Ponce, PR -- Carnaval

We have moved the boat back over to the anchorage near the yacht club. It's much more convenient to go ashore here plus there is free wi-fi so that clinched it for us. We put together an interesting anchor combo since it's so deep here and we don't want to drag: we put out our Fortress (an anchor with really good holding power) then 50 feet of chain, then our Delta (a heavy plow shaped anchor) then another 100 feet of chain. The delta acts as a kedge to keep the fortress buried (or so we hope). There is supposed to be a front coming today with strong winds from the northeast so we'll see if our trick works.

Our friends on Adventure Bound arrived on Saturday afternoon from Luperon. Despite having just finished a killer 50 hour passage and having to hand-steer the whole way, they were up for going out for beers at the boardwalk. The boardwalk seems like a scene for tourists and locals alike. They have a bunch of little take-away places selling empanadillas (fried meat-filled pastry) and pinchos (meat skewers). Plus Medalla Light, the local beer, is only a dollar and you can walk around with it. Just like everywhere else we've been, it seems like only the tourists drink the local brew. In the Bahamas and Turks instead of Kalik and Turks Head, the locals were drinking Heineken. That's understandable since Heineken is kind of internationally known as a "good" beer. Here though, instead of Medalla Light the locals drink Coors Light, which costs more and isn't as strong. Can't really figure that one out.

This week is Carnaval in Ponce. There have been parades every day, but Sunday is supposed to be the big day so we went downtown to the main square (called the Plaza las Delicias) to check things out. We could hear the music from the band onstage before we even got to the square (click on the link below to see the video). The streets were crowded with people, vendors selling ice cream and empanadillas, and teenage kids dressed up in brightly-colored Carnaval costumes with scary masks. Some of them wore the traditional elaborate papier-mache masks while others were wolfmen, monsters, and even Jason from Friday the 13th. They have an interesting tradition: the costumed kids (primarily boys) carry around these papier-mache balloons on strings, and when they walk past a girl they whack her booty as hard as they can with the balloon. I don't know if it hurts (I wasn't whacked) but it makes an incredibly loud noise. Most of the girls just keep walking and ignore it, so it can't hurt too badly. The religious theory behind the tradition is to "beat the devil" out of you before the Catholic season of Lent, but I think the modern theory is that adolescent guys have an excuse to smack the butts of the girls they like. The parade began with some guys wearing tall costumes rigged so that the huge papier-mache hands were on sticks so they could move them like puppeteers. There were a few more pretty costumes, then the parade started to resemble any small-town parade -- classic cars, high school bands, beauty queens, etc. The parade moved at a snail's pace so that the floats would stop, wait for 20 minutes, then eventually move on. There was crowd-control tape to try to keep people off the streets but it was pretty much ignored and bystanders could walk right across the parade at will. So as the afternoon wore on and the parade got slower and slower it eventually dissolved into total disorganization, with the crowd intermingling with the local high school bands as the band kids wandered around drinking bottled water and chatting with their friends on the sidelines.

Where we are:
Location=Ponce, PR
Lat=17 58.681
Lon=66 37.518