Viequez, Puerto Rico -
Moxie - Beck Family Adventure
Mike, Denise, Asia and Aranya Beck
Sun 2 Mar 2014 14:11
We anchored last night in a small bay renowned for plentiful bioluminescent plankton and the occasional Manta ray. Shilhouette had anchored near hear about a week ago and had been unlucky but it's one of those lifetime experience things that you'd rather not miss. No luck for us either unfortunately but at least we tried. On passage now to mainland Puerto Rico, weirdly for the caribbean we are motoring as here is just 4 knots of wind.
Clearing in to the Spanish Virgin Islands was a tad embarrassing, there is a number to ring for preclearance upon arrival after which a physical visit to customs is required. Now we have been to the British Virgin Islands, the US Virgin Islands and Culebra & Viequez are Spanish vigin Islands. what a surprise then when on the preclearance phone call in answer 'and what is your next port of call?' my answer of Puerto Rico was responded to with 'You are already in Puerto Rico Sir'. I followed that up with 'Yes we have visa's we were stamped into the US Virgin Islands yesterday. Long story short is we have no visa, we have a visa waiver, semantics as far as I am concerned, less so for customs. Puerto Rico is a territory of the USA so customs and immigration are handled by US federal government employees. The guy in Culebra was really, really helpful friendly and willing to chat - a pleasant experience.
Heading now for Salinas on the South coast where we need to fuel up, get a few incidental boat things for the Pacific 'maps and the like', and replenish the larder ready for our 900mile jaunt to Panama in a few days time.