Vieques: Quiet Island Get-a-way with Marvels of Nature

Fajardo is a good-sized city on the east coast of Puerto Rico, with easy access to the El Yunque rain forest and Vieques (the ferry leaves from Fajardo to Vieques).

The Fajardo Inn is a very pleasant resort/hotel on a hill in Fajardo and is a nice place to stay either before or after going to Vieques. We stayed at the Fajardo Inn after returning from Vieques and it was a very nice stopping noff point.

The hotel features a very nice pool area, complete with swim-up bar, a small mini-golf course, a gym with a juice bar, two restaurants, and a very nice and helpful staff.

We enjoyed the more casual of the two restaurants very much. It's a mexican food restaurant on the lower level with affordable prices. There's also a scenic top story bar which is a great place to relax at the end of the day.

The rooms were very spacious, quiet and clean.

The Fajardo Inn isn't really within convenient walking distance of any other restaurants or shops or anything. It is about a mile from the ferry terminal. A little too far to go (uphill) by foot while dragging your luggage along, but it is just a cheap taxi ride from the ferry to the hotel. I did walk back down the the ferry at one point, looking for a grocery store of some type, but never did find any place I would have wanted to stop at.

I wouldn't build a whole vacation around it, but the Fajardo Inn was a really nice place to stay a couple of days.

The passenger ferry from Fajardo is a great inexpensive way to get to Vieques. It's only $2 per person, each way for the roughly two hour journey. The ferry runs 4 times per day during the week and 3x/day on weekends.

The ferry ticket offices both in Fajardo and on Vieques are sort of annoying. They don't open up until just about 45 minutes before the ferry is to depart, so you have to line up in a long queue, and then it takes an amazing amount of time for them to complete a very simple transaction: OK: ticket, $2/person. Here's the money.. How hard can it be? But the ticket lines take forever to empty out and you're sure you're going to miss the boat. But somehow it does work out and then you queue up again inside the terminal area before you scramble aboard.

Warning: if you're the sensitive type, do NOT sit out back on the open air area. The diesel fumes will really contribute to making you seasick.

Fajardo is on the east end of Puerto Rico and that's where you have to go to board the ferry for Vieques. It's only about an hour from the San Juan airport area. Don't bother with the hassles of renting a car just to get from San Juan to Fajardo. There are several taxi operators who will take your family from the airport area to the Fajardo ferry terminal for around/under $50 (for all four of us, not per person). If you're having trouble finding one, call up your Vieques hotel and ask them. They probably have several business cards of these drivers at their reception.

Upon arrival in Vieques, the congestion and confusion of the ferry terminal is pretty surprising, given that you're expecting this quiet relaxed island. But the arrival process is anything but relaxing. The quiet streets become a major traffic jam for a few minutes as the passengers sort out where they are going. There are many multi-colored van taxis that are all vying to get you as a customer, while trying to balance their passengers so the whole vanload is in roughly the same direction. You share the van with other passengers heading the same way and the driver stops to let people off as he comes to the individual destinations.

At either end of the ferry, there area a couple small cafes to grab a coke to drink or some empanadas or something for a snack before getting on the ferry.

Vieques has some really beautiful beaches. There are very nice beaches that you can easily walk to while staying in Esperanza. Other's on the island will require renting a car or hiring a driver. From talking with others there, it sounded like hiring one of the local taxi/collectivo drivers wasn't really such a great idea since they tended to charge a lot more than the car rental just to take you to a beach and them come back an hour or two later to pick you up.

The Esperanza beach is a pretty spot to watch the sunset, and it has some picturesque palm trees leaning out over the narrow strip of soft sand. There's a pier sticking out into the water at one end and we were told there was good snorkeling around the pier pilings. We snorkeled there one afternoon and it really was pretty disappointing. Around the pier and the sailboat moorings just to the right of the pier, we saw a couple interesting things, but overall, there just weren't that many fish to watch in that area.

From Esperanza, its a short walk around the peninsula to get to Sun Beach. Sun beach is a magnificent long cresent of sand. The whole curve feels like it is over a half mile long. It wasn't crowded at all when we were there. Sun Beach Bay is a semi protected bay, but there can be pretty good waves there which would be dangerous for swimming, but we were able to do a little body-surfing there.

Bananas is a bar and grill style restaurant right on the Malecon (main beachfront boardwalk area) of Esperanza. The atmosphere is definitely laidpback beach-bum bar casual.

Catch a table outside for the premier spot to watch the nightly car cruise up and down the beachfront street -- it seemed to be an entertaining mix of locals and tourists in their rental jeeps. And everybody else who isn't driving will be walking past Bananas central location.

