We ended up spending almost a week waiting for a weather window to leave the marina at Las Palmas on the east coast of Puerto Rico. We were excited to continue on and explore more places! Once the weather settled down, on January 20th, we set out for our favorite Puerto Rican island, Culebrita!
The trip to Culebrita was about 40 nautical miles away. It is a tiny island off of the slightly larger island Culebra, and has a very well protected anchorage. We had been there in 2014 and found it to be tranquil and stunning. Returning 10 years later, it was still beautiful, but crowded! I think there were close to 20 boats there, while in 2014 we were the only ones.
This island used to be an important trade port with storage for agriculture products and rum kept at the storage rooms surrounding the lighthouse at the top of the island. Later it became a testing grounds for munitions by the US army. Apparently it still has some unexploded ordinances. It is now a protected park with a lot of sea turtles and about 5 million hermit crabs.
We hiked up to the lighthouse and found it to be in pretty much the same shape as ten years ago. The old storage rooms at the base of the tower were filled in a bit more with sand and plants, but you could still see the beautiful old marble floors. The iron spiral staircase leading up to the top of the lighthouse was in a little worse shape than we remembered, but we still managed to make it up to the top. I would not recommend this for anyone with mobility issues or a healthy fear of danger.
After the hike to the lighthouse we went to the southern beach for a glass of wine while watching the sun set. The walk back to the dinghy was dark and we used a flashlight to avoid stepping on hermit crabs. Once back on the boat we enjoyed a peaceful evening listening to the music on the party boats.
The next morning we visited the tidal pools called baths. It was a super cool part of the island that we hadn’t seen before. There were very cool rock formations and a lot of coral on the beach on the walk there.
When we got back to the dinghy we realized that waves had filled it up. We had lost our pump a few weeks ago so we had to bail it out with oars and then flip it over. It was a bit of work! We seem to make a lot of mistakes with this dinghy parking thing.
After we had everything stowed and back in order we set off for St. Thomas. With a little adjustment to our course we were able to sail for a few hours before approaching the cut to get to the south side of the island. We came into Charlotte Amelie bay and dropped anchor in the early afternoon.
