We got up at 7:15, which wasn’t that pleasant, but we had to be out of the room by 8am. Technically we were supposed to get off the ship at 8am (they send people off in groups depending on where they’re going afterward), but since our plans involved a cab to the airport for a 12:30 flight, we had plenty of time.

We went up to the buffet for one last gruel and Maxwell’s Foreclosure, and the place was absolutely packed, to the point we had trouble finding a table. I’ve never seen anything on a cruise ship so crowded, so I was amazed. After eating, we took our carryons down to the 4th deck, where we were supposed to exit. There was a line of people standing there, so we joined it, not really knowing what was going on. (I mean, they were pointed toward the exit.) After standing there a long time without moving, we decided to go to the spot we were originally supposed to meet before debarkation.

We got to the theater and I asked one of the staff about whether we should wait, or if we could get off. She said they were having trouble with the gangway, so we should join everyone in the theatre. We went in and got seats, and ended up waiting there for a very long time. I was glad we’d decided to leave the line, so we could at least sit down.

They finally announced that we could leave, so we headed off the ship and down to the building with all the luggage. The gangway had obviously worked at one point, because ours were the only suitcases left in our disembarkation group. We then took them over to the customs line, and proceeded to stand there FOREVER, because it was run by the most distractable lady on earth. At least it was fun watching the cute drug-sniffing dog running up and down the line.

Finally we were free of the cruise terminal. We got a cab to the airport and went to check in at Cape Air. They told us how to find the gates, took our bags, and sent us on our way with a couple hours to kill. We got coffee at Starbucks, and had a surprisingly decent lunch at Mango’s, which had the only vegetarian food in the terminal. We then went to hang out at Air Margaritaville for a bit, enjoying the airport’s free wifi and a Medalla.

Then it was time to catch our flight, so we headed back to the small-plane terminal. They called our flight time, and directed us down an escalator to the lower level. There we met up with two other couples, and then an agent led us out onto the tarmac. I love any day I get to walk on the tarmac!!

As expected, the plane was tiny. It had 4 rows of seats, but they only let us use three of them. Matt’s seat folded down, so that the front row could exit more easily. They took our carry-ons and stowed them in the nose and over the wings, and of course I forgot to grab my phone or camera. We strapped in, and our pilot (Captain Jim!) just turned around in his seat to tell us about the exits in case of emergency. It was awesome.

And then we were off to Vieques! We took off over the ocean, and hugged the coast of Puerto Rico all the way around the east end of the island. We could see El Yunque National Forest, and Fajardo, the port where the ferries to the islands depart. (We had considered the ferry, but it’s apparently unreliable, slow, and you have to get to Fajardo. Flying was much easier.) Within a few minutes, we could see Vieques, and then the airstrip we were landing on. Seeing the approach and landing out the front window of an airplane feels a lot like a video game. (While I’ve flown an airplane before, I’ve never landed one. I don’t even remember what it’s like.)

We climbed out onto the tarmac at VQS, which could not be more different from the airport in San Juan. It was tiny, with a single building and four circles for airplanes to park. (We were parked in the spot reserved for the W’s private jet – it’s the only resort on the island.) They handed us our carry-ons, and the pilot told us to grab our suitcases off the world’s smallest conveyor belt.

We went inside, and the conveyor belt was no joke – it was maybe 10′ across, with half outside and half inside. Awesome.

We had a Jeep reserved from Maritza’s Car Rental, which I’d chosen because they were the only one advertising airport pickup. The booth was there, but nobody was in attendance. (It had a sign saying it was closed 12-1, and it was after one.) I called them, and they said they were on their way over. In the meantime, a guy sitting there at the airport saw us looking at the tourist map, and came over to talk. It turns out he and his girlfriend were leaving after three days in Vieques, and he wanted to give us some advice. We appreciated that like crazy, because there is hardly anything about Vieques on the internet beyond the usual TripAdvisor stuff. No good maps, no restaurant menus, no great advice beyond which beaches to go to and “you need a Jeep to get anywhere”.

They gave us loads of advice on getting around, on beaches to visit (he verified the Jeep thing), about the BioBay, and even which restaurants had good vegetarian food, as they were also vegetarian. He showed us everything on the map, too, and we lamented that that awesome tourist map wasn’t online anywhere. (Vieques is small enough that they can draw almost every single business on the island on the map. Really.) He also told us what he’d been told: Vieques has 9,000 people and 3,000 horses, so watch out for them on the road. Our car showed up a few minutes later, so we thanked them profusely and headed out.

I was expecting a crappy beat-up Jeep, but what we got was fantastic. It was basically brand new! I was super-excited to drive a Jeep, too, because I never had before. We named it Captain Ron, following our longstanding ‘Captain’ tradition.

