The first thing to do, once we got our post-passage ten hours of sleep, was to officially check in. Since Puerto Rico is an "associated Commonwealth" of the United States of America, and since we're US citizens on a US documented boat, we could clear in with Customs by telephone. It only took ten minutes, which is five minutes less than it took us to figure out how to use the pay phone, figure out which of the several Customs numbers to call, oops, you mean this isn't a local call?, rummage around for our phone card information, and finally get all the digits punched in.
The only problem was that Customs asked us to next call Immigration. We knew from talking with other cruisers that Immigration requests that all crew members go to the immigration office in Mayaguez with their passports. (Boquerón isn't an official port of entry, and non-US vessels must call at Mayaguez or some other port of entry first.) Some cruisers we knew had hired a van for $12.50 each; others we talked with had braved the two rides each way needed on the public transportation system, about $6 each round-trip but a big hassle and with infrequent runs. In fact, before calling Customs we had waited fruitlessly at the público stop for nearly half an hour, figuring we might as well just go in to Mayaguez and deal with all the officials at once.
Some cruisers in Luperón had advised us to "just blow off Immigration," and when we talked with people from other boats who'd gone up to Mayaguez, they indicated that they hadn't gotten any passport stamps or other proof that they had cleared Immigration. (In contrast, we got a "report release number" from the Customs agent over the phone.) The final kicker was that it was Friday. So, I hope no officials are reading this, but we decided to accidentally forget to call Immigration until we hit Ponce, our next official port of entry.
Oh, and in addition to being officially in the US, we are also now officially in the Caribbean Sea. Up to now we've been in what the NOAA forecasts refer to as the "Southwest North Atlantic". It still looks just like water to me.
They speak Spanish here in Puerto Rico. They speak Spanish in the Dominican Republic. Other than that, these places are very different.
DR |
PR |
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Beat-up old cars held together with baling wire and twine |
Shiny new cars and pickup trucks which are hardly even dented |
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Noisy towns due to swarms of tiny but extremely loud motorbikes |
Noisy harbors (on weekends) due to swarms of PWCs and cigarette boats |
|
Cheap and plentiful public transportation |
Public transportation supposedly exists, but you couldn't prove it by us. |
|
Slender and attractive people |
Britt calls it "Porko Rico" and claims he hasn't seen one pretty girl yet |
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Bustling, busy towns, lots of people outside doing things |
I guess everyone stays inside because they have air conditioning here |
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Two lunches and two sodas for $5 |
One lunch for $5, soda costs extra |
This should not be construed to mean that we don't like Puerto Rico. On the contrary, we are pleased to be able to buy US brands such as Total cereal and Snickers bars, looking forward to getting our mail without having to pay international courier rates, and ecstatic to be in a place where we can actually get in the water and go fishing. But this is clearly a much wealthier country than the Dominican Republic, and with wealth come both negatives and positives. The US influence is obvious here, from the banners strung in front of bars advertising Budweiser and "Happy Hour de las ocho", to the music on the radio which could be American Top 40 if it were in English.
Boquerón is a big beach party town, and we'd arrived just in time for the weekend. This meant that it was LOUD. We quickly decided to put up with the long dinghy ride in to town rather than move closer, as music filtered in from the bars well past 2:00 a.m. It was fun to walk around during the day, though, because vendors' booths lined the streets, and the aroma of pinchos (shish-kebob thingies) competed with the scent of tropical flowers and greenery. All the yards were filled with very happy flowering bushes and vines; Boquerón is on the west edge of Puerto Rico, downwind from the mountains, and every afternoon the clouds which had been building all day broke loose a huge downpour. When we rounded the corner to the south side of the island, the hillsides were noticeably drier, evoking New Mexico (or our old back yard in Boulder), and although we could see the clouds gathering over Boquerón we rarely had rain on the south coast.
We did a huge amount of laundry in the first laundromat we'd seen since George Town, had a mahi-eating party with Natural Selection, Texas Reb and Starshine (who we collectively referred to as "Natural Texas Shine"), called our parents at cheapo American calling-card prices, and caught up on our loafing time for a few days. Then it was time to start heading east. We left Boquerón late on Monday afternoon, and although the harbor had been calm with only a slight breeze, we immediatly got into choppy seas. We'd hoped for a beam reach south to the little bay by Cabo Rojo lighthouse, but alas that was not to be, and we motored through the slop until we could pull closer to shore, where it was smooth again, and anchor. From our anchorage, we watched another thunderhead paste Boquerón and come our way, but it only drizzled a few drops on us before heading off again. We went to bed early for a dawn start the next day.
I guess this is going to be SOP for the south coast of Puerto Rico. Wake up oh-dark-thirty, pull on clothes, make a hot drink, and get moving. The wind picks up around 9 a.m. so the idea is to make some early miles and then be in a harbor and anchored by breakfast time. So far, though, it still seems awfully sloppy even in the early morning once we leave the protection of the harbors. Shortly after 8:00 we were following the buoys (real buoys! reds and greens! God Bless America!) down a twisty turny passage through reefs, shoals, and mangrove islands to the anchorage at La Parguera.
