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Sailing with the dolphins
We are on the island of Vieques, which lays to the south west of Culebra, and is the largest of Puerto Rico’s islands. Like Culebra, Vieques was used for training by the US military and, up until 2003, more than two thirds of the island was used as a target practice range where the navy staged war games. Since then the island has been reclaimed but a large section of the eastern portion is still off limits while live explosive devices are still being removed – or so we’ve read. Our first stop was an anchorage on the north east coast. As we approached the beach to drop the anchor we spotted signs everywhere with images of what looked like broken bombs with the insides falling out. The signs indicated that landing was strictly forbidden and they were clearly positioned to be read by anyone approaching by water. This coupled with the fact that we didn’t blow up when the anchor hit the bottom led us to conclude that the danger must be land based. The logic is sound…ish.
We sailed to the south east section of the island the next day and on the way we spotted breeching whales, sailed for a while with a pod of dolphins, and saw a giant sea turtle; not a bad days work. We ended up in Puerto Ferro which is one of the islands bioluminescent bays. A high concentration of phosphorescent dynoflagellates (basically glow-in- the-dark algae) creates florescent green sparkles at night when there is movement through the water. We went to bed early and set the alarm for 4 am; we were a bit groggy at first but we jumped into the dinghy and Adam rowed us around the bay. We weren’t exactly blown away but there were sparkles from the oars and the bow wave and the hundreds of bugs on the surface of the water. Earlier in the day we saw some pretty large “things” in the water but it was too murky to identify them. We were hesitant to swim after dark but Adam decided to throw caution in to the wind and bravely, if not gracefully, jumped in. His splash created quite a bit of light and his arms and legs glowed as he frantically swam back to the boat as fast as possible. It was both interesting and entertaining.
La Chivas bay was our last stop on Vieques. After being there a short time a big catamaran came in and decided to anchor right beside us despite all of the space in the empty bay. This sent Adam into a fit of catamaran related cursing but he later felt vindicated when he thought he overheard a parks officer giving them a ticket for an illegally obtained lobster in their possession. Our time in Vieques will be over soon and we will head back to Culebra one last time before heading west via the south coast of mainland Puerto Rico.
We sailed to the south east section of the island the next day and on the way we spotted breeching whales, sailed for a while with a pod of dolphins, and saw a giant sea turtle; not a bad days work. We ended up in Puerto Ferro which is one of the islands bioluminescent bays. A high concentration of phosphorescent dynoflagellates (basically glow-in- the-dark algae) creates florescent green sparkles at night when there is movement through the water. We went to bed early and set the alarm for 4 am; we were a bit groggy at first but we jumped into the dinghy and Adam rowed us around the bay. We weren’t exactly blown away but there were sparkles from the oars and the bow wave and the hundreds of bugs on the surface of the water. Earlier in the day we saw some pretty large “things” in the water but it was too murky to identify them. We were hesitant to swim after dark but Adam decided to throw caution in to the wind and bravely, if not gracefully, jumped in. His splash created quite a bit of light and his arms and legs glowed as he frantically swam back to the boat as fast as possible. It was both interesting and entertaining.
La Chivas bay was our last stop on Vieques. After being there a short time a big catamaran came in and decided to anchor right beside us despite all of the space in the empty bay. This sent Adam into a fit of catamaran related cursing but he later felt vindicated when he thought he overheard a parks officer giving them a ticket for an illegally obtained lobster in their possession. Our time in Vieques will be over soon and we will head back to Culebra one last time before heading west via the south coast of mainland Puerto Rico.