Ponce, Puerto Rico

March 1, 2014

We slept in this morning, finally, first full night sleep since we left Luperon almost a week ago.  We were pretty tired out.  I think I came close to sleeping 12 hours straight.  We took our time to raise the anchor this morning but we did raise it and head out.  There is a little island that is a “must see” about 9 miles from where we were anchored so we went to see it.  There were maybe 2 other boats nearby, very peaceful and quiet.  At top the little island was a lighthouse.  It was a beautiful island with lots of cactus all over the island.  It’s park of the national park system, a real jem.  We hiked to the top of the island to see the lighthouse and the views.  The lighthouse was really a large place, with the grass cut around it, but the building was badly deteriorated and was supposed to be closed off from the public going inside but we came up the door to the lighthouse slightly open and since all of the informational signs around were in Spanish – we went on inside to look around.  The winding staircase to the top was badly rusted but still very sturdy.  Once we got to the top, the views were worth it.

We made it back down to the sandy beach where we left D-Time and were welcomed there by about 50 local teenagers and some adults on about a dozen boats.  Spanish music turned up on the stereos as loud as it could go.  It was fun to watch them having a lot of fun playing volleyball, paddle boarding and just being teenagers.