We’d decided to do a VRBO rental in Vieques, based on advice from other people and the fact that they really don’t have much in the way of hotels beyond the W (which was $600 a night, and really not our style). It was about 1:45 and we couldn’t check in at the house til 3, so we decided to drive into town to the grocery store before calling the owner to get directions.

Vieques has two towns – Isabel Segundo, where the ferry lands on the north side of the island – and Esperanza on the south side. They’re barely even towns, really… Isabel is larger and is maybe 10 square blocks. There’s one main road that runs across the top of the island, from the airport and the W, just past Isabel II. From there, there are three main roads that go north-south, all ending up in Esperanza. The entire eastern half of the island is protected nature preserve / former bombing range, and a lot of it is still closed due to the very real possibility of land mines. (The US military rented out Vieques and Culebra as bombing grounds up through the 1960s, which is why they’re still so undeveloped.)

We took the main road into Esperanza (passing a cockfighting facility along the way), looking for the grocery store the couple had recommended. He said that it looked sketchy, so we decided it was the bodega on the corner. We parked the Jeep, locked everything (we’d been warned), and went to the store. We ended up with an overfull basket, a bottle of rum, and some $3/bottle Kona beers, and a huge backup of people in line behind us while they run us up.

They didn’t have everything we wanted at the store, so we went down a couple blocks to the other grocery store we’d seen. That was the actual grocery store, we realized as we entered. We stocked up on more supplies for tacos, plenty of drink mixers, coffee, plantain chips, and other things we needed to stock up at the hacienda (our name for the rental house, based on the awesome photos). We grabbed a 6-pack of Medalla, too.

Once we were fully outfitted, I called the owner. My signal kept going in and out, and I barely had an internet connection, despite T-Mobile’s assurances of 4G LTE in all of Puerto Rico. I got his voicemail, so I left a message and we decided to drive on and see things until he called back. A little ways down the road, my phone rang, so I pulled over and grabbed it. It wouldn’t connect, of course. Finally, we found a spot where my phone worked, and I got the owner on the line. It turned out he was in Maryland at the time.

His directions to the house were something like this: “Go down the road until you see mom&pop store, and then there’s a two-story wooden building that looks like it’s falling down, but it’s actually a store. Turn there. Go by some mailboxes and turn there. Look for a house called ____ and it’s right past there. There’s a really steep driveway.” Then he told me where to find the key. We went over the directions again since that stuff was not on my tourist map (as far as I could tell), and then Matt and I set off to find it. Since I’m godawful at landmark-based directions (I like cardinal, thank you very much), I told Matt twice what he had told me, so we wouldn’t forget it.

We found the first grocery store, and then the falling-down building was unmistakeable (it would later become known as “the ramshackle”). We found the mailboxes, and the house he’d named, so we knew we were in the right place. It was at the top of a very tall hill, and the road up there was gorgeous.

We turned the only direction we could go from the house, and looked for a steep driveway. Down the road a little bit, we came to the top of a cliff. It wasn’t a road, it was what you see when you get to the top of the biggest hill on a rollercoaster, and can’t actually see the track below you. I flipped out. There was no way in hell I was taking a vehicle, or anything, down that gigantic steep hill. That kind of road would not even be legal on the mainland.

(This was only the top, and doesn’t do it justice. But hey, you can see the ocean and the bioluminescent bays from there!)

We sat there parked at the top of the hill, and decided we had no choice. He’d said it was a really steep driveway, after all. This was more of a road than a driveway, but it was also the steepest thing I’d ever seen. So we started off.

I rode the brake the whole way down, unsure whether to let up and tear down the hill to get it over with, or whether I’d hold on too long and we’d tumble onto the roof. I’ve never been so terrified driving before. We were leaning back as far as we could, because I was sure we were going to flip right over.

But we made it!! At the bottom was a whole big crowd of peacocks waiting for us. I was so upset about the hill that I didn’t even bother taking their picture. (Mostly it was the prospect of having to drive down that same hill every single day, even at night, while we were there. We’d never leave the house.)

What was not at the bottom of the hill was the house we were looking for. There was a dead end, so we turned around (which was a challenge). We looked around, and the house was definitely not there – I’d seen pictures online, and these were not it. We’d have to drive BACK UP the same damn hill.

Part of the way up, we saw a guy hanging out in his garage, so we stopped and asked if he had any idea where the place might be. He wasn’t sure, but thought maybe it was back up at the top by the ____ house. We hadn’t seen anything else up there, but we had to go back up there anyway. Unbelievably, we made it back up the hill. At that point, I absolutely knew for sure why people drove 4WD in Vieques.

