Fajardo, Puerto Rico

March 3, 2014

Because we were anchored near the entrance to the marina, the ocean swell rocked us last night as we tried to sleep – it wasn’t a lot of fun.  The anchorage was great during the day, but at night, not so much.  So our goal today was to move somewhere else.  First though, we had some errands that needed to be run.  The marina at Puerto Del Rey is one of the best locations from which to run those errands.  There’s a well-stocked marine supply store on the premises that even had a replacement motor for our windlass, and there’s a Thrifty car rental location there as well.

So, we rented a car and headed into Fajardo so that I could work on getting our internet data issue straightened out while Daniel hit West Marine for some items we were needing.  After refilling one of our propane tanks for the first time since we left in January, we hit Taco Maker for lunch (think Taco Bell).  Since we had plenty of time left in the day, we decided to go exploring Bosque Nacional el Yunque, the only rain forest national park in the United States.  From the parking lot to the visitor’s center, there’s an elevated walkway that takes you above the canopy of the rain forest.  The visitor’s center was very impressive and reminded us of the Great Smokey Mountains National Park.  We drove about half way up the 3500’ climb and stopped along the way to take pictures of one of the beautiful waterfalls, and to climb up an observation tower for a breathtaking view of the forest and the ocean. 

Time was beginning to run a little short, so we went back into town to do a little more shopping at WalMart and a grocery store.  When I came out of WalMart I was looking around for Daniel in the car and found him mesmerized by something off to the side.  It was a miniature version of a donut maker.  It spit out perfect little rings of dough into hot grease, flipped them half way through the cooker, then picked them up to drain.  The aroma coming from that little doughnut factory was incredible, so we had to try them out.  6 mini-doughnuts for $1.75, well worth it for this unique experience.

When we arrived back at C-Time, she was still rocking and rolling like crazy so we pulled up the anchor (when I say “we” I mean, Daniel) and went about 30 minutes away to a nice, much calmer anchorage.