Hello Puerto Rico – Part II

If you read my last blog post, you’ll know that one visit to Puerto Rico is simply not enough. On April 10, 2024, we hauled Meshuggana² out of the water and spent the next few days preparing her for not only for a scorching hot Puerto Rican summer, but also hurricane season. We know very well how to winterize a boat for cold Canadian winter months, but “summer-izing” is a whole different process.

Our main concerns were

1. Ensuring the boat and everything on her is strapped down tight so nothing can go flying if hit with storm winds.
2. Anything that can explode, spill or bubble over in temps topping 100 F is removed or contained. This includes any aerosols, liquids, gels including cleaning, cooking and toiletry products. I forgot to take home bottle of ibuprofen gel caps and returned to find one big blob!
3. To avoid insect infestations, all traces of food must be removed and every surface scrubbed clean. We donated what we could to a food bank and the rest was either thrown out or given to local friends who didn’t mind taking half a jar of peanut butter.
4. All cupboards, drawers and doors were propped open and cushions and mattresses rested upright on their edges to promote air circulation.

That’s a lot of work! And just a few months later, we had to do it all in reverse to get Meshuggana² back in the water!

Hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30, with the peak being August through October. Even when we are safely in Toronto, we still pay close attention to what’s happening in the South. Last summer when Ernesto hit Puerto Rico, he wasn’t yet the Cat 2 hurricane he would later become, but he still did significant damage, especially in Fajardo. Most of the island experienced wide-spread flooding and its already fragile power grid gave out, blacking-out most of the island. However, we got lucky that our marina and Meshuggana² were spared with no damage at all.

On November 21,2024, Allen, Ziggy and I flew back to Puerto Rico, and spent several days cleaning, rigging and provisioning Meshuggana². We “splashed” on November 26, ready for our next adventure – seeing the rest of the Enchanted Island by circumnavigating PR.

Heading south and then west, we kept PR’s magnificent mountain ranges on the starboard side. These volcanic mountains cover most of the island’s interior and are home to a growing agro-tourism industry including haciendas (plantations) and fincas (ranches) producing, among other crops, coffee, cocoa, pitahaya (dragon fruit), guava, pineapple, dairy and of course, rum.

Sailing west along PR’s southern coast is enjoyable, with prevailing winds behind us and good ports to pull into every evening. These small towns all have a beach-town vibe, with beachside bars and restaurants, small shops, at least one convenience store selling a little bit of everything. They all have guest houses and inns, catering to a more Puerto Rican clientele vs the large cities with masses of foreign tourists. However, we were there a few weeks before Christmas, the off-season, so not much was open. One shop owner told us as soon as schools get out for Christmas break, the towns will be swarming with people.

Puerto Patillas – we rated this a 4-Star anchorage! First, it offered good holding for our anchor. A huge reef provided protection from sea swells, and it had a decent spot to beach our dinghy on shore (I’d give it 5 stars if it had a dingy dock).  It’s a cute town with simple, but good restaurants and a lovely public park and large sandy beach. However, the town did get loud on the weekend, with bars and traffic running until midnight – but it kinda made it feel like home – I guess I’m still a city-girl at heart.

Salinas came recommended by fellow cruisers, and it clearly has a large cruising-resident community inside a massive lagoon filled with perhaps 100 boats. But that’s not our thing, so we spent one calm night at anchor and moved on.

Ponce, named after the explorer Ponce de Leon, is PR’s second largest city. Not nearly as large as San Juan, it still offered many conveniences of a larger town including access to a marina, taxis and Ubers and shopping for everything from large grocery stores to a mall with Sears and JC Penny (I didn’t know they still existed!). Old Town by the port must have been beautiful at one time, with lovely Spanish architecture, and was probably a bustling port city at one time; however, it looks like hurricanes have taken their toll and now many buildings are damaged and abandoned or occupied by auto repair shops or machine shops.

About a mile further inland is another “old town”, completely different. Here you find more lovely Spanish architecture, grand hotels, restaurants, shops, a central cathedral with a large square that hosts concerts, children’s carnival rides and street vendors. We went on a Rum Tour, were driven around downtown and the surrounding mountainside, and to the original Serrallés family home, the founders of Don Q rum. We learned that Don Q is the favored rum in PR (not Bacardi!), and that the Daquiri cocktail was invented in Ponce, using Don Q. Unfortunately, the mansion was closed for a private function and the distillery does not gives tours.

