El YUNQUE...............................

Despite two solid days of fasting we did decide to eat again...............And anchored at CULEBRA we discovered that the ferries to the mainland are heavily subsidized and cost $2.00 each way and a dollar if you are a senior citizen..............The trip is 20 miles and takes about an hour and a half, but to get a ticket may take anything up to four hours, when you have to stand in line, for almost every ferry is oversold and the results are chaos.....................Spanish chaos...........and very colourful, loud and musical.
The island of CULEBRA gets all its supplies from the mainland of PUERTO RICO including the water delivered through a pipeline........................So the ferry becomes the life-link, and one morning we were there at 0600 to experience it all.................We had a plan, of a one-day trip (which changed as we went along), but we ended up in EL YUNQUE, the only natural rainforest in the US, located near to FAJARDO on the eastern side of PUERTO RICO...............We finally returned two days later to ARITA in the anchorage of ENSENADA HONDA, that enclosed bay in the chart below..........



Compliments of fellow-cruisers with a car in FAJADO, we were able to make quick trips to Walmart, Home Depot, West Marine, Best Buy and all the good toy stores..........



The rainforest park even produces its own bottled water though we had doubts whether someone was sitting at the bottom of the waterfall and filling them up.......But they looked good...............And the National Park was filled with fern trees that we had always believed were 'Australian', well obviously not..........See, you learn something new every day....................



Our sincere thanks to Harry and Linda on the yacht " KUHELA " who chaperoned us everywhere in their rented car. That's them towards the right............ the other couple also have their yacht 'out on the hard' doing repairs and things........ That's the kind of thing we do................for which we pay a small fortune............In fact 'CRUISING' is generally defined as fixing a yacht at an exorbitant price in an exotic location...................Even if the ferry only cost a dollar.....All things aside, a bad day on the water still beats a brilliant day in the office.......................And please feel free to let me know if I got that wrong.....................Oh, and in case you were wondering why they are all sitting there................. When your yacht gets pulled out of the water in the boatyard you need to rent a room somewhere............... The single rooms are right behind the 3-feet balcony................Then again, sitting outside like this is very PUERTO RICAN................