We ended up back by the ____ house, our last known waypoint, and I found a spot where I could get a signal again. We called and talked to the owner, and he said we’d gone too far; the driveway was immediately past the ___ house. When he said that, we recalled the gap in the fence  at the end of the wall, and I knew that had to be it. I thanked him, and we turned back around.

By the time we turned, there was a horse walking out of the driveway to our hacienda. He was showing us the way, obviously. I nosed the Jeep into the fence-gap, and then we could see the house at the bottom of what was indeed a very steep driveway. But that driveway was nothing like the road we’d just driven down, so that made it seem easy. We parked the Jeep, dragged out our bags and groceries, and I went to retrieve the key.

Our hacienda was AMAZING.

There was a patio that wrapped around two sides of the house, and the one with the grill and coconut palms had a view of the nature preserve and the ocean. It was perfect.

There were geckos all over the place, too.

The place was gigantic, and decorated with African masks and furniture that had obviously been acquired over many years. There was a full kitchen (we were looking forward to cooking after a week), and a washer and dryer so we could do the laundry. I got on that right away, of course.

After so many days of constant motion, always having to make transportation plans and stick to schedules and cut short our time in places, I was really excited at the idea of just staying at the house for the rest of the day. It was exactly 3pm, we had all the groceries we needed, and we were alone on top of a hill overlooking the ocean. It was  perfect. We opened some beers and sat in deck chairs on the patio, watching birds in the trees. (I was on the lookout for more horses in the yard, too.)

The palm tree over our heads had a couple really big coconuts on it, but they were well out of our reach. Since the VRBO listing had mentioned picking your own coconuts, I was determined to make it happen. I knew we wouldn’t be able to open them without a machete, so I went poking around the laundry closet where things seemed to be stored. I found two machetes in there, so I brought one out and we started swinging at the coconut. It was still too far away to reach the branch holding it, though, so I went back to the utility closet and found an extendable painting pole.

We had to stand on a planter, and it took a good half-hour or so to make it happen, but we got that damn coconut off the tree. Then we took turns hacking at it til we got it open, and drained the juice out. (We managed to open it the rest of the way after that.)

Then Matt made cocktails with the coconut juice and Barrilito, and it was the greatest thing ever. (He named it the Caribella: Barrilito, lime, soursoup juice, simple syrup, and coconut water.) We sat on the patio for a very long time, just staring at the forest and the ocean beyond it. We had some plantain chips, and watched a huge team of ants carry a tiny piece of chip away at an alarming pace.

Round about dinnertime, we headed to the kitchen and made tostones and tacos with sofrito rice, beans, cheese, and huitlacoche. Matt made flank steak churrasco on the grill. We ate on the patio with a mosquito coil burning, but didn’t really see much evidence of bugs at all, which surprised me. There were super-loud frogs (particularly the Puerto Rican mascot, who yells COQUI!) and geckos running everywhere, and the weather was absolutely perfect.

While we were playing dominoes outside, I started to feel like I was getting a cold. OF COURSE. We decided to go inside and turn on the bedroom A/C and hang out. Matt turned on the TV to see if we could find the Gophers hockey game, since it was on one of the ESPN channels that night, and the place had satellite. Well, apparently they turn off the service when they’re not there, because all we got were a ton of free channels (which were mostly home shopping). Thankfully, DirecIV was doing a free preview promo, and one of the included channels was the NHL Network. So we got to watch some hockey after all.

I had a lot of trouble sleeping because of my cold and seasickness (oh no, it never goes away right away!), but I still got up at 9:15 feeling much better than I had on the ship. I went to make coffee, and we had breakfast on the patio. I was so happy to have decent Puerto Rican coffee, too.

We showered and got geared up for the beach, which required more work than you might think: we needed towels, cooler, beer, lots of water, some snacks, sunscreen, cold medicine and kleenex, and beach chairs (which we found in the closet at the hacienda). We piled all those things in the Jeep and headed toward Blue Beach, the one the people at the airport had liked the best.

I noticed when I turned the Jeep hard to the left that the steering wheel kind of caught, and I had trouble steering. I figured maybe that was just a Jeep thing, but I wasn’t sure. Driving that big bouncy thing around with vertigo was pretty entertaining, too.

The turnoff for the nature preserve was a few miles down the road toward Esperanza. From there it’s a few miles on a potholed, washboard road covered in horse poop, because there are wild horses wandering around everywhere. It’s fantastic.