La Parguera used to be a fishing village and is now a low-key resort town (for locals, not for foreign tourists). Many cruisers skip this stop and make a longer leg east, anxious to get some miles under them. Others fall in love with the place. Of the three other boats anchored near us, one belonged to a local, one belonged to cruisers who had been here for five weeks, and the last, a trawler, had been here for three years.
Ken, who with his wife and dog live aboard the trawler, had cruised the Caribbean for several years before deciding to "settle down" in La Parguera. He has a little business selling flags and kites from a booth outside the grocery store, and he serves as sort of an unofficial harbormaster, greeting visiting cruisers and giving them information about the town. We would never have found the dinghy dock without his instructions -- it's a little access dock behind a boathouse, with "Muelle Privado" (Private Dock) signs all over it, which Ken told us were intended to keep the weekenders away, not the cruisers. Ken also maintains a book exchange (for English-language books) by his store, so we got some new reading material.
The harbor at La Parguera is surrounded by reefs, so we jumped into the water for the first time since the Bahamas. Visibility was terribly disappointing after those clear waters, only 20 feet or so, and there were few large fish. Lots of interesting coral and soft formations, though, and we swam around quite a bit looking at things and searching out spearworthy prey. I was stalking a bar jack, spear cocked, waiting for it to turn sideways and present more of a target, when a small Spanish mackerel swam right in front of me. It was a Zen shot, more my surprised reaction than a carefully aimed release, but it resulted in one hole-y mackerel and our first catch. Shortly afterward, Britt got a mystery fish which looked sort of like a mackerel. It was obviously a game fish of some sort so we added it to the bucket. Another half hour of swimming around yielded nothing else. We hope we get better snorkeling in the "Spanish Virgins", the islands off the east coast of Puerto Rico.
On Thursday we got our bikes ashore, again something we had not done in far too long. I got a little cranky about having to first spend half an hour airing up the tires, adjusting the derailleurs which had gotten way out of synch, and oiling up all the cables and chains and creaky bits. But finally we set out, somewhat randomly, and immediately found ourselves grunting up a steep hill. Oof. Fortunately we had just gotten off into a side neighborhood, and when we returned to the main road we got a nice descent down the other side of the hill.
Ken had suggested a low-traffic road out to the east, and we easily found it and got into the rhythm of the ride. Going east we had a major headwind, and I consoled myself with the thought of the tailwind we'd earn for the return trip. The scenery was kind of boring, though, as we were going along the coast but not close enough to actually see water, just dry flats. Eventually we took a turn onto another road which led us to a main road, busy but with a good shoulder, and a good view of the mountains. From there we decided to ride to Ensenada, which is another anchorage on the south coast route, and when we got there we bought sodas at a small store and wondered if we'd see any cruisers we knew. Five minutes later, up walked Tom and Cindy from Feather, who we'd met in Luperón. We had a nice chat as we finished our drinks, then we turned back toward La Parguera, reveling in the tailwind. If you bicycle in Puerto Rico, always go east first!
That afternoon we got things shipshape for another morning departure, and at dawn we were picking our way back through the reefs for another windward slog. Since we'd seen Ensenada by land, we opted to go to Cayo Aurora, also called "Gilligan's Island", just a few miles past it. We had the anchorage to ourselves, since we seem to have gotten just out of phase with the rest of the cruisers. A good thing, because we had a minor takedown crisis while rolling in the mainsail. We had zipped in the connecting piece between the bimini and the dodger to keep the cockpit a little drier in the daily Boquerón rainshowers, and hadn't removed it. This blocked our view of the main, and when I rolled it in after our motorsail, I didn't notice it get folded and crumpled into the slot until it was almost all the way in. We had to fight the stupid sail all the way out again and then all the way back in, a real pain, and not conducive to marital harmony nor to impressing the lookers-on. Fortunately this is an infrequent occurence -- this is the third time it's happened. We have to be careful when the sail's flopping around, dead into the wind, and the halyard isn't bar-tight.
After resting up from the morning's hard work, we dinked over to Cayo Aurora, which is a state park. A few tourists and locals played around on the island's sand beaches and in the mangrove canals, but the trails marked on the chart had become overgrown long ago, and we quickly got bored with the little island. Back at the boat I made pains au chocolat and Britt took apart and greased one of the winches which had been acting up lately.
Another beautiful sunrise the next morning -- we're seeing more sunrises this week than we used to see in a whole year -- and we were off to Ponce. The waves weren't as bad as they'd been the last few days, perhaps because the wind was a bit north of east and being blocked by the island, and it was a pleasant motorsail to the anchorage off the Ponce Yacht and Fishing Club.
Ponce is the second largest city in Puerto Rico, and a big industrial center. We'll get fuel here, for the first time since Florida, and do a little sightseeing and shopping before moving on.
