Living in Miami has given me the opportunity to know so many amazing Puerto Ricans, but if I had counted my connections to PR before this year, the list would be slim. The stretch would be the hurricane relief efforts, my beautiful sister-in-law, arroz con gandules, and the ASL version of Westside Story that I tried out for in high school.
I simply had never thought much of visiting Puerto Rico because in the last 10 years we’ve gone from being a student family where our free time was consumed with school and Isabella, resources where skim, and the little vacation budget we had was spent visiting family, to being in a completely different economic predicament with TWO kids, a big-kid job, and not enough time to vacation. I thought about that a lot leading up to my birthday this year. I have worked so hard my whole life to build a career and balance it with my family in a way that would keep me present enough in the lives of my children to avoid the need for their therapy. What I didn’t do was to spend my 20s traveling the world, going to concerts, getting into trouble, or skydiving. Although I’ve had SO many adventures in my life (literally SO MANY) and my life has been ridiculously beautiful and full of fun, I just never made time to be recklessly carefree.
So for my birthday this year, Seth decided to surprise me with some moderately reckless carefree adventure. The level of carefree where I had no idea where we were going on vacation and only knew we were going somewhere when I received a fraud alert for a hotel charge. I promised Seth that I’d keep the secret alive by avoiding information and then he forced me to promise not to ask any questions. So when Seth told me I had to pack “shorts that could get wet but that weren’t really going to get wet” I was confused. Even more confused when we landed in San Juan, PR, rented a car, drove for an hour, got on a ferry for 20 minutes, and landed in what seemed like the middle of nowhere.
The middle of nowhere in Puerto Rico is called Vieques. You get there by driving to Ceiba and taking a ferry that is FOUR DOLLARS ROUND-TRIP. In my experience, you find the most beautiful things in the middle of nowhere. Even so, I had no idea why we were there until the sun had long set.
Vieques is home to the most beautiful natural phenomenon and the Hotel Tamarindo. It’s name comes from a giant tamarind tree that grows through the center of the lobby and the patio upstairs.
The view from this bed and breakfast is a field of horses and a sea spreading as far as the sky allows it. The hotel is cozy and had such a great spirit about it. It was quiet and peaceful. We spent the evening roaming the hotel and playing board games in the library where there was an honor snack bar and a mini library with a “borrow a book, bring it back, take it with you, mail it back, or leave another in its place” system.
The hotel was decorated with quaint signs that reminded me of the harvest festivals my mother used to hold me and my sisters hostage at (I didn’t appreciate clever comments on wooden displays until a much older age.)
Our room was the best in the building. I could have stared out the window for hours, but I was told to change into the “shorts that could get wet but wouldn’t really get wet.”
So hours had passed and I still had no idea why we were there but we set off to explore in my “wetable” shorts. Vieques is filled with stray horses that are fed and friendly but owned by no one. There are also dogs running around the island but they all have owners, they just seemingly have their own lives with places to go and errands to run during the daytime.
After dinner and after dark Seth and I set off for the first planned excursion of the trip. The Mosquito Bay Bio tour. It is pitch black darkness and the only light you have is the light of the moon and the light of the bioluminescent phytoplankton that makes the water glitter and glow in your hands and when you brush anything against it. You know that scene in Moana where the grandmother comes back as a mantaray and the water glows and she lights up as she swims through it? That’s why bioluminescent phytoplankton does to anything that brushes against it. So you could see the schools of glowing fish swimming away from your oar as you rowed. Unfortunately our camera doesn’t have night vision and flash doesn’t capture the glow so the best picture I have is this blurry one of Seth and I in a kayak. Oh well, I guess you’ll have to see it for yourself.
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