Ponce, Puerto Rico adventures
14 March 2017
Tues Mar 14 Forrest and his daughter Hannah knocked on our boat to introduce themselves and ask if we wanted to do any errands with them as they had a rented car for a few more hours that morning. Laundry and hardware store were on their list and ours, so we quickly grabbed our gear and took off with them for a few hours. Effie Lee, their boat, had been scuttled and they salvaged it after it was in the water many years. It looks beautiful now after 10 years of work. Forrest also had his two teenage boys aboard. The three children were sailing with their dad for a year and had started out in South Carolina. They were headed east however, so our visit with them was brief. They left later that day. That evening a couple we had met in Morocco stopped by. They own a Santorin Amel. They couldn't chat long as they were heading to shore to do some errands, but we are both heading west so we hope to run into them and have a longer visit soon.
Wed Mar 15 We rented a car and toured from Ponce northeast to Farjardo as they had a West Marine store there where we hoped to get some charts for Turks/Caicos. The electronic navigation system we are using doesn't have enough detail to suit us in some of the reefed bays - but we struck out. As usual we were told - noone buys paper charts anymore so the chart stores are going out of business. Next we drov along the northern shore to El Yunque National Rainforest. We stopped at El Portal (visitor's center) which was a very modern very open building that took full advantage of it's gorgeous location at the base of the rainforest. We drove past Cava Falls and then stopped to hike in to La Mina falls. The guide books made it sound very strenuous, especially the trip back out, but we took it nice and easy and it wasn't bad at all. Very lovely falls, but very crowded as many folks had brought bathing suits and towels and were refreshing themselves in the pool at the base of the falls (very cold water). Then we went further along the northern coast to San Juan. We arrived there just around sunset and had to use google maps on our phone to get us to Old Town. The Garmin navigation that we had rented apparently didn't have San Juan details loaded. We walked around walled Old San Juan. It was well lit and there were lots of folks walking around. We saw the fort, the main gate in the wall, and lots of cobblestone streets. We had dinner, walked some more, had an ice cream cone, and then drove back to Ponce, arriving about 10:30pm. Full day, but enjoyable.
Thu Mar 16 We got up early and went to the grocery store around 0700 as we had the car until about 9am. We stocked the freezer with meats as we were told to get what we could here as choices would be limited and prices higher as we moved towards the Turks/Caicos and southern Bahamas.
We returned the car, filled up with water and diesel and were on our way by noon.