Caribbean 2014

Arrived to Saint Croix. We dropped off the car in the morning and flew to here with a small airline Cape Air. I asked the pilot if I can take the co-pilot seat of the twin-engine Cessna 406, which was not a problem for him. :)

Just before arriving here and after booking a car I realized that they drive on the wrong side of the road here.. Well, it was surprisingly easy to get used to, just a couple of kilometers and driving on the left side does not feel so odd anymore. For some reason the cars still have steering wheel on the left side.

Today's flight:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSV6sp1iWQg&hd=1

In the morning we went to the Isla Grande Flying School once again and took their Cessna to Vieques island. We stopped at Vieques for a while to have lunch and for Mia to collect some sand from the beach (yea..) and flew back home via Culebra island.

Before leaving the apartment in the morning Mia managed to drop her phone and smash the screen, so after flying we visited a shopping mall and Radioshack to get her a new one.

That was not the only switched phone of the day, though. After returning back home me and Mia went to swim on the beach next to our apartment, and I left my phone in my shoe for a couple of minutes. For just enough time for some ¤#%¤"# to steal it. Well, luckily it was pretty faulty anyway, I could remotely lock it and it only had the local prepaid SIM card in it.

So, back to Radioshack it was.. Now I also have a cheap Android phone of a local operator, and switched the prepaid phone number to the new phone. Have to order a new phone back home I guess.. Own mistake, but those do happen sometimes.

There is a beach 50 meters from our apartment, so.. That kinda calls for night photos. :)

The footprints belong to lizards. They are everywhere, just like on Vieques. One small one was having breakfast with us today and hanging on Timo's laptop screen.

The FAA office was conveniently located in a shopping mall, so the morning was spent wandering around, shopping some required things and making postcards in a one-hour photo shop. It was almost impossible to get decent postcards from Vieques, so we ended up making our own..

Afternoon I went to the FAA office to meet with the inspector. There was basically no interview or anything, he just asked me to fill the license request form and issued me a temporary American pilot license. However, I would need a one hour flight review with a US certified flight instructor before the license would be valid.

So, the next stop was once again Isla Grande Flight School, and the guys were just as helpful as always. "You wanna fly it now?" "Yea, sure" and in half an hour we were up in the sky. It was fun (and sweaty) to once again fly a school flight doing stalls, steep turns and a couple of different kind of landings. Radio phraseology is slightly different in here, but that wasn't too much a problem either. The instructor was happy with my flying, so now I have fully valid FAA pilot license. :)

Cooking some tortillas for dinner now, and tomorrow morning we will go island hopping with the same aircraft.

I put some dive videos online:

First dive, a refresh training with Brandon the most bearded divemaster of the Caribbean:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZSrPA7x6xw&hd=1

Diving the Mosquito Pier:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5Yekekp_KU&hd=1

Diving on Paddy's Reef, beautiful corals:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJFUWIa2KuE&hd=1

Our future plans have been set.

Tomorrow: Just doing some small things like shopping and my FAA inspector interview.

Friday: Flying, island hopping to Vieques, Culebra etc if I get my license papers done.

Saturday-Tuesday: Saint Croix, US Virgin Islands and diving the ocean wall there. The reefs around Saint Croix should be spectacular where the wall descends down to the ocean bottom, to 4.5 kilometers depth. Cape Air will take us to Saint Croix, probably with a small Twin Otter or similar aircraft.

Argh. World is cruel. We have been desperately looking for a car on Vieques for a week, especially a 4x4 car to explore the island. We called all the car rental agencies on the island, like ten of them.. There were absolutely no free cars, not even for one day.

Now we come back to the main island, I booked the cheapest possible small car from Avis mostly just to drive from Fajardo to San Juan and drop the car there instead of using a taxi. What do they give us for the same price? A ¤#%#% Jeep Wrangler. Oh the irony.. I guess they just needed the car to be transported one way from Fajardo to San Juan. Well, now we have a cool car on the main island but no real use for it. :P

This time our Airbnb aparment booking gave us a pretty nice apartment with own yard, located in a guarded rich-looking residental area. Well, at least having the Jeep is nice now, it fits in the style much better than a cheap Hyundai or similar. The apartment owner lives next door and has dogs that hang around with us.. And one of the dogs is named Mia. :)

Seems like our apartment even has air defense. I was unpacking my bag in the bedroom and noticed a mosquito on the bed. In a second a small lizard jumped to the bed, ate the mosquito and jumped away.

I put some videos online too, as we now have decent internet connection. Night dive yesterday:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8rScwHmvZM&hd=1

Flying in San Juan a week ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8XLGCXY6hE&hd=1

Time has come to leave the island of Vieques. We packed our bags, took a taxi (which we had to wait for an hour) to downtown and will continue to the main island by ferry in a couple of hours.

I booked an apartment and car for us in San Juan and tomorrow I should visit FAA office and get my American pilot license. Then I guess we could do some island hopping with a Cessna, come back to Vieques maybe.

Mia is also blogging things and photos on the way:

http://shootndive.blogspot.com

We did our first night dive today together with the most bearded divemaster in the Caribbean, Brandon. Diving at night was kind of interesting. Our flashlights were the only light sources and everything outside their light cones was totally dark.

We spotted lobsters, hermit crabs, turtles, stingrays and many kind of fishes and many of them seemed to be attracted to the lights. Small fishes kept circling around the flashlights and a porcupine fish was just floating in the spotlight.

Too bad I forgot to take contact lenses with me when we left the apartment, so my vision was even more limited during the dive. I see something without glasses, but not that good.. We were diving under the pier again between the poles, and it was "interesting" to try to control the buoyancy and direction when seeing everything a bit fogged, in addition to only seeing anything at all with the flashlight.

The dive photos are video screenshots, so sorry for the quality. Video material is coming later, when we have access to decent internet connections.