The Island of Vieques is located about 15-20 miles off the East coast of Puerto Rico. After spending a night in El Yunque Danyelle and I targeted Vieques as our next destination for two reasons 1) it has what many believe is one of the world's best Bio-Bays 2) it seemed relatively non-touristy.
So with our packs ready to go and our rental car parked in an extremely shady, barbed wire inclosed parking lot - BUT completely safe because my buddy Junior seemed like a cool dude - we set off on the Puerto Rican ferry system.
In my previous post I closed with a conversation I had with a woman who grew up on Vieques, and her warnings that Danyelle and I should consider renting a room rather than camping, due to the high crime rate.
The ferry left at 4:30pm traveling just under 10mph. We were going to arrive on the island with about 30 minutes of daylight. I figured we would have just enough time to reach the camp-grounds, and if we didn't feel comfortable spending the night, we would have to haul ass by foot down the beach to Esperanza(a 15 min trip by foot). Still, in Esperanza there was no guarantee we would find a room, as there aren't really any hotels. For example, one of the places we were advised to stay was with a couple of Americans who ran a restaurant called Bananas, and had a few rooms in the back that they rented out.
While on the ferry I figured I should start up a few conversations to see if I could gather any more information. There were two individuals I was able to have a lengthy conversation with. Both lived on Vieques, but neither was a native. They didn't know each other before meeting in Vieques but BOTH spent most of their lives in Manhattan. One was an old white haired, red faced man in his 70's who grew up in Manhattan. The other was a woman in her 60's, born in Germany, but spent 24 years in Manhattan married to a newspaper writer. Both were merchants, selling their craft on the streets of Esperanza.
A picture from the ferry
At first, neither of them seemed like they wanted to play tour guide to a couple of tourists, but were still willing to engage in some conversation. We talked about everything from the meaning of life and what makes us happy, to what wall-paper and ring-tone was best for the German woman's stone age cell phone. About half way through our 2 hour boat ride I asked them what they thought about camping on Vieques. I figured their opinion would be better than the woman I had met on the dock for a couple of reasons:
- The woman on the dock may have grown up on Vieques, but she now lives her life in a Florida suburb with 2 kids teaching spanish and coaching swimming at a local high-school. She seemed to be a very sweet conservative woman living the American dream.
- The two merchants had spent the last 9 years on Vieques. Their trade puts them right on the street, and in turn, right in the middle of all the action. To me, they would have the best knowledge of what occurs on Vieques.
ALAS - I finally got the answer I was looking for! I asked the German woman if she thought camping on Vieques was safe and her response was positively, YES! The old man agreed, but he agreed with just about everything the German woman said. Still, we new nothing was for sure until we got there and scoped it out.
After the ferry docked we jumped in a cab and headed to the other side of the island where our camp-grounds were located. At this point, I still wanted to get as much info about the island as possible so I started asking the cab driver as many questions as possible. It was getting dark and I thought it still might be a good idea to head straight to Esperanza instead of arriving at a shady place and then having to walk 15 minutes along the coast in the dark. But, to our excitement the cab driver also had only positive things to say about camping on Vieques. Hell yes!
As we walked up to the camp-ground the sun had just disappeared out of site, giving us just enough light to survey the camp grounds. I went up to the first person I saw and started asking questions. This individual was a nice old Puerto Rican woman in her 70's who spoke broken english. She wasn't camping but had stopped by to spend her day at the beach/camp-ground where her grandson was camping. He was on a high-school multi-day field trip to camp, and visit the Bio-Bay on Vieques.
At this point Danyelle and I took a huge sigh of relief realizing the camp-grounds were probably as safe as it gets. As I looked across the camp-grounds, I saw about 13 tents all occupied by Puerto Rican families.
We set up camp:)
Ok, enough rambling - the next post will cover how awesome Vieques was.
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