
we’ve been to has been beautiful, the people friendly and the seas full of
life. It is strange that after the
really crowded Virgin Islands, full of charter and visiting yachts, that there
are hardly any visiting boats here at all.
The locals love their fishing boats and a few have sailing boats but we
have seen a handful of American yachts and that is it. So if you want an interesting and peaceful
Caribbean charter consider Puerto Rico.
Exploring one of the 'mangrove' islands
Anchoring inside
reefs, between mangrove islands and in very shallow water means we have to keep
a sharp lookout for uncharted coral heads and rocks as very few are marked with
a buoy. To make it harder our depth
sounder has decided to pack up, so we are using the old method of a leadline to
get depths. Swinging the lead for 2 hours
is a bit tedious but beats being in a traffic jam on the M25. At the weekends the coastal seas are full of
people heading out in little boats, fishing boats and kayaks, to spend the day
on one of the many tiny islands in the reefs.
There are many pretty houses built on stilts over the water - these are in La Parguera
The colourful church in La Parguera
There are many pretty houses built on stilts over the water - these are in La Parguera
A few days ago we headed round to the west coast and the
town of Mayaguez, so we could clear out from Customs and officially leave. After an hour at sea John rushed down and
asked for help – we had a stowaway on deck.
It was a bright green lizard which we can only imagine fell out of a
tree in the mangroves and swam to us and climbed up the anchor chain. We caught it in a plastic tub, put it in the
shade and released it in a clump of trees when we went ashore. We anchored in the wide, shallow bay with
only one other boat, ‘Pierre-Helene’ from Canada, with a friendly couple on
board who are just heading back home.
Our stowaway posing for a photo before adjusting back to life ashore
Mayaguez is a lovely town with a good selection of shops
& restaurants, tree lined streets, fountains and an excellent network of
attractive, clean & air-conditioned trolley buses that are free. We used the trolleys to get to the zoo, which
was really clean, well run and full of iguanas in the undergrowth as well as in
many of the fields holding herbivores.
In the reptile house we found out that our lizard was a Puerto Rican
Great Anole,that is quite rare and lives in trees.
Puerto Rico Zoo - all photos by Harry
Billy, an 8 year old boy whose parents run the zoo café,
was very chatty and sat down with us when we stopped for a late lunch. Both he and his dad were fascinated by the
idea of living on a boat, and then Billy
senior offered us a lift back in his big pick-up truck. It had taken us over an hour on foot and by
trolley-bus to get to the zoo but was much faster going back, and Billy was
thrilled to see that we really do live on a boat!
A long visit to Customs (in US territory every person on board has to go along) means we are now cleared to leave and we have sailed down the coast to get water & fuel before heading to the Panamanian coast tomorrow. It is over 800 miles so should take about a week of sailing, and we plan to make landfall in the San Blas Islands.
We have loved visiting this island and wish we had discovered it years ago - I really wish I had seen a manatee.
