Day 3: Vieques->Ponce

We hardly slept at all. We were jet-lagged, and as falling asleep wasn’t hard enough, roosters from all around the guest house woke us up before dawn. We decided it was time for our vacation to feel like a Caribbean one, so we headed to the beach. We wore bathing suits and even took with us a snorkeling mask that we found in our room. The walk to the beach took longer than we expected, and we forgot to bring water. We passed by a small shack, and there was a guy who looked like he was opening the place for some sort of business. We asked if he sells water, and he said that he’s not open yet, and the water is not cold. He then walked to the back of the shack and came back with two bottles of water, and he wouldn’t take money for them. We walked on, passing many stray horses and chicken. Vieques is full of them.

We finally got to the beach. It was pretty and mostly empty, but neither Julia nor me are very good with beaches. We went into the water, appreciated how nice they were, but didn’t really know what to do next. We tried the snorkeling mask but there was not a lot to see. We decided to try another beach that was closer to our hotel.

This one had a pier. We tried the snorkeling mask again. I have never snorkeled or dived before, so I was very disappointed at first, but then I tried to swim under the pier. Suddenly I was surrounded by countless little fish. A few meters below me, bigger fish were swimming. It’s really hard to describe the feeling of experiencing this for the first time. It’s so beautiful and new, and for a reason I can’t really put in words, scary.

We were running out of time. We walked quickly back to our room, packed and left. A taxi driver who was looking for other passengers that didn’t show up took us to the town of Vieques, where we had lunch in a tourists’ bar and boarded the ferry back to the main island.

From Fajardo we drove with our rented car to Ponce. We asked the receptionist in the Hotel Belgica why so many streets in the city were either blocked or restricted for parking, and he said that there’s no good reason. Surely there’s a parade or festival soon, we said, but he insisted. 

It was very hard finding a place to eat, but we finally found a hidden family restaurant, where we had tapas that was excellent, and we left to wander around the city.

No parade my ass. It wasn’t a very big parade, but it had marching bands and dancers and floats. We learned that the parade is one of several events to take place in the city square over the coming days to celebrate the anniversary of the local marching band Ponce Lions Blue. Indeed.

We found some ice cream, because it was very hot, and then looked for a place to have drinks. We found a dance club that was almost empty and had a second floor with a porch that overlooked the city square. From the porch we watched the weekend night traffic. Everybody has to be loud in Puerto Rico. The volume of music that comes out of cars makes you wonder how the drivers still have their internal organs intact. In some cases, the answer is obvious: they mount towers of speakers on top of the car, producing the desired effect without compromising their own hearing. The cops don’t seem to mind. From where we were sitting, we could see how they were able to direct traffic, wave and chat to their friends who passed by, and dance - all simultaneously.

There Are speakers, in case you were wondering.

Back in our room, we were excited to realize how big our room was, but let down by how close the hotel was to the city square, with our window facing a main street. I wasn’t so proud of myself for bringing earplugs to this trip since the ferry ride, just a few hours before.

Day 2: Bioluminescence in Vieques

After grabbing a little bit of shitty breakfast in our hotel, we drove to Fajardo. The roads in Puerto Rico are worse than anything I ever had to drive on. In fact, at some point we had to pull over because I was certain we had gotten a flat tire. When we got to Fajardo, we went straight to the ferry terminal to get tickets, and from there we drove downtown to burn a few hours until our ride.

Not much is going in Fajardo. In the city square we saw an iguana and we followed it around for a while. The locals probably thought we were being stupid. A little like the girl who gave me a ride from the airport in Canada about twelve years ago. “Stop the car!” I yelled at her. She immediately hit the brakes and when the car stopped she yelled back “what happened?” Through my excitement, I managed to reply “a squirrel!”

After the iguana left we continued to wander around. These people have weird taste when it comes to nativity scenes. They look more like a crime scene, if you ask me. One of them had what appeared to be the body of a man hidden in a closet, with only his shoes and the lower part of his pants peeking out. Next to him were baby Jesus and the three wise men. Next to them was a man roasting a pig. It turns out every nativity scene in Puerto Rico has to have one.

We were bored and hot, so we looked for ice cream, which was nowhere to be found. Instead, we found a coffee shop. We enjoyed the air conditioning for a while and continued to the ferry.

I was very excited to go on the ferry. Ever since my first ferry ride where I learned that I can have a beer while being on the ferry, it became a ritual for me. Unfortunately, the ferry from Fajardo to Vieques is more like a bus in San Francisco - it’s crowded, noisy, doesn’t have beer, and good only for taking you from one place to another.

After landing in Vieques, we shared a taxi with a tiger (our code word for a mixed Asian/white) family, that for $5 per person took us all the way to Esperanza. We walked over to the Coco Loco Guesthouse and met Joel, our host, who is very nice and very talkative. We settled in our cute casita and walked towards the beach for a late lunch.

There are a dozen or so restaurants on the beach strip in Esperanza, and they are all populated by Asians. Julia wanted to try conch (which is a big snail, really) and get a coconut at some point. The restaurant we sat in was out of conch. We were disappointed, and we ordered fish. The table next to us got a beautiful, whole fish. We were encouraged. We got our food, and it was a different fish. We were disappointed again. Our food was good, so we got off the emotional roller coaster and were content with our lot.

We were supposed to be picked up at 6pm from a gazebo on the beach to be taken to Mosquito Bay. Julia had that arranged months in advance. But it was already twenty minutes past the hour and no one had showed up. We tried to call Abe, the tour company owner, but could not reach him. It was finally my time to contribute my share: she makes the plan, I deal with emergencies. I found a guy who was clearly from another company that arranged Mosquito Bay tours and explained to him the situation. Vieques is a small island, so of course he knew Abe personally and had his personal phone number. On the phone, Abe said that they no longer pick people up from the gazebo. Thanks for letting us know, Abe. He sent his driver to pick us up, and when he dropped us off to join our group, we noticed that everybody was already wearing their life jackets and giving us dirty looks. “Are you sure you don’t wanna blog about this?” Julia asked.

We were the last kayak in our group to get into the water, and Julia was immediately mesmerized by the bioluminescence. That left me to deal with armies of stray kayaks handled by equally mesmerized and completely distracted Asian tourists. When I finally managed to shove them all away with my paddle, I saw how in incredible the bay is. Countless tiny organisms called dinoflagellates (“ooh! prehistoric animals’ farts!” - “not dino flatulence, idiot!”) glow in the water around your kayak and where your paddle meets the water. They glow to trace the path of fish zooming around in every direction. When you scoop water in your hand, it looks like you’re holding star water. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to take pictures because the effect is so subtle, and it turns out that every picture that you see on the web is actually photoshopped.

We returned to the shore, and one of the guys in the group handed me his life jacket. For some reason, it happens way too often that people think I’m working. I was at a friend’s wedding once and somebody asked me to clear the table. I was standing in a gas station and a lady gave me her car keys and asked for a full tank. I was standing near my motorcycle, holding my helmet, but that didn’t stop her.

We returned to Esperanza and got a late dinner which consisted of terrible mango fish tacos and some unidentified fried thing they serve only to tourists, and tried to sleep, which was not an easy task: nature is pretty loud with all its crickets, birds, and frogs.