Ooops - There go my Undies !
Thursday 20th - Friday 21st February, 2025
We have rented a car and are exploring Puerto Rico and birding. However, regular life goes on and we were keen to take advantage of access to fresh water (at the nearby marina) and do some laundry. So on Friday morning I set to work washing my clothes in a large bucket in the cockpit. After the initial wash stage, I transferred the clothes to a clean bucket for rinsing and pitched the dirty water over the side. To my amazement, I watched a pair of underpants, that I hadn’t realized were still in the bucket, fly overboard. I jumped into action and grabbed the boat-hook from on deck and set to trying to recovery the undies. Unfortunately, like most of our fishing exploits, this was unsuccessful and they gradually sank beyond sight. One can only wonder if they had less holes whether they might have floated longer!
Anyway, returning to the business at hand … we rented a car from a local guy named Sidney. He brought it to the marina and the three of us drove over to his his office a couple of miles away. The process was as quick and easy as is possible to imagine - he took a photo of my driving license, we handed over the cash and off we went … no credit cards, no paperwork or documents! On Thursday we explored the south west of Puerto Rico, stopping first at the Guanica State Forest. This is the dry side off the island and these forests resembled the woody areas of the canyons of Arizona. We saw a number of new birds, including Adelaide’s warbler, Puerto Rican Bullfinch, Flycatcher and Tody. We then motored on to Cabo Rojo, which has colorful salt flats and a lighthouse sitting on top of some amazing and horribly undercut cliffs. Our final stop of the day was the Laguna Cartegena which is a beautiful wetland area surrounded by hills and farmland. Here we saw Orange Cheeked Waxbills and a Red Bishop - both exotic species that originated in Africa. It was well after dark by the time we arrived back in Salinas, so we stopped for dinner in a local restaurant. The food was excellent (shrimp in garlic butter with rice and beans for me, and shrimp gumbo for Gloria), but the ambiance left a little to be desired and it was obvious we were back in the USA freezing our butts off with over exuberant air conditioning!
After our laundry adventures on Friday morning we drove over to the El Yunque National Park on the north-east side of the island. This mountainous rainforest is incredibly wild and beautiful, but also very popular and busy. We added Puerto Rican Woodpeckers and Orioles to our list as we wandered through the undergrowth near the visitors center. Later we hiked the lower section the Mt Britton trail through beautiful forests. Our final stop on Friday was at a Costco in Caguas, in the center of the island. This was our first visit to any other Costco outside of Waltham, MA and it was surprisingly similar in many ways to our local store. We bought a ton of stuff and headed back to Salinas, again arriving after dark. It proved to be something of a challenge to clear the ice in the freezer so we could store everything.
In total we have added 14 new life-birds to our list since arriving in Puerto Rico. We have one more day with the car and plan to drive north again and visit Old San Juan.
Mike
Cabo Rojo .... we have to sail past this cape next week on our way to the DR
Wow! Can’t believe you not only saw but managed to photograph some of your new life birds! -T
ReplyDeleteHilarious undees story. Beautiful pics. I've never been to Puerto Rico. Laura
ReplyDeleteSome of those birds look so colourful - some less so! Fab to get new species in your log book too.
ReplyDeleteI feel better now, at least it’s not just me that loses undies (well bikini bottoms) over the side of Cotinga! 😂. Jo
Mikee- how can we focus on the amazing photos after you’ve created a vision of your sexy, holey underpants roaming free around the oceans! Hugh and Louise
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