There are a few beaches along the way, but we wanted to go to the one that was known for having signs about unexploded bombs. There was a mysterious detour along the way, near some mysterious gates with multiple ‘no trespassing’ signs. We got to the beach access road, and drove until we found a little parking area that had the fewest cars (there are 13 beach access spots, and apparently 11-13 have gazebos; they were the most crowded. We went to 7, right by the road closure.) There was a sign there warning us to stay on travelled paths, because otherwise we might be blown up by 1950s bombs. SERIOUSLY.

We’d been told by the people at the airport that theft was a problem at the beaches, with all those untended cars sitting around. The solution was to take everything with you, and just leave the windows of the car open so they didn’t get broken.

So, yeah, check out just how crowded Blue Beach was.

There weren’t any shady spots to be had, so we set up our beach chairs and cooler and covered ourselves in SPF 50. We cracked some beers and just hung out looking at the ocean. There was an island that was fairly close to shore, and there were signs all over it warning people to not go onto the island because of unexploded ordnance. (Pictured in the header above.) Snorkel boats were bringing people to swim at the reef right next to it, though.

We went to swim for a long time, which mainly consisted of bobbing around in the water. The temperature was perfect. After that we sat in our beach chairs again, and decided to cut open the mysterious fruit I’d picked up at the bodega the previous day. It turned out to be the world’s largest yellow avocado, so we ate that with a bag of plantain chips.

A guy named Brandon (who Matt termed the “one-man brodown”) showed up with three women, and they picked a spot far too close to us, since we could hear all the immense douchiness Brandon was broadcasting around the beach. We decided that was a good opportunity for us to go get lunch, so we packed up our stuff, threw it in the Jeep, and headed toward Esperanza. We met these horses along the way:

The town was about five miles or so from the entrance to the nature preserve, on the south side of the island. It was right in the middle of the lunch hour, so the tiny town was crowded. There were a bunch of food trucks and some trinket tents set up in the parking lot at the pier, and a few open-air restaurants facing the malecon. We drove slowly through town checking out our options, and had to go down a few blocks to find parking. We ended up parked next to Lazy Jack’s, a combination hippie restaurant and hostel. (I’d decided from their ad on the tourist map that I didn’t like it, but I really have no idea why.)

We wanted to have lunch at El Blok, a new Jose Enrique restaurant that was also illustrated on the map. It was about three blocks down the malecon, so we headed that direction. We rounded the corner to find the spot that El Blok would be, once construction was finished. It wasn’t even close. (Don’t ever change, Puerto Rico.)

We turned around and decided on Duffy’s (another place I’d judged as a crappy bro-bar based on their tiny ad on the map, but that wasn’t true at all; I don’t think that’s really possible in Esperanza). We got a seat, and were greeted by an awesome server. Their menu said they had the island’s largest selection of craft beers, and that was no joke; there were some selections from the Old Harbor Brewery that we’d visited in San Juan, and a beer fridge full of craft beer from all over the place. I ordered an Abita Turbodog and a veggie burger; Matt had a Stone IPA and a pastele with pork. (Pasteles are traditional Christmas food in Puerto Rico, but the server said they had the guy who made them chained up in the back because they were so good. The tostones were amazing, too.)

After his beer, Matt ordered the house special, the Parcherita, which was a passionfruit margarita with a salt and demerara sugar rim. I just tried his, since I had to navigate a Jeep on the world’s narrowest roads. Our server said people loved them so much that they’d had them as the cocktail at their weddings in Vieques. I couldn’t argue with that, because it was delicious.

By that point, I’d started to realize just how much Esperanza reminded me of Negril, just much tinier. It was really laid-back, everybody was friendly, there were locals drifting in and out of bars, and everywhere you looked there was an amazing view. Even better than Negril, it was clearly gay-friendly… there were rainbow flags everywhere. I was suddenly very, very happy to be there.

We wanted to stay all day, but we had more beaches to visit. We headed to the Jeep and made some phone calls, both to the house’s owner who was checking in, and to make reservations for the BioBay tour on Monday night. Esperanza was one of the few places on the island where we reliably had a phone signal, if not internet connectivity. The owner said the house had wifi and that we just needed to get the password off the router, but that it was also very common for the phone company to “accidentally” cut the lines for DSL, and it would take forever for them to repair it. I told him we’d check and let him know.

The Jeep was still having that weird steering issue every time I made a tight turn (like a u-turn, which I did a lot in Vieques), so I was going to call the car rental place to ask them about it. Matt suggested we just drive over there, since it was only a few miles away. Vieques is indeed tiny! We headed over there, along one of the roads that ran north-south across the island. The road was very windy and forested. We saw a couple places along the way that we wanted to stop – one was an awesome-looking bar with a corrugated aluminum roof, and one was the place we were planning to have dinner later.

