Warm Water and Mofongo

Friday Night, beginning of Easter Week on Culebra. Kids are clogging the ferry over from the mainland, and they've turned up the speakers on the avenue. Puerto Rican Coast Guard helicopters buzz overhead from time to time and we can see it's going to probably be a loud weekend. But not out here, where we haven't moved for a few days and probably won't move at all. The bay is so pretty, especially at sundown or sunset, and though the dinghy ride into town is a little longer than a closer-in anchorage would make it, it's still really nice to tie up the dinghy and have lunch at The Dinghy Dock. Yesterday we had mofongo -- corn meal and plantain mixed together into a batter and then put in molds and deep fried 'til crunchy, then filled with shrimp or pork or octopus in a creole tomato, onion, pepper sauce. Yum-0.

Everything is better in Puerto Rico, probably because just about everybody you talk to has spent time in New York and their English sounds like they grew up in Queens. They all think Plotnik is a Mexican and that's fine with him. He can't hear his own accent -- probably nobody ever can.

Every afternoon right before sundown, and every morning right after sunrise, two men and a pet goat get out of their motorboat and walk on the reef with large white sacks, collecting something they're finding out there after the tide has come in and covered the reef, then receded and left maybe conchs? Clams? They look like big rocks that they put in their sacks. The goat looks like a dog and it's on a leash, but it bleats like a baby goat. Can't figure out that one.

In the afternoon Plottie jumps off the back of the boat with his mask and flippers on and swims towards the reef -- you see starfish and turtles and today a large ray jumped out of the water right next to the boat. The water is so warm and it feels so good to be swimming through it on the way out or on the way back. Plot's got his little guitar with him and it's a godsend as he transitions from a blogger forgetting he's on vacation to a human being capable of actually doing stuff without stopping to write about it. Until his 15 minutes a day, like now.

He hears it's cold back home. Hope there has been a little rain for his tomato plants. But that's far from here, ain't it?