Cruising Vieques

The wind stayed light and we took advantage of it to motor-sail to the island of Vieques.  The island is considered part of Puerto Rico but also otherwise known as the Spanish Virgin Islands.  Vieques was used by the military to test explosives prior to 2006 therefore it has not been visited by many cruisers.

We started our visit anchoring off of Green Beach.  It rained the first two days so we didn't do much except catch leaks on the boat.  One bit of excitement was the exploding of our pump for the back head.  (Manual oporator induced). That required an afternoon of stinky mess and cleaning in a closed up boat.  Tough on the crew and the captain/maintenance guy.

The sun came out enough for us to attempt snorkeling on the reef near where we anchored.  The water was cloudy with visability of 10-15 feet.  The reef was mostly boulders and slabs of rock covered with a lot of soft corals.  There were some small fish but nothing worth getting the spear out for.  We visited the beach with brown sand and promptly were getting bitten by bugs so we didn't stay long.  

Next stop was the town of Esparanza.  It has one small grocery store where you can buy a few items, it was reasonably stocked.  Along our walk to the store we saw a lot of little cottages and restaurants, free range chickens and horses.  It makes me giggle when I say that, hee hee.  We came upon a big play park that the kids loved!  It had three different parks all in a different theme of colors surrounded by a small track and exercise equipment.  It was us and one other crushing couple taking advantage of the equipment.  

We left the island to cruise back to Puerto Rico to get Nicholas to the dentista for a lost filling that needs to be repaired.  That will be a whole new post with the comedy and errors of me attempting speak Spanish enough to get a filling replaced.