We got to Maritza’s, and I stopped into the office to describe the steering issue with the Jeep. They summoned the mechanic, and he took it for a spin (literally) in the parking lot. He said it was just low tires, so they filled them up and we were on our way again. Everyone there was super-friendly, too.

On the way back, we decided to stop into Tin Box (the corrugated-roof place) for a drink. The parking lot was fairly empty, but it appeared to be open. We parked and as we walked in, a older lady working there barked “WE’RE CLOSED!” I asked when they’d be open, and she said “Tuesday”. As we left, there were a few people walking up in obviously wedding-related clothing, so we were pretty sure it was closed for a private event. (That would be the one crabby person we talked to on Vieques.) We got back on the road and headed to Red Beach/Caracas (every beach in Vieques has two names – a color, and a local name).

It was down the same road as Blue Beach, inside the nature preserve. It was “crowded” when we got there, in that there were probably 50 people on the entire beach. A lot of them appeared to be packing up to go, though, since for some reason morning is beach-time. There was a large group of hippie-looking people partying at the far end of the beach, and also there was a nun. A BEACH NUN. I was so excited.

We also saw Brazilian Derek Jeter strutting up and down the beach in his Speedo. He kept going in the water to splash his crotch. I have no idea, but it was pretty entertaining to watch. We hung out and had some beers, then went to swim until about 5:30.

This is my absolute favorite time of day on the beach, when the sun starts to get low:

When we’d been in the water long enough to get cold, it was time to head out. We very nearly had the entire beach to ourselves at that point, too. We dried off at the car, put clothes on over our bathing suits, and headed back toward Esperanza for dinner. When you’re on an island, you don’t have to be that classy. (I did tell Matt I thought we were under-dressed, but he disagreed.)

Next Course was on the road near Maritza’s, and I was glad we’d driven that way before, since we’d have to drive it in the dark. Between the narrow, curvy roads and the lack of street lighting, I was pretty wary of having to do that.

The place had a steep driveway going down to a hairpin turn to a parking lot, which had a line of four or five Jeeps that were basically identical to ours, all backed in to the spots. We did the same, laughing because the one next to ours was even the same exact color. The place wasn’t too busy yet, but it was small enough that reservations would definitely be required later in the evening.

They gave us a spot on the balcony, overlooking the line of Jeeps, a valley in the middle of the island, and the coast of Puerto Rico in the distance. It was hard to complain about that.

Their menu was excellent, both food and cocktails. It was sort of California-style Caribbean cuisine, with lots of local ingredients. I had broiled watermelon with goat cheese and radish greens, and Matt had oysters Rockefeller.

Then I ordered a wild mushroom pizza, and he got butter-poached lobster with crab risotto and fennel cream. We didn’t want dessert, but when the menu arrived, we noticed that one of the options was to buy the kitchen beers for a dollar apiece. Our server said there were four people working back there, so that seemed like a pretty solid investment for four bucks. They deserved it.

The place was pretty much full by the time we left, and Matt was right – there was a wide array of dress there, though people did tend towards fancier. (I was wearing a dress, at least.) When we got to the Jeep, I understood why everyone had backed in – the parking lot was full, and there were cars parked along the wall across from us. I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to get the Jeep out of there, but after a few well-executed manuevers we escaped.

The drive back was as harrying as I’d expected. I was driving slow enough to have cars stacked up behind us, but I didn’t care. It was hard to navigate by landmarks at night, too, but luckily the road in Destino had some streetlights. We found the ramshackle, and decided to drive up to Colmado Mambo, the not-as-shady-looking bodega, for Barrilito and a few other things. As we passed the road to our neighborhood, there was a car sitting there with running lights but without its headlights on.

I pulled up in a spot out front, and Matt said he’d run in. I looked over at another vehicle parked there, and saw a bunch of faces looking at me. It was super-creepy, to the point where I was conviced we were going to be robbed. I decided to prepare for it, by hiding the only thing we could not lose: Bally Basketball. I put him under Matt’s seat and then played with my phone, not looking at them, til Matt FINALLY emerged from the store. It seemed to take forever.

He said that nobody in the store could be bothered to do anything, and that though there were a bunch of cars out front, there was no one in the store. I pulled out of the spot, passed the creepy van, and went to make a U-turn in the street just past the parking lot. Just as I did that, someone laid on the horn and freaked me out. I didn’t think they were honking at us (since we weren’t in anyone’s way), but then I remembered the headlight-less car waiting by our hacienda and decided that we were most definitely going to be murdered.

