19:11.6N 69:21.2W

 

Hello! When you heard from us last we were in the British Virgin Islands. Right now we are in Dominican Republic, but before that we visited the Spanish Virgin Islands.

 

On Friday 14th February we sailed into Culebra, the smallest inhabited island in the group. We didn’t stay long there and soon moved on to Vieques. We anchored in Sun Bay where some anchored boats invited us for a drink on the beach. I didn’t enjoy it very much since I got doused in salt water by a wave and bitten all over by tiny-weeny black flies appropriately named ‘no-see-ums’. We were also very lucky to see some of the famous bioluminescent plankton which is most common in the bay next door. Luckily Sun Bay had some of its own and I found it really cool to see tiny disco balls swirl around your boat at night. We didn’t stay long in Vieques either but soon moved onto the largest island in the Spanish Virgin Islands: Porto Rico!

 

I really enjoyed our time in Porto Rico because we did lots of sight seeing, but it wasn’t all fun and games... As its hard to stock up on food anywhere else, we had to buy lots of food here in the town of Salinas. Unfortunately the supermarket was an hour and a half's walk away from the harbour. There is nothing I like less than walking for an hour and a half with a bag of food in 30 degrees Celsius on a blazing hot afternoon. My legs are still stiff from that torturous shopping trip.

 

On our second day in Porto Rico we visited its capital city of San Juan. We did some sight-seeing in the old part of it which I really enjoyed. Apart from the terrible parking, I really loved San Juan. First we ate what was supposed to be a snack at a cafe but turned into an early lunch because of the enormous portions we were served. After we discovered a retro styled Ben and Jerry’s shop that sold very nice ice cream in freshly made waffle cones (probably the highlight of the trip). Then we visited El Morro, an enormous fort was designed to protect the city’s bay and blow the hat’s off tourists on windy days. Our final stop was the Princess Walk. In this beautiful street there was an impressive fountain called the Fountain of Roots that represented Porto Rico with a number of dramatic statues.

 

The next day we did some more sightseeing. This time we went to see the Rio Camuy Caves, a set of caves that an underground river once ran through. It took us a while to get there (let’s just say the map wasn’t as accurate as we thought) and then we had to queue for so long that I think I aged a couple of years waiting in the line. But it was worth all the hassle! Our guide was really funny and showed us some stunning rock formations.

 

Our final touristy day was spent in Ponce. We needed check out there so we took advantage of the famous art museum there. I’m not a great fan of art museums but I really enjoyed our visit to the Museo de Arte de Ponce because there was so many different kinds of paintings there. Some of my personal favourites were the paintings by Puerto Rican artist Miguel Pou. Most of them were of people or places in Puerto Rico.

 

When we came back from our excursion we had a snack at the marina cafe and when we were walking to the jetty to get in the dinghy... up popped a manatee! A man was feeding it water from a fresh water hose while it drank from water. Even though we could only see the top of his face, he was very cute!

 

Well, in a reasonably large nutshell that was our stay in Puerto Rico! After a calm and restful overnight sail to Puerto Bahia Marina, we arrived in the Dominican Republic. In a couple of days we will be sailing to the Turks and Caicos and then, somewhere that I’m very excited about, the Bahamas!

 

So long!

Kerry