ILENE THE BOAT: La Parguera

La Parguera, where we stayed four days and four nights, is named after a type of local fish. The town is at the back of a wide reef-strewn bay. With GPS, navigating between the reefs is easy, especially the buoyed ones. Greens on the left and red on the right.

Most of the reefs not bouyed are visible by the waves crashing over them. Some are even easier to see because mangroves have grown up on them.

A few, which appear as sand bars, have stakes driven into them as a warning.

The next to last set of reefs have less waves because the big waves have been broken by the outer reefs. The final set of reefs are mangroved, and provide enough protection from the remaining seas to permit people to build waterfront houses on pilings.

We were not sure of the depths in the passages between the last row of cayos to the right or the depth and anchoring room within, so we anchored outside of them and dinked the short distance into town.

and here is ILENE from town.

The only dingy dock is behind the boats at the left center of this photo.

The sign says that mooring of dinks is prohibited without permission, but the permission is absolutely granted so our dink is shown tied up in a very secure spot.

We went on several walks. One toward the east (in search of a chandlery which we found, but it did not have what we needed) was through a nice neighborhood of small single family suburban style homes, with dogs, kids and a very well maintained but lived-in look. Once again, we were impressed by how friendly everyone was. On the way back, we met this critter on a divider in a parking lot. Ilene wanted to bring him back to the boat so the kitties could play with him. Roger said "NO WAY".

The next day we walked west, into an area with several large Condo projects that looked all boarded up.

We learned that these are the properties of wealthy families from elsewhere who come here on weekends. This town wakes up and becomes crowded on weekends we were told. We stayed until Saturday morning and it was filling in during Friday afternoon and we heard more music that night, but we did not go ashore again, having lifted the dinghy in anticipation of an early departure for Boqueron, our last port in Puerto Rico.

But the town has suffered from the world wide recession. The mall, up the hill, with restaurants, supermarket, a US Post office and a book exchange is boarded up.

We don’t know if this Gun Club, up the hill, is still open.

Perhaps the highlight of our stay was a two mile dinghy ride to look for and find a little creek behind Isla Cueva. We had to shut down our outboard and use our oars to paddle through the mangrove trees. Their branches combined over our heads and shut out the sun.

Their yellow lower shoots try to grow out, curve down into the water, and root, and green shoots stick up everywhere. We believe this back alley is maintained by careful pruning—otherwise the mangroves would grow into the middle and block it.

There was no one here, no boats, no houses, no electric wires, just us. Cool.

While we were playing there, the daily winds came up. Each night was calm, but you can set your clock by the wind. Promptly each day, from about 9 am to 6 pm it blows hard from the east, 20 knots. So the trip back from Isla Cueva was a wet one from the spray into the dink though we headed north to enter the channel behind the last row of cayos which broke the wind somewhat.

Ilene did a lot of research about where to eat and most folks recommended the Palacio de Mofungo. It didn’t look like much from the outside but many of the best meals come from unprepossessing places. But this food was not great. We met a couple and one of their adult twin sons, visiting Puerto Rico to attend the 100^th anniversary of InterAmerican University which the twin’s great grandfather founded as a Presbyterian missionary who saw the need to teach the people to read so that they could read their bibles. The parents have given up their land base and live in their truck-pulled trailer, four months in the winter in Houston, near family and the other eight in various spots in all of the 48 contiguous states of the USA. They travel only 200 miles per day and stay for a month where they land. Trailer park rentals are more expensive than anchoring but how else can one see the interior of the nation.

A better meal was at La Balcones, paella, $15.95 for two and tasty.

The best meals however were eaten aboard, however. We met Larry (left) and Jean Pierre (right),

of “Dove”, a 38 foot Island Packet from Detroit (via the Erie Canal). Larry has been sailing south for several years but not this far south until this year. JP is from Montreal, retired from the Army and met Larry in the Bahamas. Dove was anchored a good distance from us but they accepted Lene’s invitation for mango pancakes.