Puerto Rico, part 2- The Caribbean Sea, at last!

On Saturday, April 15th, we finally made it officially to the Caribbean Sea!!! We and our buddy boats, Wild Horses and Caretta, set out that morning to rejoin Bitty Rose at La Parguera on the south coast of Puerto Rico. We and Caretta anchored in Bahía Fosforescente (Phosphorescent Bay), while Wild Horses anchored at Punta Montalva where they could get Ocean (their dog) ashore for her needed walks. Bitty Rose joined us and Caretta in the bay that afternoon, having initially been anchored near the town of Parguera.

Just after sunset, the tour boats started arriving and asked us to turn off all our lights, even our anchor lights. They brought people to snorkel amidst the phosphorescent dinoflagellates. We waited until most of the tour boats had gone before getting into the water ourselves around 9pm. Initially I wasn’t expecting much. Dave had gotten in and agitated the water, but I saw nothing of note from my vantage point on Lady’s stern. I was used to seeing phosphorescent critters glow from above. Dave assured me that if I got in the water with my mask on and stuck my face in, I’d be amazed. He was right! We spent about 20 minutes in the water just off our swim ladder, kicking our fins and swirling our arms through the water to make the dinoflagellates glow. I felt like I was doing magic. It looked like a night scene from Avatar, with the floating tufts of light, only these were roundish and in the water. It was amazing! (Unfortunately, my underwater camera could not pick up these balls of light so the images live on only in our memories.)

After breakfast the next day, Sunday, we moved Lady a couple of miles to anchor off Cayo Carocoles, a bit north of Cayo Enrique, which was supposed to have the best snorkeling. We dinghied around a bit, with me occasionally sticking my masked face in the water to find “the good stuff.” We eventually picked up a mooring ball further from the island and closer to the edge of the reef near the channel, where it’s a bit deeper. We got in the water and swam in a westerly direction toward another mooring ball at the edge of the channel. The hard coral was still predominantly dead, but there were healthy patches of soft corals, some rather tall and bushy. There were plenty of fish.

After our snorkel, we dinghied to town to check it out. It used to have a dinghy dock, but that was destroyed by a hurricane or earthquake, or both. Fortunately, our friends on s/v Guajira had been there a couple of weeks ahead of us and provided intel from a local liveaboard for how to get ashore. The de-facto “dinghy dock” was now a pair of beached sport fishers between two dive boat businesses. We tied our dinghy to the bow of one, carefully climbed over its partially attached bow railing, stepped across to the other boat to its transom, stepped off the transom into shin-deep water, waded a few feet toward land, and climbed a metal rail fence. 😅 Ta-da, town! We weren’t there more than 30 minutes, since there wasn’t much of interest to see, for us, anyway. It’s a tourist waterfront with dozens of small restaurants and food windows, and souvenir shops selling mostly kitsch. We walked up a road more into town to a little convenience store/market to see about getting some fresh produce, but they didn’t have much. We returned to Lady, ate lunch, then dinghied over to Punta Montalva to join Wild Horses and Caretta. Bitty Rose joined later. Dave & I had everyone over to Lady for a couple of hours just for drinks and conversation. 

The next morning, Bitty Rose set out in the wee hours heading for Ponce. The rest of us set off about 8:30am for Gilligan’s Island. Gilligan’s Island?! Yeah, you’re gonna have to wait to get more about that. 😁  Until then, stay safe, and take care of each other!