Our tour took a somber turn as we learned of a tragic event in Ponce’s not too distant past, as we visited the Mameyes Memorial. Mameyes was a community where Ponce’s poorest residents lived and built their homes on a sandstone mountainside. On October 7, 1985 at 3 AM, after days of torrential rain, the mountainside gave way taking with it approximately 175 homes and potentially hundreds of people, although the official death toll is 129. Despite rescue efforts of neighboring communities, local government plus additional assistance from United States, Mexico, France and Venezuela, just 50 bodies were recovered. The area now serves as a memorial and mass grave to victims buried under the mud and rock.

What is most eerie about the tragedy is that just 3 days before the landslide, children in the Mameyes school were asked by a teacher to draw “whatever comes to mind”. Several drawings were not typical children’s art, but were drawn with dark earth colors, featuring crosses and turned over houses, perhaps as a prophecy of the coming disaster. These drawings are now exhibited in a Ponce museum.

We continued to move west and found two more lovely anchorages, La Paguera with a cottage-country vibe and close to another bioluminescent bay, as well as Boqueron, another small beach town mostly closed before the Christmas holidays. Our big surprise here was an unexpected neighbor dropping anchor nearby – Koru, Jeff Bezos’s more than 400-foot sailboat! We watched their tenders go back and forth to shore all day and evening, so we assumed Jeff was not aboard, but likely the crew had shore leave and were enjoying some beach time.

Here we had an opportunity to rent a car and explore beyond the coast.  A highlight for me was visiting and touring Hacienda Verde Tahiti, a farm specializing in pitahaya, better known as Dragon Fruit.  Ingrid, one of the owners, walked us through the farm and the pitahaya fields, as well as introduced us to her sheep and apiary, that will soon produce sheep milk products and honey. Originally the hacienda produced Tahiti Limes, but in 2017 Hurricane Maria completely destroyed the crops. Now, in addition to growing and exporting pitahaya all over North America, the self-sustaining hacienda produces wholesale plants for nurseries and offers eco-tourism “glamping cabins” with ocean views – yes please!

As we headed north along PR’s western coast, the Mona Passage was playing her unpredictable games, and we couldn’t stay there as long as we hoped. After another night-time passage, we arrived in San Juan Harbour, this time full of anticipation for my family arriving for the Christmas holiday.  This year, in addition to traditional holiday celebrations, we went on a few family outings to experience more of this fabulous island.  

After a somewhat scary drive up the side of a mountain on deeply pitted dirt roads in our rented sedans, we reached Hacienda Chocolat, where an ATV picked us up and took us even higher up the mountain to the hacienda. But it was worth the drive as we then walked among cocao trees, learned about cocao production and later sampled cocoa in various refined stages. Fun Fact: almost all ”chocolate bars “commercially produced contain little to no chocolate. Next time you buy a Hershey or Mars bar, read the label and you will find that cocao or cacao powder is typically one of the last ingredients listed, meaning while it might be a delicious candy, it’s not really chocolate. After sampling the real stuff, I agree – there is no comparison

Puerto Rico is known for producing excellent coffee and this means no trip to PR is complete without a tour of a coffee plantation.  After another drive into the mountains, we arrived at the Hacienda Muñoz. Our guide walked us through fields of bush-like coffee trees, and despite it not being peak season, several trees had ripe, red berries. For this reason, all coffee bean harvesting at Hacienda Muñoz is done by hand, as is much of the bean processing. We learned that in PR, brewed coffee is always hot and black, and a real Puerto Rican would never put sugar or cream into their cup. After sampling I agree that this coffee is much better than Tim Horton’s, but I think I still prefer to add some cream to mine.

This was a tough Christmas for us as it was the first one without my father, but spending time and sharing adventures together with my family made it special, and I’m sure Dad approved. We wrapped up a wonderful week of Christmas family time, but eventually everyone had to go their own way.  And it was time for Allen and me to move east and begin new adventures in new places. We still love Puerto Rico, and will be back again.