Puerto Rico

As we prepare to leave beautiful Puerto Rico, I reflect on the past week. The island is absolutely breathtaking. I was surprised by the landscape. It is a very mountainous island with many steep peaks and plunging valleys. The beaches are not like those we have seen so far. The sand is very dark and there is a lot of seaweed covering the narrow beaches.

It rains here most days so everything is so green and lush. The trade winds howl across the island so the rain showers don't last very long. They have also made travel by boat to the east side of the island difficult. We have had to travel at night when the winds are at their lightest.

We have met very nice people here and for the most part they speak at least some English. We wento both Ponce and San Juan, which are fairly large cities. I loved seeing the old architecture, but saddened to still see the devastation of the last hurricane that crippled this area. I don't think Puerto Rico has yet recovered fully.

It's funny, I've never seen so many Ram Rebels and Ford Raptors in my life. It's interesting, though, that there are almost no Chevy trucks on the roads, or cars for that matter. In fact I never even saw a Chevy Dealership.

There is an army base in San Juan, so we were able to get grocery shopping done and buy western food probably for the last time for many months. Needless to say we stocked up on our faborite beer and munchies.

It is now time for us to leave this beautiful island and move on. We will head out from Salinas tonight to get a little farther east, probably Vieques, before heading south to Curaçao. We still have about another 60 nm to go before turning, so it should take us probably 2 days. I'm hopeful that the trip to Curaçao will be be easier than was the trip here. 🤞