This is my travel diary of a trip to the North East Caribbean to that square island they call Puerto Rico. This trip could be summed up in one line:
Mojito for breakfast, rain once day and a place called Vieques. It was winter 2012.
What's that Goldeneye filmset doing in this story? We'll get to that later.
If you've been there you know what I'm talking about and might enjoy this but this is especially for people who haven't been and maybe if I can get just one person to visit that place I'll have done my duty as it is truly what feels like the last place on earth free from anything remotely resembling a hassle.
It all started here at the cold, post modernistic, concrete woven hub called 'FRA'.
After 14 hrs in a flight that was so underbooked that we each got 3 seats for a nice rest in between some 'Havanna Cokes' to set the mood we got there:
Darkness had already set in but you could sense the beautiful cocktail of American convenience, Latin American music (and DANCING), kicked back way of going about...well just about everything and a gentle breeze with a mellow 86F/30C degrees each day, every day, day in, day out. What's not to like?
My friend who came up with the idea for the trip in the first place had booked us into the hottest (as in no AC), windiest (as in gigantic fans blowing at max) and tiniest (6 beds in one room) hostel in the oldest part of Puerto Rico's capital San Juan aptly called 'Old San Juan'. After a quick let's call it check-in the ever present music called us to the waterside...I'll let the video speak for itself (skip to 32s for the music):
Grainy and shaky but you get the picture, we were THERE. Suffice to say once you exit the Aeropuerto International San Juan, rest assured you will have instantly forgotten what you even do for a living it drags you down into the caribbean vibe that quickly. We'll later find out just how little we knew about that at that point but it already felt like a wonderful place with just the right mix of old and new, rundown and modern, functioning but not too serious to give you that great feeling of having a good time.
After a short rest in the morning I found myself following vague commands along the lines of 'pack up, cab's here, we gotta go the airport', I remember thinking 'didn't we just get here?'. Seeing the street lit up in the morning sun really brought out the ever present pastel colors of the buildings - something I love!
Anyway we weren't going to the San Juan International airport instead we were going to a place that's called 'Aeropuerto Isla Grande' - the names get bigger and bigger while the buildings keep shrinking, I like that.
Inspired by the small airplanes and the fact that we were told that with 6 people we couldn't take all our luggage because it might not be able to take off I felt the urge to leave one last artistic impression before crashing into the ocean so I did:
In hindsight after having survived the pic seems somewhat strange but it'd be just wrong to keep it from you. I was then presented with a ticket which said Flamenco Air. Before you ask...
That's what it said. So this was it, my first time in an island hopper. Half the gauges didn't work and the copilot seemed to be bigger than the plane itself. That worried most of the 3 other passengers but not me, if they do this twice a day and live in a Hurricane area they'll be able to fly 100 miles on a sunny day. If you have no idea how tiny this seems in real life well...
Yeah...the engine is outside luckily but not very far away:
Being an avid aviation fan I absolutely loved it. Like driving an old car, the connection to the machine and how it operates is just so MUCH more direct. Some impressions through dirty, scratchy plexiglass, tried to compensate as much as possible:
See what I mean about the copilot?
Both were cool dudes who seemed more like friends driving their old mule out to the countryside with some road trippin' strangers in the back.
View was incredible to say the least:
And then well there it was, little speck in the ocean 90 miles off the main island's east coast - Vieques:
When I first saw it I didn't really know what to expect. My friend had kept sharing of intel to a minimum so I was pretty excited to find out what that I seen described online as the 'place that truly feels like the end of the world' was going to be like. First of course we had to land.
My favorite part of the whole flight, the most dangerous part of any flight and the truly exciting thing to witness in a small plane was upon us. Everyone pretended to keep their cool until they could spot the landing strip through the windscreen.
Not quite there yet...
That's more like it:
After safely landing and having our bags thrown out the gentlemen excused themselves and went about their day meaning, they started the plane and went back to the main land. The other two passengers seemingly vanished which left us alone with the airport and a curious reception bungalow by the W hotel group. As you can see it was a busy day:
Of course being Rupert Holmes listening, end of the world travelers we did not stay at something as first worldly as a W hotel. We had a nice place called the 'Villa Coral' run by a nice couple who rent out the spare rooms in their house which is beautifully modeled and feels more like a 4 star hotel than privateers running their own little operation. As one of the three places we needed on the island to survive I saved the receipt for the day that I needed to tell all Steemians where to stay on Vieques, check the right one, we'll get to the other two soon:
We soon found our airport shuttle...
...but no driver. I slowly started to love the place. An airport with no personnel, an airport shuttle without a driver and no humans around. We still needed to get to our hotel though so we found the little shack behind the airport. Two American guys there, one grilling burgers and the other one busy with what seemed like the restoration of a Harley - behind the kitchen - under a gigantic umbrella. Ok, I definitely love this place!
The guys were so nice to provide us a map of the island and told us how lucky we were "cuz this year the hurricanes been nice to us, only ripped down couple hundred palmtrees but no houses" - good to know.
If you go to Vieques, check out this place it's an out of this world experience and the perfect start to your time on the island!
At this point we still hadn't seen a beach, a hotel or anyone else besides Jack, Joe and the ESPN commentator babbling on on the tiny 15" TV. You literally feel like you just crashed on some other planet. Eventually the driver showed up and finally we got to see what all the fuss is about with this place...after a short stroll through the rain forest like back roads, roamed by the island's famous wild horses, we got to the shore, got out and for some time there wasn't any talking...
Before even going to the place we stayed at we HAD TO check out the other side of this pic...which we did:
Not much I can comment here honestly, you gotta imagine sand below your feet and the only thing in your ears is the 'swooshing' sound the wind leaves in between the palm tree leaves. While walking back the inevitable once a day rain set in:
20 minutes later, same temp of a steady 86 and the sun came back. In this region of the world I learned to appreciate clouds because whenever the sun hits you directly it burns and I mean b u r n s. I been to the UAE in spring and that wasn't half as bad. Some people might have Red Bull to cool down and notice the barcode on the can...
Like I said every little detail makes you feel good :). Whenever you even get the slightest onset of seriousness you look around at bill boards and then it just hits you - tomorrow I'll be like Jesus:
That might be too much for some so might just have a cold beer:
We postponed Jesus-walking to the next day, checked into our place (didn't take pics of that that day) and went back to the magical waterfront. Needless to say after that day we were pretty beat and frankly overwhelmed by the impressions. You might have noticed the absence of any and all people from the pictures on Vieques. That is due to the fact that there just aren't that many people especially not in 'Esperanza' which is the name of this town.
This island has a long history and a lot of it is actually bad. There is a grave problem haunting the people of this island and we came to know more about it during the following days. Will share with you and hopefully help spread the word about it.
For now I'll leave you with the one thing only the Caribbean sun will do - go down like this...we were tired but excited for the next day!
Oh and there are some people here too :)
Aaand it's gone.
