March 7, 2014 Puerto Real, Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico 18d, 4.28mN; 67d, 11.5W

It seems that not that many cruisers crossing the Mona Passage in either direction stop in at Puerto Real, which is too bad, because it's a great stop with plenty of anchoring space in a good bottom, a very friendly marina with easily approached fuel dock with unlimited free clean water, and a couple of good restaurants. We had our first mofongo here, and it was great. There seem to be many variations, but ours was a sort of seafood gumbo in a red tomato, garlic, chili sauce, served in a bowl lined with a mash of fried plantains, bananas and yuca (cassava root).

We ended up staying nearly a week because we had to coordinate with Garmin to conduct some tests on our chartplotter which had quit recognizing the charting chip from the time we got to the Turks and Caicos, and we had been navigating solely with our new iPad with the Garmin app and Garmin Bluechart Mobile charts. The app is free from Garmin, and the charts for the entirety of Central and North America and the entire Caribbean were downloaded for $25. (Since raised to $45). That's an unbelievable bargain, because the chart chips for the chartplotter are much more expensive: just the S.E. Carribean Bluechart Vision charts for the chartplotter are $325. They do have a little more detail, and can be manipulated in some clever ways, but they are no more accurate than the inexpensive iPad charts. BTW, our iPad is the newest Air model, with two internal gps's, wifi and cellular data.

Anyway, our chartplotter failed to respond to the service tech's suggestions, so they gave us a return authorization number. Puerto Rico being part of the USA, we had waited to get here to send it back to Garmin in Kansas. With the return number, we packed up the unit and, once again using the trusty iPad, looked up the nearest US post office, which was in the town of Cabo Rojo, three miles from the marina. We decided to hoof it, which turned out to be a small adventure, because the road had no provision for walkers and as cars approached, we stepped off into the deep grass, broken bottles and squished iguanas to let them pass. It was hot, too, and we were glad to stop in an ice cream shop in town before we trekked back to the marina.

About now we got a phone call from Katie from Costa Rica, where she had been taking a yoga instructor's course and vacationing; her backpack had been stolen, along with her passport, cash and credit cards. She wanted us to know that she had cancelled her credit card, but B of A told her since it was linked to ours that ours would be cancelled too. We called B of A and arranged to have new credit cards sent to us c/o the Puerto Real Marina. This meant extra days hanging out in this pleasant bay, so we caught up on boat chores for a couple of days. Amazingly, in two days our new credit cards were delivered to the marina office by UPS.

The Garmin Rep had told us to expect the unit back in about 10 days, so we had given them a return general delivery address at the post office in the town of Salinas, about 55 miles further east from here.