We wanted to go to Culebra, but we couldn't find a hotel there, so we went to Vieques instead. Martin, Laura, her friend Candace, Martha, Julia, and I all squeezed into the rental car for the trip to Fajardo, the town on the east coast from which the ferry leaves. Danielle, Sam, and Rebecca were going to the Virgin Islands for a week starting the next day, and Andrew had to work, so he was going to join us the following day. We caught the one o'clock ferry to Vieques with a big crowd of people. Martha, Julia, and I sat inside, where the air conditioning made it freezing and Gladiator dubbed in Spanish was annoyingly playing on a TV screen.
The ride took a little over an hour, and when we got to the town of Isabel Segunda on the norhern coast of Vieques, we followed one of the men advertising taxis to a large van. He took us to our guest house in the town of Esperanza, on the southern coast, for $2 a person. The proprietor wasn't there since we were early (Laura had originally told him we would be on a later ferry and couldn't get in touch with him after we'd changed our minds), so the taxi driver called and sent him over. He was an amiable German man, and he showed us to a beautiful apartment on the second floor with two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a living room. He gave us a map of Esperanza and pointed out the places we might like to go. We walked a few blocks through the charming town to the main street, with a boardwalk along the shore. We wanted to go to the Blue Caribe Dive Shop, which offered kayak trips to the bioluminescent bay, but it was closed, so we went to the beach.
The beach is called Sombe or Sun Bay, and it is as perfect an example of a Caribbean beach as I have seen. We swam in the very warm water (a little too warm for my taste), and stretched out our towels on the sand. Since it was late afternoon, there were only a few other people on the huge beach. We went snorkeling along a dead reef the had washed up to shore, which contained no more live coral but a lot of plants and fish and some sea urchins with very long spines.
After the beach we were quite hungry, so we went to Trade Winds, a restaurant and guesthouse (most of the restaurants in the area were crowned with guesthouses) along the main street. The food was delicious, and they even had vegetarian options--I had pasta with vegetables and garlic. After dinner we walked to the general store to buy some snacks and wine, which we consumed while sitting on the deck on the roof of our guesthouse, which offered a beautiful view of the town and the ocean.
Martin, who slept on the roof and claimed it was quite comfortable (there were only beds enough for five), awoke when the sun started heating up the deck. When the rest of us woke up, we found that he had gone to the bakery and brought us back bread, and he had gone to the dive shop and bought us tickets for the kayak tour of the bioluminescent bay. When we were all dressed (about noon), we went to a different beach, called Media Luna, a good walk down a sandy road from Sun Bay. By the time we reached it we were hot and tired, but the water was even warmer than at Sun Bay, so it wasn't very refreshing. There was a breeze, so the most effective way to get cool was to get wet and then stand up in the wind. We spent a leisurely afternoon alternately lying on the beach and getting wet. The setting was lovely--the beach was enclosed in a small bay, and there were several families at the beach enjoying the afternoon, with the benefit of vehicles to get them there and back. The main drawback of the beach was the little prickly things that stuck to your feet if you walked into the vegetation area, where we put our things to keep them out of the sun.
A short time after we returned to our apartment and cleaned up, Andrew arrived. The ferry he had tried to get on in the morning was full, and he had to wait in line for several hours to get on the next one. Apparently it was so crowded because all the island residents had gone to shop for school supplies, as school was about to start. We sat on the roof and watched the sunset, and I observed some horses meandering down the street. Laura and I went to buy groceries and more wine at the store, and we cooked spaghetti and peas for Martha, Candace, and ourselves. We added the only vegetables the store had, onions and green peppers, to Spanish-style tomato sauce, which originaly tasted like Chef Boyardee, but some vinegar improved it. Martin, Andrew, and Julia went out to dinner.
After dinner we went to the dive shop for our kayak trip. The first trip was full, so they scheduled a special one just for us at 9:30. We piled into the back of a pickup truck and were driven to the marshy entrance to the bay. Our guide, a young, handsome, tattooed man called Matt, told us about the bay, which is lined with mangrove trees, and the single-celled organisms, called dinoflagellates, that live in the bay in vast quantities and glow when they sense motion. We waded through smelly black mud to get on our kayaks, which were made of plastic and had indentations in the top where we sat. We paddled out to the middle of the bay, watching the glowing ripples made by our paddles and the glowing trails left by fish darting through the water. In the middle of the bay Matt dropped an anchor line to which we attached our kayaks so we could swim. It was like bathing in stars. When we moved our arms and legs, it looked like we were making snow angels of greenish light. When I dipped my hand into the water and lifted it out, little lights flashed all over it, like I had a planetarium show on my hand.
After we got back from the bay, we went to the bar portion of a bar/restaurant/guesthouse called Amapola's, where an androgynous bartender (Vieques is know for its tolerance of varying sexual orientations) was serving "lottery shots." The customer would pay $1 and pick three numbers between 1 and 45. Each number corresponded to a liquor, and the bartender would combine the three in a shot. This sounded crazy to me, but several of our company partook. I had a pina colada, as I prefer drinks that taste good. We then went back to our guesthouse and sat on the roof, talking and drinking, until the wee hours of the morning.
Martin slept on the roof again, along with Andrew, so they were awakened by the sun and brought us bread again. By the time the rest of us had woken up they were ready for lunch, so they went back to Trade Winds. They planned to go to the beach afterward and then walk across the island (it's not very big) to Isabel Segunda and meet us at the ferry. Julia slept, and Martha had blisters from her flip-flops, so Laura, Candace, and I went into town. We walked through an exquisitely designed park, with lovely landscaping and lots of exciting playscapes for children. The only thing it lacked was swings.
We went into a couple of shops, and then to the Vieques Conservation Society. This place was a museum of sorts, with shells and crab skeletons, bugs in jars, and posters of island flora and fauna. It had a room filed with Indian artifacts excavated on Vieques, along with an exhibit about the excavation, and old sewing machines and farm tools and the like from bygone days on the island. There were tanks filled with wondrous sea life, including a large sea slug that crawled around on a rock. There was an exhibit on manatees and the threats facing them. There was even a book exchange--a shelf filled with books that you could take, provided you left another one behind. I liked the place so much I bought a T-shirt.
We went to Amapola's for a snack, where we sat at the bar and talked to the androgynous bartender. Laura and I ordered nachos to share, and Candace ordered a burger. Since there were only a couple other people there, we assumed that the food would come quickly, but it took half an hour, because the chef was on the phone. The nachos were very good when they arrived, but we had to hurry back to the guesthouse to get on the taxi, which was waiting in front of the house when we arrived just on time. Martha and Julia had been worried. We met Andrew and Martin by the ferry dock (someone had offered them a ride, so they arrived early and explored a fort), and sat down to wait for the ferry. I took a brief stroll around the town, but most places were closed because it was Sunday. Martin ate quenepas, a small green fruit that is eaten by biting off the shell and sucking out the slimy pulp. When the gates were opened, there was a mad crunch to get on the ferry, with people pushing and shoving through the crowd. I felt like I was in a herd of cows. We sat in the back of the ferry, where it wasn't too cold but there were exhaust fumes, and played a card game Andrew taught us involving teams and trumps. As the ferry pulled away we bid a fond farewell to Vieques.