I was trying to figure out what to do if we got there and the car was still waiting, because the police station was most definitely behind us, and ahead was a whole bunch of marshy, empty area and the ocean. We were totally dead, and someone was going to steal Bally. I was so freaked out by the whole thing that I missed the turn by the ramshackle, and  the car wasn’t even there anymore. Somehow we had CHEATED DEATH.

I didn’t tell Matt about this non-murder-plot til we were back in the house showering, because it was too embarrassing. He agreed that the people in the van were definitely shiftless and creepy, though!!

Our hacienda hadn’t been hard to find in the dark, so that made me feel better about driving around there, since our BioBay tour wasn’t until 10pm the next night.

We hauled our leftovers and other things into the house, did dishes from the previous night, and I started laundry. Then we went to play Moby Dick, the nerdiest card game ever, on the patio. It calls for a “measure of grog” to pass back and forth as an indication of whose turn it is, and Matt had conveniently purchased an actual half-gill measure at Nelson’s Dockyard in Antigua. Our nerdiness was absolute.

After our game, a moth flew up onto the patio and started flying all over the place like it was crazy. We decided it was horny, and headed inside before it attacked us anymore. While we were bringing our things inside, we discovered a little coqui that had taken up residence between the slats of the chair to spend the night. So cute!

Matt played an Indonesian drum in the house for a while (because why not?) and we went to bed around midnight. I was smart this time and took dramamine, which meant I slept far better. I still had my cold, but there was something about being on an island that made me barely even notice.

When I got up to make coffee, I noticed a couple chickens running around the yard, so I fed them some torn-up bread. Patio chickens!! I wanted to keep them.

We got our stuff piled into the Jeep again, and headed to find another beach. Our destination this time was Navio, because it was one of the most secluded, and our hacienda’s owner said there were tidal caves at one end.

According to our tourist map, we had to take the road that went past Sun Bay, just outside Esperanza. We’d already driven by there a couple times, and I’d noticed that the gate on the road into the park (apparently it’s a campground) seemed to always be closed. The exit gate was open, and there were cars in the parking lot, so we figured that must be the thing to do. We drove in through the exit, and headed down the beach road.

Sun Bay had a gigantic beach and actual facilities, so I’m guessing it probably got fairly crowded on the weekends. When we drove past, though, there were only a few cars parked there. The road quickly turned from potholed asphalt to even-more-potholed dirt, and we followed the signs pointing toward the beaches and the bioluminesent bay.

We passed Media Luna beach, and then came to a fork in the road. The left fork led to the BioBay, and the right to Navio. The road was tiny, with no room for cars to pass. We didn’t exactly know what we’d do if we encountered a car coming towards us, because it was thick, jungly forest on both sides of the road. The potholes were terrible, too, and got progressively worse. I wasn’t even sure our Jeep was going to make it, between driving in and out of potholes and the couple of mud pits we had to pass. Had there been a spot to turn around, we would’ve done so, but there wasn’t.

We finally got to the end of the road, where there was sort of a cul-de-sac and some parking spots for Navio beach. We found a little clearing with a shady palm tree and set up our chairs, using the tree as an ottoman.

Navio was worth the journey. It was a perfect beach.

Pretty crowded, right?

I did a little beachcombing, and found some fan coral and a little sand dollar.

There were indeed caves at the end of the beach, but the tide was pretty high at that point. People were snorkelling by this reef.

We hung out under our palm tree for a couple hours, relaxing and watching the ocean. After that, we decided to go back to Sun Bay to swim, because the waves at Navio seemed pretty rough. Plus I really wanted to see the other beach, because I liked all the huge palm trees there.

The drive back wasn’t quite as nervewracking, since we knew what to expect. I decided to make a video so everyone could experience what it’s like driving on the road to Navio. Matt pretended he was on Top Gear.

We parked at Sun Bay, and picked a gigantic palm tree to sit under. How does Vieques have so many gorgeous beaches?? And how were they practically empty?

Bally had some adventures on the beach. First he sat in his own palm tree:

Then he found a cairn:

Then he wore a piece of coconut as a hat.

There was one other couple on this entire beach. Seriously.

We went and swam for a long time. There was a bit of sea grass right by the beach, but once you swam over it, the rest was sandy. We decided to get some exercise, and swam out to the rope and back.

Near the shore, I found a pufferfish swimming right at the surface. I chased him in Matt’s direction so he could see it, too. Sadly, he wasn’t freaked out enough to actually puff up.

Once we started getting cold, we got out of the water. I wandered around finding treasures on the beach for a while.

This weird fruit was growing on a tree nearby. A few had fallen off, and looked kind of frightening laying there rotting.

