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
