Back to Boating

We left Robin and his Family Cabins with regret. We had a map he had given us and we followed it up to a road clearly marked (in Spanish) “Danger. No entry” and words to that effect. Robin said it was bollocks. A drunk Norwegian had fallen from a dam and died, and the hydro company was worried about lawsuits. Right beside all these dire warnings and the large obstructing gate was a sign, “Bienvenido al parque nationale El Yunque.” We decided to believe that one.

We had a lovely wander along a road lined with bamboo, palm, water trickling down rocks, and, somewhere below us invisible in the undergrowth, the splash and chatter of a small river. WW hunted orchids, but bromeliads prevailed. The flowering season for endemic orchids is December to February, but an African interloper—a ground orchid—was flowering away. It was a lovely, if brief, ramble.

We had been given instructions on how to find some petroglyphs, but they relied on a fellow being at home to charge us for parking and show us his path. He wasn’t home, so we had to forgo that pleasure. It was back to the car and off to Ponce with us.

We pulled in shortly after noon, loaded ourselves and our belongings onto Django, and discovered a head full of water…the shower/bilge pump needed attention. That dealt with, WW learned the water pump was hors combat. While you’re breathing, your boat is breaking.

We are almost ready to leave. We have provisioned. The two of us have removed and replaced the water pump twice. The first time, it worked but not perfectly; the second time, it was a brand new water pump. WW has swabbed the decks. And I? I have caught up!