We were getting hungry for lunch, so we packed up the Jeep and headed out. I was glad we’d driven through there during the day, since we had to meet the BioBay tour group in the parking lot at Sun Bay later, and that closed gate would’ve been confusing.

There were a ton of horses hanging out in the campground area. They’re pretty skittish, and don’t like people coming too close.

We parked the Jeep on a side street in Esperanza. This guy was wandering around town:

It was a bit past lunchtime on Monday, and Esperanza was much quieter than the previous day.

We decided to try Lazy Jack’s for lunch, because we knew they had vegetarian options there. They also had delicious signature drinks.

The place had a hostel in back, and there were young people coming and going from it. There was a girl sitting at the bar waiting for the mail delivery, and our server appeared to be staying at the hostel as well. She took our order and then disappeared for a long time, and we later saw her wandering down the street with someone else staying there. The bartenders seemed to be the only actual employees there.

We noticed a series of vans driving up and down the street, and realized those were the Vieques bus system. They had signs in the windows listing their stops, which were mostly Isabel II and Esperanza, the W, and the beaches.

After lunch, we decided to go back to Duffy’s for a beer. We’d really liked the place, and wanted to stop in again on our last day there. Here it is with the patio, facing the malecon:

Here’s the malecon facing west. That’s ‘mainland’ Puerto Rico in the distance:

We got a seat at the bar at Duffy’s, where I had to contemplate this creepy painting:

Hostel guests were wandering in and out of there, too. (Esperanza is a lot like Negril, in very tiny form.) Matt decided he was only drinking beers named after sea creatures, so he had a Leviathan and a Lost Coast Great White. We hung out there for a couple of drinks, then asked the bartender if we could get a bottle of Schneider/Brooklyn Weiss to take back to the house. He accidentally opened it, so he gave us that one for free and grabbed another one to go.

We headed back to the hacienda to hang out on the patio for a while, and work on our bottle of Barrilito and shower. We emptied our suitcases and repacked them with clean clothes and souvenirs. Later on, we made dinner and ate outside, then played dominoes until it was time to get ready for the BioBay tour.

We left the house around 9:40, and I wasn’t thrilled about driving around in the dark again. A car tailgated me the whole way to Sun Bay with its brights on, and when it passed Matt noticed that it was a cop. We turned into the exit again, and headed toward the parking lot where we saw a bunch of identical Jeeps. There were a bunch of people there waiting already. Then a few giant white vans pulled up, and a bunch more people piled out. (Apparently Abe’s will come pick you up if you don’t have a car.)

The BioBay was the main reason I’d originally wanted to come to Vieques, because there aren’t very many of them in the world. There’s apparently one tour company that has transparent kayaks, but we went with Abe’s because the people at the airport said they were great.

There were way more people than I’d expected, especially for a Monday night. They counted 36 total, which meant 18 two-person kayaks. We all signed in and paid, and then they gave us some instructions for the tour. They gave each group a number so that we could count off while we were out in the bay, since it would be hard to see. Then we all piled in the vans, and they set off down the same road we’d taken to Navio earlier that day.

I ended up talking to the lady next to me, and discovered that she was Minnesotan, too. They’d come over on the ferry from Fajardo, and were spending a couple weeks in Vieques. We of course got to discussing the blizzard, and her daughter told us how they’d blown a local’s mind on the ferry by telling him about ice fishing. Hilarious.

Since the tour guides were obviously quite familiar with the potholed back roads, they drove much, much faster than we did in the Jeep. I’m shocked that none of us hit our heads on the ceiling. Matt and I were cracking up because we knew what to expect, and those who were having the experience for the first time looked a little panicked about it. We arrived at the launch spot at the bay, and the guides started unloading kayaks and life jackets from a truck there. It was really dark (we’d been super-lucky and ended up there on a moonless night, which is the ideal time to go), and the only light was from the guides’ headlamps.

Matt and I were team #2, so we got in our kayak right away. They told us to paddle out and grab a spot by a pontoon that was floating in the bay, to wait for everyone to get into the water. We gathered there and the guides explained that the bay provides perfect conditions for dinoflagellates that glow when they’re disturbed. We all sat there splashing our hands in the water, watching them light up. It kind of looked like blue sparks that left a trail after every movement.

We paddled in a group over to see the narrow opening from the bay to the sea, and paddling made them glow even brighter. It was too dark to really see much, or to have a sense of distance. (We kayak quite a bit, but doing so at night is really disconcerting!) The guides wore flashing lights, so we were able to follow them around that way. They brought us over to see the mangroves, and then gave us time to just paddle around by ourselves for 20 minutes or so. Matt and I spent most of that time smacking the water with our paddles to make it glow, or with me staring up at the stars, which were incredible too.

