Sailors Go on Vacation — The Reality
At the end of February, six sailing friends met in Vieques. We had high hopes for relaxation, fun in the sun, and some adventure. Things got interesting the day before vacation even started. I called to get the address of the house we rented. That’s when I was told that most of the roads on the island didn’t have names — which made it interesting to get six people to the house. Luckily islanders were very friendly and we had some recommended landmarks. Oh, and by the way, there are lots of horses and chickens wandering the road to make things interesting too.
These are the controls for the plane that's going to get us to Vieques!?!
However, the adventure started before we got to the house. The passenger ferry had been out of service (it started operating again the week we were there). So we took a car from San Juan to Cieba and sprung for the $30 flight to get to Vieques. That flight involved all of us having to shout our weight across the airport so that we could be told where to sit on the plane.
Should labels like this make me worry???
When we made it to the house, we were all really happy. The house was great and Homeaway.com represented it well. We were the second people to rent the house complete with gourmet kitchen, large rooms and a balcony and pool that both looked out at the ocean.
This is the pool at our house...vacation is looking good so far : )
The internet advertised a fair number of sailing charters and opportunities for Vieques. However, they were not prevalent or obvious once we were on the island. Unfortunately, a sailboat did run aground on the reef the first morning we arrived. Not sure how they did that because even the cartoon placemat map showed the reef as really large and obvious.
The Sol Food truck (Picture courtesy of Jessica)
We knew that fruit and vegetables would be available on Tuesday and Thursday mornings — IF we got to the farmers market early enough. Luckily we had a good trip Tuesday morning. We were also able to find a couple of other stores and road side stands. So, we had plenty of fruit to make tropical blender drinks. We cooked many meals at the house during the week. However, the road side truck Sol Food had the best food that we ate out. If you’re going, get there early. They’re open from 11-4 Thursday through Sunday or until food runs out.
Glad they're clear about their hours. (Picture courtesy of Jessica)
The week included lots of great snorkeling. Even though Vieques is a pretty small island, all of the beaches were really different from each other. So snorkels and fins were standard attire for most of the week. Blue Beach had a great island to swim to and snorkel around. Playa Navio had volcanic rock for climbing and walking to a blow hole. Playa Cofi had a lot of sea glass (even if they do think that some of it came from a dump in Puerto Rico). Playa Negra is a black sand beach accessed by a half mile walk down a dry river bed (but too rocky for snorkeling). Mosquito pier had some of the best snorkeling of the week.
The blow hole we found at Playa Navio. (Picture courtesy of Jessica)
By far, the favorite touristy activity of the week was the Bio Bay tour. The water glowed so much with bioluminescence that you could see that path of fish swimming through it. If you go on this tour, make sure you rent your kayaks from a company that has clear boats. We had a great experience with Vieques Adventure Company.
Sun Bay Beach
So, it wasn’t exactly a sailing vacation as originally planned. But, it sure was fun in the end.
