Sunup to Sundown, Launches Keep a Very Special Promise

The captain of the 50-passenger boat pulled alongside the pier to deliver a gallon and a half of fresh milk to the 13-year-old boy.

The boy, Joel Acueda, can be found dockside every afternoon waiting for one of the boat captains to bring his family milk from the farmer with 10 cows who lives across the lake.

No, the captain isn’t a milkman. But milk delivery is part of his job as skipper of one of the five launches on Lago Dos Bocas--the Two Mouth Lake.

Whatever the cargo, the captains and crews of Las Lanchas--the launches--carry it. And they do it for anyone who needs their service, delivering supplies from one house to another along the shores of this remote lake high in the mountains of Central Puerto Rico.

For the 300 Puerto Ricans who live here, Las Lanchas de Lago Dos Bocas are the lifelines to one another and to the outside world.

They call the boats “the promise the government kept.”

“When the government completed Dos Bocas hydroelectric reservoir in 1943, the people who lived here asked: ‘How are we going to get back and forth to our homes and farms now that you made the reservoir?’ ” said Ismael Serrano, 58, a boat captain for 21 years on Lago Dos Bocas.

He said the government told the people not to worry. “They said they would always provide free boats--all day, every day of the year for the people of Lago Dos Bocas. They said they would transport the people, their supplies, their crops. They said the government owes them this for flooding their valleys.”

And the government has done what it said it would do, Serrano said.

The large passenger launches run sunup to sundown seven days a week, along the lush, green shores of the two-fingered lake. They board and discharge riders wherever passengers want to get on or off. People wave from shore and the boats head in to pick them up.

Generations of the same families have lived and farmed on the steep mountain slopes above the lake, raising livestock, vegetables, coffee, bananas, oranges, grapefruit, lemons and coconuts.

Before this two-finger lake was here, rivers flowed through its deep canyons. The farmers used horses and small boats to travel in and out, to transport their supplies, to take their crops to market.

Now the five government-operated boats--each with a two-man crew--take the people to and from their homes, deliver the mail, leave packages from merchants on the docks, and carry bags of coffee, stalks of bananas and crates of other crops to the main landing. And they do it all for free.

Schoolchildren ride the boats. Neighbors visit neighbors using the launches. Men and women ride them to and from work.

And hundreds of Puerto Ricans on family outings come here every weekend just to ride the boats in the beautiful mountain surroundings, to picnic, to fish on the lake. Even for visitors, there is no charge.

“If someone is sick and needs to go to a doctor we head straight for the main landing with them. We’ve had close calls with women about to have a baby,” said Serrano.

There are two restaurants reached by Las Lanchas De Lago Dos Bocas and one hotel open only on weekends with five rooms, each renting for a total of $65 for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Serrano, who earns $700 a month as captain, was born in the canyon that is now Lago Dos Bocas, as were his parents, grandparents and great-grandparents.

“When I was a kid I had a row boat and would row people for 10 cents from one place to another on the river. It would take me an hour sometimes to get them where they were going. Then it would take me an hour to row back home again,” said Serrano.

“There was no electricity here until 1960. For those of us who live here, Lago Dos Bocas is a paradise. It is quiet, peaceful and about as pretty a place as you’d ever want to see. I’ve lived other places, even in the States. But nothing can compare to Lago Dos Bocas.

“And we have a great transportation system.”

He ought to know. He’s the captain.