May 14-15, 2010... Salinas

By far, the funniest thing related to wildlife happened in Salinas.  One afternoon, walking up the companionway, Patti looks out of the boat and notices something unusual -- a MANATEE clasped to our dinghy floating out behind the boat.  Now, we had heard there were manatees in Salinas, and kept looking for them, not seeing any.  Then voila!  This manatee was apparently eating some of the terrific stuff growing on the bottom of the dinghy.  Luckily it didn't sink the dinghy or try to get into it because this thing was BIG.  This was not an isolated incident -- we had heard about this before from other cruisers.

Salinas is a terrific little town.  It has the beach area near the waterfront and marina, where there are restaurants catering to the weekend crowd from San Juan, and a downtown with a town square and beautiful public buildings and churches.  One of these jewels is an old market arcade building from 1925 that has a shoemaker, barber shop, snack bar, and a couple of bars.  We heard fabulous music coming from there so we stopped.  Some musicians were playing along with recorded music.  A local man told us that at night, the musicians jam outside the building.  We decided to return that evening to see.  There were three sets of conga drums with musicians taking turns on them, another drummer with a cowbell, and a man on maracas.  The beat was great and the music continued nonstop.  Even better than the music was the people watching.  What a great place.  Check out the great sunset from last night.