The only downside to the BioBay tour is that you can’t take photos… there’s really no way to capture that without a really powerful camera. I guess that means you’ll have to go see it for yourself, which you absolutely should. It was amazing. Also, it’s pretty amusing to go on a tour that requires meeting in a dark parking lot in a deserted spot.

We were on the water for about an hour total. They were really efficient about loading the boats back up, and we were back to the parking lot around 11:45 or so. We said bye to our fellow Minnesotans, thanked the tour guides for a great trip, and headed back to our hacienda for the night.

We got up around 8 Tuesday morning, and I went to make coffee. Somehow I managed to put the machine together wrong, and we ended up with coffee everywhere. I cleaned that up, and the second time, it worked. We had our last patio breakfast overlooking the ocean, hauled our stuff out to the Jeep, locked up the hacienda and hid the keys. It seemed like we had only been there for a day, and I wanted to stay a lot longer.

Matt was kind enough to take a picture of the ramshackle so we could remember it always. Next time we’ll probably actually go inside.

We drove into Isabel II to do some souvenir-shopping, but the town was packed and we couldn’t find parking after circling for a while. We decided that wasn’t a big deal, so we headed over to see Mosquito Pier and the ceiba tree, both of which are on the north side of the island near the airport.

On the way, we stopped to fill up the Jeep at one of Vieques’ two gas stations. They’re across the street from one another, and you have to wait in line forever to use them, plus you have to pre-pay. (That was another valuable tip from the couple we met at the airport.) While we’re on the subject, another fun fact we’d learned about Vieques: there’s a horse taxi. Like, a guy shows up on a horse with a couple other horses in tow, and you ride them from one place to the other. REALLY.

We didn’t really know the story with the ceiba tree, but it was on the tourist map. Apparently it’s 375 years old! It’s in a park very near mosquito pier.

As usual, there were horses hanging out in the area. They’re seriously everywhere.

This is my favorite sign. “Ceiba, beach, more beach.” It’s very appropriate for Vieques.

We drove out onto Mosquito Pier for the view. Here’s a majestic shot of Cap’n Ron the Jeep with Puerto Rico in the distance:

And another of Puerto Rico, this time with no Jeep. I tried to convince Matt we could probably swim there.

This is the west end of Vieques. That’s the only area we didn’t really cover (apart from the large sections where you’re not allowed to go lest you explode.)

Looking back down the pier. The W resort is somewhere over on the left side here (so is the airport).

We found a fossilized tree stump there, too.

Then our time in Vieques was up, and we had to go to the airport. (Sigh.) There was no one at the car rental desk again, so they told me to leave the Jeep in the parking lot and hide the keys. (I like the way things work there.) We rolled our bags inside, checked in, and then went down to the gate area. It had seats for probably 20 people at most. The agent had told us there were two flights at the same time, and we’d be on the second. (I wondered what they were going to do about the fact that there were more than six people waiting.)

One plane loaded and took off, and then they led us out to ours. Here’s the airport! I believe it’s actually smaller than the one in Kona.

Once again, we were on the W’s private landing spot. What does it cost to fly Air W? Anyway? I can’t imagine.

Matt and I had the same seats as our previous flight, in row two. We strapped in, said hi to the pilots, and were off.

Here’s a view of the east side of the island, looking toward Isabel II.

This is Mosquito Pier from above. I still can’t get over how tiny Vieques is.

Rather than going around Puerto Rico this time, we went directly over it. This is the area near Roosevelt Roads Naval Station, south of Fajardo.

We flew around the edge of El Yunque National Forest, and I tried to pick out the fire tower we’d climbed on our last trip. I couldn’t find it in there, though.

We came in over San Juan and turned to follow the approach directly over the long causeway lined with flags. It was fantastic seeing that from the tiny plane.

Landing at such a huge airport seemed really strange. I love seeing the runway like this.

We got our carry-ons (Bally got to fly in the nose of the plane this time), then went into the baggage claim and picked up our suitcases. We had to take them upstairs in the elevator to the main part of the terminal, and bring them to the USDA inspection area before we could check them. There was a line out the door for that, of course.

We checked in with United, then wandered around the airport to check out our food options. They were severely limited, so we ended up at Air Margaritaville. At least they had sports on a million TVs. We had lunch and a couple margaritas, then headed to the plane.

There were no issues with our flight back to Chicago; we even arrived early, so we had plenty of time to make our connection. They boarded that one a little late, and we were all in our seats on the plane and ready to go when the flight attendant announced that our pilots had just landed. Um, what?

We arrived in Minneapolis much later than expected. Thanks, United!