The food was typical grill food -- burgers, fries, chicken, nachos and that kind of thing. Nothing fancy, but it all tasted good, and the beer was cold. The prices were fair compared to many other places around town.

Both times we at at Bananas, it was packed and there were many waiters or waitresses. But we weren't in any hurry and it was a fun spot to sit around, so instead of complain about slow service, we marveled at how hard our waitress was working.

Bananas also runs a guesthouse, offering pretty cheap rooms. But don't even think of staying there unless you want to stay up late partying and not get a lot of sleep because it is really an active place.

We've been a lot of places, and the bioluminescent bay of Vieques is truly one of the most magically unique places we've seen. Briefly, the bay is home to microscopic dinoflagellates who emit light when they are disturbed. Our trip happened to fall during the new moon, so we had to experience this, and it was our primary reason for coming to Vieques. The subtle effect is washed out by the light of a full moon, so many of the tour operators don't even make the trip during that time of the month.

Our kayak tour was with Blue Caribe Kayaks, located right on the main street of Esperanza, not with Island Adventures. Island Adventures does the tour aboard a big electric, non-polluting pontoon boat. We wanted the more personal feel of the kayak tour. Our trip, which was pretty typical, began at the store-front of the Blue Caribe in Esperanza. You board a van for the short ride out to the bay, and even before the van stops to unload you and the kayaks you start to feel excited. It is amazingly dark! Eventually things get sorted out, you pick up your paddle and grab a kayak and the adventure really begins.

The general plan of the evening is to paddle individual sea kayaks out to the middle of the bay, then you can jump in the water and swim with the light-emitting creatures.

We had barely started paddling alongside the mangroves lining the bay when I noticed the faint glow in the water everytime I moved the paddle or my hand through the water. And it just gets better from there. As we rowed out to the middle, every stroke stimulates a new bunch of creatures to light up briefly.

Once you reach the middle, the guides help you tie up the kayaks into a central bunch, and you can jump into the water and swim with the lights. It is amazing to watch the individual points of light slide off your hand or leg. Of course you have to do the standard snow-angel move, waving your arms and legs in the water to be surrounded by a angel-shaped halo of tiny lights. And for fun, you can also dribble the tiny lights out of your mouth.

After a good long swim, it was back into the kayaks for the trip back to shore. We were a little chilled by the breeze after being in the water, but it was bearable since it was a nice night. We weren't used to kayaking, so it was a little uncomfortable doing all the paddling and sitting in the kayak, but the experience was totally worth the discomfort. The guides do a nice job and nobody got lost or left behind in the dark.

I regret that I don't have any personal photos from this experience, but I don't have a water-proof camera. No guides are left with the vans, so you only bring your dry clothes along with you, and anything you carry in the kayak that you expect to get wet.
There are other bio bays, including on mainland Puerto Rico, but this one is supposed to be the best and brightest. It was an astounding experience.

Casa Alta Vista came pretty close to ruining our stay on Vieques, but our stay was saved by the enjoyable experience of the rest of the island. It is the kind of pretty, independent, small hotel that you really want to like: but the room was really just terrible.
If we'd paid about $30 for the room, then maybe I'd feel differently, but it certainly wasn't worth the price.

Casa Alta Vista is a few blocks off the end of the beach front main street of Esperanza. It's a pretty building with around 3 stories, with a few rooms on each floor and a nice ocean view from it's rooftop.

The main problem with our room was the bugs. I mean, its a tropical island, you expect a few bugs flying around. But we woke up with a lot more bug bites than we went to bed with. And about the first thing we noticed upon entering the room was that there were bloody remains of smushed mosquitoes on the frig and on the walls of the room and bathroom. Not really a nice appealing sight to accompany their grotty bedspreads.

Besides the bugs and cleanliness, the other problem with the room was the noise. OK, it's a rural area, we kind of expected to hear some roosters through the window (the crappy louvre style windows that never really close to seal out noise), and that wasn't the problem. Casa Alta Vista wasn't a big noisy party hotel when we were there, either. But just someone walking into their room down the hall or next door sounds like they are talking in your room. Our neighbors came home at something like midnight,and they weren't really talking loudly, just talking, but they might as well have been talking right at us in our room for all the good the doors did at keeping the sound out. I think the sound was actually somewhat amplified by the tile floors, etc.

Another thing I didn't really care for here is that they really try to nickel and dime you every chance they get: beach towel: $5. Snorkel mask, $5. old bike --- rental fee.

They do have a mini-store in the first floor by the reception desk, and it is nice to have the convenience of that to buy some beer, rum, or chips or something. And they provide coffee and pre-packaged muffins for breakfast, nothing great, but it at least gets you started.

Don't make our mistake --- stay somewhere else!