Parguera to Vieques

The next day, I woke up early to go diving at The Wall and the Mermaid Point. I had not heard a lot about Puerto Rico being a great dive destination. I was pleasantly surprised! The Black Coral reef was incredible. Everything was covered with fans, sponges, coral, and sea life. It was one of the prettiest dive destinations that I've been to in years.

Photos from About.com


Afterwards I started on what I thought would be a relatively short drive to the port for Vieques. Puerto Rico is not a huge island, but its roads that are not part of the freeway system are narrow, winding, and absolutely terrifyings. There were stretches along the coast where there was a sheer cliff dropping into the ocean right of the lane, no guardrails, narrow shoulder. To top off that harrowing drive, the signs are wrong. There was one town where I followed the signs leading to the highway I was supposed to following and ended up in the middle of nowhere. I backtracked and tried it again, sure that I had just misread the sign. Once again, I ended up lost. The third time, I just asked someone where to go. They gave me directions that were opposite of the signs and I ended up in the right direction. After all of the time I spent getting lost, I missed my ferry and had to wait for several hours for the next one.


By the time I made it to Vieques, it was already dark and I had missed my appointment to visit the Bahia Mosquitos. As unpleasant as that bay sounds, it is a bioluminescant bay with the highest concentration of dynoflagellates in the world. Luckily for me, an incredibly awesome crew at Blue Caribe felt sorry for me and ended up giving me a private tour of the bay (and hooking me up with a hotel room). It was unbelievable. We kayaked out to the part of the bay where the bioluminesence is most apparent. At first it was just glowing as I moved my paddle through the water, but then I jumped in and it was glowing all around me. When I lifted my hands up, the water would run down my arms in green streaks like a bad trip.

Photo from http://www.biobay.com/


The next morning, I spent the morning walking around Vieques. I had a nice breakfast at Bananas and a telephone conversation with my best friend Mindy about officiating her wedding ceremony. That is definitely one of the perks of traveling in Puerto Rico: nationwide cell phone coverage applies. :)

After making it back to the mainland, I headed back towards San Juan. I went to dinner with a friend from high school who happened to be stationed in Puerto Rico--small world--and met my family back at their Resort.