Culebra and Vieques

Innamorata
Steve & Carol
Fri 20 Apr 2012 20:54
18:07.10N 65:20.85W
Checking in with Customs and immigration was a different experience, first you have to phone to say you have arrived, the phone call took Steve 26 minutes during which time the official asked if there was someone who understood English better than Steve did as he had to ask her to repeat herself a couple of times as she spoke so fast, he had to explain that he did indeed understand English!. Afterwards we had to go to the airport and fill in forms etc which included declaring all fresh produce, which in our case included a Mango – which is apparently very bad as they can carry a weevil in the seed and the US do not want them to contaminate their trees, we were told to eat it on board and throw the skin and seed overboard to let the fish deal with it!
   The next day we got a ferry over to Puerto Rico as it’s only $2.25 each for the 1hr 30 min crossing and we wanted to shop for some US charts and a camera. Fajardo is said to be excellent for both, well we got neither. We did get a couple of other bits and had an interesting day out. Having seen a bit more of the coast from the ferry we decided we’d head off to the island of Vieques and catch up with the others.
We sailed to Vieques and anchored with Tuatara and Tactical Directions in another Ensenada Honda, after we negotiated the shallows coming in we passed Eye Candy heading off, all 3 were leaving but the others decided to stay when they saw us arriving. Ensenada Honda is a pretty anchorage surrounded by Mangroves which we have been exploring in the dinghy, we are the only boats here.
  Sun downers on Tuatara tonight, don’t want to be late so had better post this now.