Our First Weekend in Puerto Rico

Our First Weekend in Puerto Rico: Thursday, April 25th – Sunday, April 28th

Puerto Rico is great! We are eating delicious food, drinking multiple fruit flavored mojitos and meeting interesting people. Plus, we are visiting unique places and speaking Spanish whenever possible. Our first weekend in Puerto Rico was a success!

The sailing here is challenging, hence the name “The Thorny Path.” Winds are strong and waves high most of the day. We’ve adopted the popular cruiser tactic of beginning to sail at or before the break of dawn. By doing this and making short passages of less than 20 miles at a time, we can avoid the worst of the elements. Overnight the sea dies down but by mid morning it roars again.

In between sailing, we enjoy downtime at the different ports and the company of fellow cruisers. Here’s a recap of our first weekend in Puerto Rico!

Potluck Dinner On Board Sava

Our first night in Puerto Rico, after checking in, we had an impromptu potluck dinner on board Sava. Bruce and Judy from sv Little Whale generously invited all of us to share the huge mahi they caught on the passage (we could learn from them)!

Since we have a larger cockpit, we became de facto hosts and supplied rum, ice, bruschetta and Thin Mints for dessert. Tim of sv Belle Marie completed the meal with mushroom gnocchi.

We ate and drank like kings and too quickly for anyone to take photos of the food! Photos of the guests I did manage.

Parguera

From Puerto Real we sailed to Parguera, a tourist town on the south coast of Puerto Rico. In Puerto Real we got our SIM cards for internet access, but not much else in terms of provisions. We left anyway, parting with our buddy boats, but catching up with Jenn and Mike from sv Sanitas.

We stayed in this area for a few days due to strong winds. The anchorage itself was calm and beautiful and we enjoyed taking the dinghy to visit the town and the nearby wilderness areas.

The oceanfront town of Parguera is packed with bars, restaurants and a popular betting game, all of which drew Jenn to make the apt comparison to boardwalks at the Jersey Shore.

What’s cool about a lot of these towns we’ve visited on the south coast is the tourists are Puerto Ricans. We aren’t in a sea of other foreigners, instead we’re mingling with the locals in their vacation hotspots. Parguera was just our first glimpse of Puerto Ricans enjoying their beautiful country.

Our Friday night in Parguera was filled with flavored mojitos at Karacol, delicious tapas from Moons, and cervezas from Isla Cueva. Parguera introduced us to the high quality and large variety of food we continue to sample in Puerto Rico.

Parguera Boat Party

Parguera is also surrounded by beautiful little islands and mangrove lagoons. We dinghy-ed around and snorkeled a bit, but the best part was the weekend afternoon party in the bay. Power boats of all sizes were anchored, moored, what have you, across the bay and quite close to where we were anchored. Mike and Jenn were the first to head over in their dinghy and we closely followed.

We’ve witnessed the boat parties in the Miami, Florida area and this was different. Here, most people were in the water as opposed to dancing on their boats. They played music, but it was background music where you could hear each other talk. The crowd was mixed too and all of that together reminded me of a Saturday afternoon family barbecue in the water.

We brought some beers over to join in the fun, and it was fun. The water temperature was great and people were happy and friendly. As I was taking group photos with the gopro, a very friendly guy came up and offered to take photos of all of us. He took great photos, told us funny stories about trips to Canada and the U.S., introduced us to his friends, and shared his rum. We all enjoyed the opportunity to hang out with locals and be part of their party!

We did a lot in our first weekend in Puerto Rico, which was already a week ago. More to come soon.