I was ashore bright and early the next day to catch the car hire man. When he arrived he was charming. He looked at the cars in the car park, fished some keys out of his pocket and opened one up, had a quick look inside and gave me the keys. He produced a piece of paper from the glove box and said it was the tax, while gesturing vaguely at the driver’s door pocket indicating a map. I gave him the money for 2 days hire and that was the deal done. I suspect it was someone’s personal car that he had charge of, a feeling exacerbated on examination of the taxation document in the name of an individual and the fact that we drove straight through all the toll booths on the motorway without a hitch, so presumably there was toll credit attached to the vehicle.

We headed off to do some sightseeing and locate the airport in San Juan. Because of the pressure of jobs we did not have as much time as I had hoped to see the island but San Juan proved to be extremely interesting, with a walled old town and a fortified citadel on the headland overlooking the approaches. Finding a car park was a bit of a nightmare but finally we managed to locate something not too far from where we wanted to be and set off on foot to see as much as possible.

We grabbed a ‘sub of the day’ to maximise the time we had for looking around before heading off to find out where the airport was. This proved a bit of an error because by the time we’d found it traffic had built up and the return to the route we needed to go south was gridlocked. We tried various alternative routes but nothing worked and we just got lost. Eventually we found our way back to the main road but I think the traffic avoidance probably took longer than sitting in the queue. I was keen to drive along a scenic route that follows the ridge of the central chain of mountains, but this was further delayed by needing to buy petrol and not fully understanding the system (we had to pay first, or at least give them our card, before we were allowed to fill up) so the light wasn’t great when we hit the turning. We gave it a go but there was no view at that time of the day and the road was very twisty, which made driving difficult, so we soon gave up and dropped back down to the coast road and then the boat.

The next morning was my last day and we got up early to drive to the supermarket and stock up for the next part of the trip with Dave and Mike, and then with Ross, as there were unlikely to be the same opportunities later in the trip. Then it was back to San Juan and the airport to wait for the LIAT flight back to Antigua. At the airport I got talking to a very friendly couple who had a sailing boat on the Chesapeake but all too soon it was goodbye to the Caribbean and flying back to freezing England.

View of old San Juan from the multi storey car park                                         Replica of HMS bounty used in the film Mutiny on the Bounty

Views of San Juan

Old town wall                                                                                             Guardhouse at the old town gate

Pioneer statue                                                                                                 The fort at the end of the old town headland

History of San Juan                                                                           View of the town from the fort

View from fort to Isla De Cabras; guns were also mounted here to protect the inlet     View down the coast from the fort

   Another view down the coast from the fort!                                                  Gun emplacement at the fort                                         

Views of the town

                                                                                                         Stocking up for new arrivals