I like Puerto Lucia. There's always something going on in the marina itself most of the year, though it's generally fairly low-key until about November, when "the season" starts and people start either prepping their boats for cruising east to Central America, or gearing up for the local sailing season with its warmer, sunnier weather and southwesterly winds.
The marina hosts a sailing club, which has sailing courses especially for children and teenagers. They have dinghy races most weekends during June through September, which start at the launch ramp right in front of the med-moored sailboats. Hang out on your own deck and watch them try to sail along the fairway in too-light wind, eventually giving up and getting towed outside the breakwater by grabbing on to the back of the committee power-dinghy. There are a few larger sailboats with adults aboard, that sail on weekends out of Marina Puerto Lucia and the nearby Marina Salinas; I think there may some mild rivalry between the two yacht clubs but I haven't eavesdropped on the conversations enough to know for sure. And, of course there are always small sportfishing boats for hire.
Commercial fishing boats anchor along the shore near the port of La Libertad, and further out the large freighters anchor. You can see a few of them in the far background of this pic right here, if you can tear your eyes away from the view of one of Puerto Lucia's sweet swimming pools.
Puerto Lucia's fuel dock is where the smaller commercial fishing boats come and go, loading up on ice as well as fuel – here's one bad boy leaving the fuel dock in the pic over there on the left. Over on the lower right, we see another use for the fuel dock, as Puerto
Lucia's crane unsteps the mast of a British-flagged Bavaria 44. Cool.
The Puerto Lucia boat yard has both long term and short term occupants; there are a handful of boats that have been on the hard for a year or longer. Recreational vessels upto 65 feet, as well as commercial fishing boats, get hauled here for repairs performed by an excellent yard crew. To the left, we see what this Ecuadorean boat yard might look like.
Sorry; I haven't gotten a photo of one of the resort/marina's resident sea turtles. You'll just have to trust me that they occasionally surface in the marina's fairway, just to give you some stink-eye. As far as I can tell there are at least two adult turtles who roam the marina and even venture into the resort's interior fairway, but I've heard from the resort staff that there may be more. So much for the naturally-occurring natural gas discharges being hazardous to wildlife.
As you make your way around the nicely-landscaped grounds to the gym, you'll learn that in its natural habitat a poinsettia grows over 10 feet tall. That's one, over on the right:
You'll also get nostalgic for OSHA regulations – look at this intrepid painter, working on one of the resort's pyramid-shaped rootops. You can guess how high off the ground he is, by looking at the tops of those palm fronds in the photo's lower right corner - that's a full size palm tree. Dude, you're not supposed to use a ladder that way. Especially, THAT ladder. Yeesh.
As you can see, you can have a full day's entertainment without even leaving the confines of Marina Puerto Lucia or the resort. And we haven't even mentioned yet all the attractions in town.
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