Monday, November 16th
Fajardo to Vieques
We woke up to the dismal sound of steady pounding rain on the deck outside. We gritted our teeth and quickly packed up our bags to head downstairs for breakfast. It was all well and good for it to rain on our first day, where there was no beach involved, but we were headed to the sunny, beautiful island of Vieques! It had to stop raining.
Breakfast was set up in the front courtyard of the hotel, since the beautiful deck at the back was a flood zone, and we dutifully ate our oatmeal while the inn owner tsked at the sheets of rain washing out the car park. She predicted dire delays on the ferry. I resisted throwing a
breakfast roll at her head. The coffee was weak. But at least there was bacon; Stuart gave me his last bite to cheer me up.
As we arrived at the ferry terminal and parked our little car in the long-term lot – guarded by strays! - the rain cleared to a high grey cloudy sky; by the time we boarded, it was sunny in Fajardo but we were chasing the rainclouds eastward across the water to Vieques. Again,
rain when we arrived and I held back churlish, childish tears. We found a publico to take us to our car rental place and pick up our 4WD for the two days we were on the island. Imagine, we had two rental cars at once! It felt like a distinctly strange luxury.
We took the winding route 201 south from Isabella Segunda, the main port town on the north
side of Vieques, down to the south side of the island and Esperanza. Our lodgings were easy to find, two blocks north of the malecon, the seafront esplanade that made up most of Esperanza.
Carmen showed us our little studio room at Mi Pana apartments, with the louvered hurricane windows we’d seen all over Puerto Rico and a cozy table-and-chair set on the walkway outside. The room was rustic but clean. We sat outside for a few minutes, watching the last of the drizzling rain pass, and made friends with the calico cat that wandered the property. We named him (her? we didn’t check) Mofongo.
We changed into beachier duds and headed down to the malecon to grab some lunch at Banana’s, the local gringo-ish hangout. In fact, as we wandered the malecon, it was pretty clear that all of Esperanza was a gringo-ish hangout. It had that lush life air that must have drawn Hemingway and his ilk to Key West, before the chain dives and the Banana Republic took over Duvall Street and turned Key West into Cancun East. Everyone looked happy and lazy, even the stray dogs. The rain had washed the streets and the buildings clean and the little beachfront sparkled. We had
finally arrived at a beach vacation.
After lunch, we drove the 15 minutes back up to Isabella Segunda to use the only ah-teh-atcheh on the island – imagine! – and to get Stuart some new swim trunks, since the ones he brought were ripped. From there we went straight to Playa Media Luna. I got a kick out of driving along
the sandy road next to Sun Bay, bouncing through holes and swerving to miss tree stumps. It felt like Africa again, only this time I was the grown-up singing along to the radio and not the kid stuck in the backseat.
We found the beach and I think I might actually have run screaming into the water, even though it was still a little cloudy and windy, I was beyond delighted to be in the ocean. After a lazy hour or
so, we explored further down the road trying to find Playa Navio, but the indeterminably deep mudholes prevented us from making it all the way down the road. We turned back and headed back to Mi Pana, to relax a little before our evening’s adventure.
At five-forty, we drove back to the Sun Bay parking lot and met our guide, Federico, who told us to slather up with baby oil because, as he said, “the mosquitos here are bad, but out on the bay, it’s like war”. He drove us, and another couple from Maryland, down a bumpy dark road, far past Playas Media Luna and Navio, to Bahia Mosquito. It was already blanketed darkness in the sky as we unloaded the kayaks alongside a couple other tour companies, but our guy moved fast and we were in the water before the rest of them. Stuart sat behind me and told me what to do with my paddle – c’mon, you think I’ve ever kayaked before? – and we were soon slicing through the water out to the center of the dark, warm bay.
We reached the center, and Federico gave us a torturous ten-minute lecture on the bio-luminscent bay’s ecosystem and conservation efforts, all ten minutes of which we were excitedly dipping our hands in the water to see the sparkles there. He told us how the dinoflagellates used their bioluminescence to appear several hundred times their actual size to scare off predators. He explained how the mangrove swamps surrounding Bahia Mosquito decomposed into the bay, filling it with incredibly rich minerals, and how the very narrow opening to the sea
created the ideal conditions for an incredibly dense bioluminiscent bay. He talked a bunch of science and ecology, basically, very little of which I retained since I was splashing my oar in the water to watch the sparkles. And then we finally slid out of the kayaks with woops and
hollers and into the warm night water.
It was incredible. My arms and legs glowed, dimly, as though someone had shattered a florescent bulb in the water and then smeared the top with vaseline. It was always changing, too, depending on how quickly I moved, or kicked my feet. Stuart was a vaguely star-shaped glow to my
left. The light shining upwards showed me the pure wonder on his face. It was one thing to see the sparkling dinoflagellates light up around the kayak’s oar; it was an entirely other thing to see them on your arm.
The warm, highly salinated water made floating effortless, so we just floated, trying out dozens of permutations to see cooler and cooler effects in the water. Look! When you skimmed your arm across the surface, they glide over and across like little grains of sand! Look, when you submerge and then come shooting out, you can see them slide down your face! I must have spent ten whole minutes just cupping water in my hands and watching the little lights twinkle in and out.
We spent thirty or forty minutes in the water, long enough to prune our fingers, and only begrudgingly did we fling ourselves back into our kayaks (which gave me a nasty boomerang-shaped bruise on my right leg) and start gliding back towards the shore. We were giddy. I felt twelve years old, like a million bucks, and glowing inside. I didn’t even hear the buzzing of the mosquito-packed air, although I did rub myself down with more baby oil when we pulled the kayaks back onto land.
The whole bumpy ride back to Sun Bay, we wittered on about the swim, the lights, the incredible feel of the water. Stuart and I parted ways with our guide and the Maryland couple and drove back to Mi Pana, ecstatic, bubbling, to shower and change and head out to dinner. We walked down to Duffy’s, on the malecon, the whole time jonesed and electrified from the experience.
I’m sitting in my chilly Brooklyn apartment right now and thinking, if I could bottle that evening, that warm expansive water, that sense of limitless wonder and incredulity that this teeming, crazy planet had conspired to create this experience and that I have the brain power and the imagination to enjoy and relish it, I wouldn’t sell it for the million dollars it’d doubtless be worth. I’d keep it and every time it was cold and harsh outside, or any time I couldn’t tell hell from the
handbasket, I’d squeak open the seal and breathe it all in again.
We slept like babies that night and I dreamed I was floating effortlessly through warm, inky black water.
