San Juan Culture

Old San Juan is home to two UNESCO World Heritage sites – the forts of El Morro and San Cristobel. Entry is refreshingly cheap and these are run by the US National Parks service. For a Brit, it is slightly comedic to see the Park Rangers in their khaki shirts, green shorts and distinctive wide-brimmed fawn hats as our only exposure to the traditional uniform is through Yogi Bear cartoons.  However, everyone goes out of their way to help and make the trip enjoyable. The children spent two days exploring every labyrinthine twist and turn in both forts and we were not permitted to leave until they had been down every passage, groped through every tunnel and peeked through every doorway. Even the graffiti is historic with many sketches of Spanish galleons on the walls and shutters.

As the smallest of the Greater Antilles, the wildlife is very different to the smaller Lesser Antilles. Just in the city, it is obvious how much more diverse the bird species are with white-winged doves now common, many more passerines and noisy groups of monk parakeets swarming the old town coast. Nearer our anchorage, the local beach has calm waves protected from the prevailing surf. A sculpture garden has been erected in the shallows and has attracted reef fish in for snorkelers to admire. We now see the distinctive porkfish as well as blue tang and ocean surgeonfish, and even saw a night sergeant. We were not prepared to carry Matthew’s buoyancy aid around town so he was forced into the sea without it and found that he could indeed snorkel unaided. He is thrilled at finally being able to swim, but only with mask and snorkel as he still sits rather low in the water. Back in the old town, we revisited Pigeon Park with broken crackers where the feral pigeons crawl all over you to get a morsel. James and Elizabeth took to catching the tamer birds whilst Matthew just chased them. We then drank cheap beer in a Madrid-style bar and wandered the leafy avenues. We could really get to like San Juan.

Our autohelm is literally just outside warranty based on purchase date but well within time based on installation. Although the UK agent was keen to try for a warranty claim, Simrad dug their heels in and we’ve been forced to spend several hundred pounds on a new unit. James is not impressed as we bought it at the Boat Show in January but the unit was not installed before April, so we effectively lost three months’ worth of warranty for the show discount. The replacement is not as sophisticated as the one that failed but should arrive on Monday which will allow us to continue on Tuesday.

We are now significantly behind our planned schedule and are running out of time to reach Chesapeake before I have to leave at the end of April. James has suggested we miss out the Bahamas completely now and make the 1200nm passage from here non-stop to Florida. This will help make up some time as well as making clearing back into the US mainland easier as we will not have visited any foreign ports, and save us the exorbitant $300 fee charged by the Bahamas to all visiting foreign vessels. We were always reticent about this charge as, with our deep draft, there are very few places we can visit anyway in the Bahamas and will have to miss great chunks of the 700 islands as the waters are far too shoal, with hundreds of square miles less than 1m deep. I had hoped to dive the blue sink holes of Abacos, join a shark feed or kayak the mangroves of Lucayan National Park, but these can wait. Our plan is now to try to reach Miami in time for Elizabeth’s birthday, where we will hire a car to visit Tampa and the Everglades.