It’s been too long, I know. It’s been over four months since this incredible trip and I’ve done it no justice – in my defense, the time between then has done me no justice either. If you’ve forgotten where we were, here’s day one and day two.

Tuesday, November 17th
Vieques

It was bright when we awoke, the sun already warming the small balcony outside our room. Stuart made coffee – we’d smartly bought some at the colmado in Isabella II – while I jumped in the Toyota and drove two minutes down the road to get some breakfast pastries at La Dulce Esperanza. I remember the feeling of the hot seat under my thin beach skirt, the giddiness of knowing that we were only going to get hotter, saltier, and happier as the day took us to the beach. On my way home with my danish haul, I swung by the beach shack on the malecon and rented some flippers and snorkels.

I arrived home to find Stuart showered and relaxing outside the room; we ate our danishes and gulped down coffee and there was something delicious in knowing we didn’t have plans, damnit, we were just going to jump into the car and head to the beach. I pulled on my swimsuit and threw towels and sunscreen and my camera into a tote bag, and away we went.

We took the road heading east out of Esperanza and instead of turning north on 996, we followed on until we got to the Diego gate, which used to mark the line between Vieques and the Navy. This was the reason to beach on Vieques – completely undeveloped, completely unspoiled. After two miles or so of road, we struck out off the road, southward, where we suspected the sign had once pointed towards Playa Caracas. We parked in the shade and (after a judicious car-side application of sunscreen) I ran shrieking towards the surf.

There were crawling vines all along the sand, with trumpet-shaped magenta flowers turned towards the sun. There were big lazy pieces of driftwood, floating shoreward and surfward, all afternoon. We laid out, we splashed into the pristine waters, we ate ham sandwiches and drank tons of water. I took photos. After two or three hours – who knew? who had a watch? – we decided to investigate the other beaches along the Navy road, and ended up spending the last of the afternoon at Orchid Beach. I snorkeled across the entire length of the wide, shallow bay, just relishing the power of my flipper-kicking feet.

The sun gave us a good going-over, us cave-dwelling New Yorkers, but we didn’t care. As we drove back westward into the lowering sun, we bounced in our seats and let our arms dangle out the car windows and grinned, grinned like fools, at our matching sunburns.

We gingerly removed our swimming duds and marveled at the angry red lines as we got ready for dinner. We had some time to kill in the lazy late afternoon so we got back in the car and drove along the lonely, hilly roads of the west side of the island, up route 995 to the north coast. We found a little half-moon of sandy beach near an abandoned church that’d been commandeered as a manure den, far as we could tell, and we wandered down to the shore only to get chased back by a disturbingly well-organized flank of mosquitoes.

Across the water in the dusk, we could see the clouds forming over the mainland. Back in the car, we swatted at errant mosquitoes as we pointed ourselves back to Esperanza. I remember we were quiet, on the drive back, and spent twenty minutes watching the lights come on in the few houses we passed, listening to the nighttime critters get louder as the sun left Vieques for the day.

We’d been hoping to eat at El Quenepo, on the malecon, but they were still closed for low season, so we had a satisfying meal at Trade Winds, leaning back into wide comfortable chairs, splitting a bottle of wine, giggling at how the alcohol rushed to our fried little brains. We were happy, glowing pink in the candlelight, listening to the surf rush at the sand a few feet away.

[The rest of the photos live here.]