We woke up this morning and enjoyed a leisurely few hours at the condo. We ate breakfast, caught up on work, and packed our backpacks for the ferry over to Vieques. On the way to the ferry terminal, we drove through what looked like an abandoned city, but it turns out that it was a military base from many years ago that was starting to get overgrown. It was really weird to drive through and reminded us of the TV show The Last of Us — sort of a zombie apocalypse vibe!
The ferry was quite large and air-conditioned, which was a bonus! Our seats were very comfortable and it really made for a smooth ride over to Vieques! Officially called Isla de Vieques, it is an island, town and municipality of Puerto Rico, and together with Culebra, it is geographically part of the Spanish Virgin Islands. Vieques lies about 8 miles east of the mainland of Puerto Rico, measuring about 20 miles long and 4.5 miles wide. Because the residents of Vieques literally have to ferry everything over, there were people with carts of things — televisions, furniture, etc.
Once we arrived on the island, we had to navigate by foot to our Airbnb rental. We had the directions and it was an 11 minute walk, so not bad! This island was hit hard with hurricane Maria in 2017, and some places are still rebuilding. We heard that the island was without power for nine months after the hurricane! It looks just like you would imagine a sort of rundown Caribbean island would look. We wound our way through the streets and up a hill to find the purple wall of our place. When we got there, the cleaning lady was still finishing up so we had to wait outside for a few minutes. Once we got inside though it was super cute! We each have our own room, which is nice. Mark has the sofa in the living room. The back porch is really big and has tons of chickens and iguanas outside! It’s a very tropical vibe.
After we got settled, we wanted to walk down to Sea Glass Beach because we had heard that it was a great spot to search for sea glass. And it was! We walked up and down the small horseshoe beach and found a handful of sea glass for each of us! After our glass hunting, we put on our scuba masks and decided to check out the snorkeling. It was actually better than yesterday! The visibility was crystal clear and we saw lots of different fish. Kaia had fun finding large conch shells on the bottom. She would swim down and pick one up and then come up to the top to see if there was somebody living inside. Unfortunately, every shell she found had a permanent resident!
We quickly headed back to the house to change our clothes and get ready for our kayaking in the evening. The place that I had hoped to eat for dinner was reservation only, so we ended up at a small Taqueria just around the corner and it was amazing. Mark got a Mexican burger with chorizo, sausage and egg and the rest of us got tacos. It took a while to get our food, so it came out just in time for us to eat and walk right over to Blackbeard Sports for the bioluminescent tour.
After signing the waiver, we hopped in a transit van and started working our way to Esperanza. This was where Mosquito Bay was located. The drive itself was curvy, but not too bad. The most amazing thing was seeing all of the wild horses on the side of the road! Our tour guide said that Ponce de Leon brought the horses over on his ships they are a different breed of horse. They’re slightly smaller and can move a little differently. It is noticeable when you see them! He said the people who live on the island will just hop on them and ride! They really do wander all over and are alarmingly close to the side of the road! He said that’s why you need to watch your speed when driving on vehicle. They jump out just like deer!
When we got to Mosquito Bay, the road wasn’t paved anymore and was extremely bumpy! I don’t even really know how to describe it because there were just really deep holes and grooves in the road and the van was bumping all over the place. He said that they sometimes fill it in with gravel but then it actually isn’t that good because it causes a lot of extra people to come visit the bay and disrupt the ecosystem. So even though the road condition is horrendous, they actually like it to stay that way because it helps keep it protected. Which speaking of protecting the ecosystem, the main roads on Vieques have red street lights for the sea turtles! We thought that was so amazing how the entire island is so focused on conservation and nature!
Back to kayaking, when it was our turn, we wandered out into about 1 foot of water and had to sit down into the kayak. My kayak buddy was Owen! We took a couple of quick paddles just to get out of the way and towards our guide, and immediately the water lit up with blue bioluminescence. It was amazing! For the next hour, we followed our guide deep into the bay and he showed us different things to do with our paddle to make it light up, like dipping your paddle straight up and down or slicing it through the water like a light saber. We also had a glass bottom on our boat and when the boat would move through the water, it looked like stars just swirling past like we were floating through the sky.
My favorite thing to do, however, was put my hand in the water. I would separate my fingers and drag them along, and the blue lights would just roll past and create the most beautiful patterns. I really couldn’t stop doing it. It was so cool. As we approach the backside of the bay, our boats would disturb the fish and the fish swimming into the bioluminescence would create light. You could see the fish swimming underwater, and when they chose to jump out of the water, sometimes several times you could see the bright splashes of water with each jump. It was surreal! The conditions were absolutely perfect for our trip. The water was glassy. The moon wasn’t full and was hit behind clouds, and it had recently rained a couple hours before which they said is prime conditions. The water was literally lighting up like crazy for us!
Our group was relatively small with only 10 people Max and we were four of them. The rest of the people in our group didn’t really seem to want to have fun. So the four of us were the only ones splashing and squishing our paddles around and basically spending the entire hour just enjoying The light show. It was like something out of the movie avatar! Kaia even asked if she could have her ashes spread here when she dies. It was definitely a magical once in a lifetime experience!