Or...Cats and Castles
Or... Felines and Fortresses
Or... Lizards and Limestone
I could go on...
After our first day In Patillas, we decided a lazy, "feet-up day" beckoned more than a repeat of the town's limited offerings. Then it was time to pull up the anchor and head to Salinas.
Our sail was brisk, with a surprisingly big following sea. It was a relief to finally turn and enter the protection of a chain of mangrove islands just off the coast, leaving us with plenty of wind, but flat seas. There didn't seem to be any other boats along this whole section of coast.
We left Patillas with rain (and rainbows), and arrived at Salinas in typical Caribbean sunshine
Then we pulled into Salinas Bay, and it was like pulling into Newport or Annapolis. There were hundreds of boats on moorings and at anchor in the big bay. We threaded our way in and found a spot as close as we could to the dinghy dock at Salinas Bay Marina. After two tries, our anchor set well and we were sufficiently far from each nearby boat to be assured of not swinging into them in shifting winds. We rowed ashore and immediately learned that we were near the wrong dinghy dock. Ours was actually much further. Oh, well, the anchor's holding. We're not moving now.
The staff at Marina de Salinas were very helpful. We dropped off our laundry for them to do (what are we, Rockefellers?) and had two cold showers, which made us feel much refreshed. Maryanne then contacted a local guy, who agreed to rent us a car for the next three days. Here we go!
For Day One, what I really wanted to see what was once the world's biggest single-dish radio telescope at Arecibo. Unfortunately, that has been decommissioned and is being dismantled. It is no longer open to the public. I was a few years too late for that excitement. Okay, next on the list is El Yunque National Forest (Yunque is pronounced something like "Jun-kay"). The nation's only tropical rain forest and the site of some of the longest-running tropical biological studies on Earth.
To get there, we took a series of dodgy, rural roads to the main entrance (luckily, we got 'upgraded' to a high-clearance pickup). The forest was pretty, but surprisingly small. We managed to stop at the Visitor Center and all of the major attractions in just a few hours. We were done much earlier than we expected, and were able to head for accommodation that Maryanne had booked for us in Old San Juan ahead of schedule.
First we drove along road 186 through El Junque - the less touristy part. There are afew places where its possible to pull over and grab a view, but overall felt it was poorly marked and poorly maintained (even the park map was peculiar and confusing); we were underwhelmed
Then we entered El Junque park proper and spent more money and much longer than we expected at the visitor center when we managed to lock the keys in the car - Oops!
We hit the highlights along the single road in El Junque Park, but skipped the 9 hour walk option (would have been nice, but no way we could fit that in!)
I was a bit worried about Maryanne's lodging choices, because she tends to weigh economy over comfort, but she did well this time. The place she booked was small, but adequate, and just far enough off the main drag to be quiet when all of the discos two blocks away were thumping.
I didn't have much in the way of expectations for Old San Juan, but I really liked it. I would put it on par with Quebec City or Casco Viejo in Panama. It is very romantic, and despite my general grumpiness, I love romantic. If we could afford it, and my Spanish was better (Mas mejor?) I could happily spend the rest of my days becoming part of the neighborhood in such a place. No wonder it's pictured on the license plates by the text "Island of Enchantment".
Despite being dead-dog-tired, Maryanne and I could not resist staying up way past our normal bedtime. We did two laps of the Old City on foot before finally giving up and returning to our rented studio apartment for a night's sleep.
We arrived late in the afternoon but took a quick walk-about to get a feel for Old San Juan
We finally got a proper dose of Christmas Lights, a little late, but beautiful
And a stroll through night-time San Juan before sharing our funds between dinner and cocktails
We couldn't bring ourselves to leave the next morning, so we wandered around a bit too far and lingered a bit too long over lunch. When we finally agreed it was time to leave. It was time to start the 'jobs'.
A morning walk to soak it all in
Our visit to Castillo San Felipe del Morro was unexpectedly free this day (in respect to President Carter)
And past the Santa MarÃa Magdalena de Pazzis Cemetery, and the open grounds once used for military drills and now famed for kite flying (not busy on this day)
And the Castillo San Cristóbal at the other end of old San Juan
There were SO MANY things we would have loved to explore in San Juan, but we'd spent our allocated time, so on to chores... First on our list was to refill our CO2 cylinder. After a LOT of research, Maryanne found a place. When we got there, things were not so straightforward. The place we wanted to use didn't handle our size tanks. After a couple more twenty-mile dead-ends, Maryanne eventually found a guy from a paintball shop who would fill our tank, but he wanted us to meet him an hour west of San Juan to do the fill. We were already half an hour south of San Juan and rush hour was about to start. We ended up meeting him almost at the northwest corner of the big island for a tank-to-tank fill. From there, he told us the fastest way back to Salinas (with the best roads) was to continue an the coast road toward Aguadilla, on the far northwestern corner of the island, then south to Mayaguez, then finally west towards Ponce.
At that point, the road was basically one long strip mall, but the hills in the distance were pretty. After about fifteen minutes, the strip mall stopped and the sun went down, leaving us as just another pickup truck following red taillights as they meander through a dark void.
We lost half the traffic in Aguadilla. By the time we had made it to Mayaguez, we were hungry, so we pulled into the world's most disappointing Pizza Hut (the only place we could find near the highway that was still open) for a dinner we both regretted immediately.
At Ponce, Puerto Rico's second largest city, we lost our last half dozen cars of traffic. Then it was just us for the last half hour back to Salinas. We managed to get the dinghy up in the davits and stowed by midnight, but just.
Afterwards, we would have both loved to sleep in, but we only had the pickup for one more day and so far, except for the CO2, we had done no actual provisioning.
Maryanne reasoned that Ponce, being more populated than Salinas, would likely have a better selection of stores to clean out. Since we were going anyway, we might as well stop and see a few tourist sites beforehand, so we should really try to get an early start.
Ponce is no San Juan, but it is a beautiful town, with a very nice central historic district. We decided to save that for lunch, after visiting Castillo Seralles and the adjacent Cruceta El Vigia and the Japanese gardens.
Castillo Serralles is not a castle, but instead a very nice villa built in the hills overlooking Ponce for Juan Eugenio Serralles, son of Juan Serralles. Juan senior was founder of Distilleria Serralles, maker of the 'Don Q' brand of rums.
Prior to our guided tour of the residential part of the house, which seems to occupy less than the space needed for all of those servants, our group was seated in a small theater and shown a short history. In a deep, sweet, dripping Spanish that evoked Ricardo Montalban, it was explained to us that Juan Serralles had, in the process of establishing his rum empire, basically invented culture, and also Western Civilization.
This was confusing for us, not just because it was in Spanish, but because we had previously been told, at the Bushmill's Whiskey Distillery in Northern Ireland, that John Bushmill had done the exact same thing when he established his distillery an ocean away.
Perhaps this was a case like Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, where each independently changed the world without any real knowledge of the parallel path of the other. Or, perhaps, maybe theses distillers are a little full of themselves. I mean, is it all that surprising that when being surrounded by a field of sugarcane or barley, respectively, that the second or third thought through someone's mind might be, "Hey, I wonder if we can make alcohol out of this and sell it to people? People like alcohol. Then we will be so rich that we can literally build houses up in the hills where we can look down on everyone."
Just sayin'
Castillo Serralles, built as one of the homes for the Don Q Rum Family, was worth a tour
And included access to the viewing tower within the Cross (Panorama 180), and a Japanese Garden
Anyway, the house is very beautiful, with lots of refreshing natural airflow. It wouldn't be a bad place to lounge on one of the many balconies with a good book, while servants bring an endless supply of mojitos or whatever.
From Juan's "Castle", we descended into the beautiful and brightly painted historic center for some more exploring. After being distracted by one cool thing after another, it wasn't until the sun was just above the horizon that we began our mission of visiting several stores and slowly filling the passenger space of our four seat pickup to the ceiling.
And a walkabout in Ponce Town itself - highlights were the distinctive red and black striped old firestation (now a museum):Parque De Bombas, and the lovely arcade of the Fox Hotel (with the flamingo ornaments). But even the bus station has beautiful grounds to lounge in while waiting on your bus. Here again there were options for additional museums but our time was limited so we mostly ambled.
We departed Ponce long before we'd have liked, and hit the stores to provision Begonia. After another solitary drive back to Salinas on the dark, empty highway, we were practically the only people around when we got back to the marina.
I say practically, because it was Friday, so at least the bar by the dinghy dock was still open. After unloading our haul and lining it up neatly on the path to the dock, it was clear there was no way we were going to make it to Begonia in one trip. Maryanne volunteered to stay behind and babysit the second load while I took the first to the boat. While she sorted which items would go on which trip, I bought her a Don Q and Coke to keep her company while she waited for my return. The poor thing does suffer...
We were back aboard and secure a couple hours before the previous night, but we were still pretty wiped out from it all. Neither of us could face the mountain of food that needed storing, so we just pushed it to one side, stepped over it, and went to bed, leaving the task to our future selves. They're always getting screwed.
We had to return the pickup in the morning, so there was no sleeping in then, either. Maryanne offered to take the keys back herself, but since we also needed several trips with the water jugs to fill our tanks, I decided to accompany her so we could get that process started.
What luck that was. As we were nearing the dock, I turned to avoid what looked like a shallow spot in the water, when it surfaced and took a big breath. Manatee! It wasn't quite close enough to pet, but if either of us had fallen in, it would have had to get out of our way. It seemed relatively unbothered by us and paralleled us for a while. Cool!
On our return, we spotted two more as they moseyed between the moored boats. It didn't happen to us, but we heard of a few boaters who, worried that they had dragged and run aground in the night, came on deck to find a manatee having a scratch on their hull.
We needed to make three more water runs. Maryanne let me get away with that job while she did her disappearing trick with the provisions. I also needed to go up the mast for a five-minute job that ended up taking an hour and a half. By the time I was finished and back on deck, Begonia's interior looked more or less normal again. She even did a little extra tidying, so it actually looked better than that. I gave her puppy dog eyes and she offered that our list for the rest of the day could be 'nothing' if I wanted. Great, but how do you cross off 'nothing'?
She even went further and said that, as long as we didn't encounter any itchy manatees, we could turn off our alarms and sleep until the first boat with a stereo goes by in the morning.
The remainder of our time in Salinas was pretty basic. We went for walks, had a couple of lunches out, did a last load of pre-passage laundry. On our second-to-last run, our Torqeedo battery promptly died, even though the readout had just said it was at 75%. Then I really wished we had re-anchored closer the first day. In the tropical heat, I had to ride the fine line between getting us back to the boat sometime today, please, and not ruining the shower that I had just taken. The only tasks we had had left after that were to put the dinghy in lifeboat mode and get a good night's sleep for tomorrow's passage.
Inbetween tours and chores, we were able to relax and see a bit of Salinas too. More so when our expected mail was delayed, and delayed some more, and we eventually abandoned and departed Puerto Rico without it. One of the local bars entertained us well with its dispenser of fish food which we could use to lure in the large tarpon fish
Anchorage location >> On google maps
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