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Going Home

All too soon it was time to leave Vieques. We’d had a wonderful trip – full of good yoga practices, good food, friendship, warm water and more. I hope to return someday. There was lots more I could have done and certainly I need another chance to practice snorkeling. Many thanks to our yoga teacher, Lindsey for coming up with the idea and organizing it and showing us this beautiful place that she has visited many times before.
Happy Trails!

Feliz Navidad at the airport

Another one of those mongrel dogs, hoping we’d give him something to eat

Jen was all smiles riding next to the pilot

Bye bye Vieques

Flora crouches to get a photo of a brightly painted Cape Air plane

This blue planet seen as we approached NYC.

Sunrise to Sunset and Beyond

The sunrises and sunsets were divine. We stopped what we were doing to make sure we could take them in. Often we’d have pina coladas while we watched the sunset. Sunrise was a good reason to get up in the morning.

San Juan to the west of us

Animals on Vieques

Vieques, like many other islands around the world, has been plagued by non-native animals introduced for one reason or another. The human population is less than 10,000 and the horse population is around 3,000. Many of these horses are feral and some are perhaps simply let out to graze til their owners decide they need them. More people appeared to ride horses than bikes. Chickens are everywhere. Their incessant crowing woke me up at night. Dogs and cats are allowed to roam and most do not appeared to be neutered. I was disappointed with the lack of birds – both in numbers of birds and diversity of species. It may be a slow time with many having migrated away for the ‘winter’ season however I was told that there are never a lot of birds, certainly nothing like Florida. Even sea birds which would presumably not be affected by the introduced species on the island, were few and far between. Frogs, toads and lizards were everywhere. At night the frog sounds provided a white noise for sleeping. I named one frog the marimba frog due to its call that sounded like marimba notes. Another tiny frog says its name ‘coqui’. We saw one bright green iguana on the west end of the island. These were introduced for a reason that I don’t know.

Clip clop, down the street

Free-range horses

Looking for a handout

mongrel dog

baby fish in a mangrove swamp

Tarpon being fed by the fish monger

We speculated that an insect created these large brown lumps on trees

Fascinating beetles eating decaying fruit

hermit crab

non-native toad

native toad

Red-eyed coqui

Lizards are good at plank

city pigeon

Black-necked Stilt

I think these were yellowlegs

Brown Pelican

Magnificent Frigatebird

Great Egret. Cattle Egrets were much more common. They followed the horses.

Stuff Grows on Vieques

December 17, 2013 – 2:23 pm
Posted in vacation
Tagged bananas, bougainvillea, flowers, hibiscus, jasmine, plants, trees, Vieques
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We were there at the beginning of the dry season. However, someone must have mis-read the calendar. We had some rain most days and quite a bit of rain on one day. And with the never-ending summer weather, plant life thrives. Any building or car that had been left alone for a while appeared to have stuff growing on, around and through it. I was impressed by the shear numbers of flowers that we saw – most of which I could not identify. There was lots of bougainvillea, many varieties of hibiscus, jasmine, morning glory, bromeliads and much more. Also much to my surprise, there were quite a few cacti species! And no, I don’t know what they are. If you know the names of any of these plants, do let me know. We were surprised by the honey bees! They were pollinating many flowers. We never saw any evidence of bee hives so maybe they were introduced and have gone feral along with the horses, dogs, cats, mongoose, etc.

Kiwano – horned melon

They look like saguaros

Another cactus

mangrove roots

hibiscus fruit

palm tree lit up at night

300 year old Cieba tree

From a distance it looks like a good climbing tree. Up close it looks armed and dangerous.

Wing-like roots

bougainvillea

This looked like a pea flower

Bougainvillea

jasmine

bougainvillea

Love this palm

hibiscus

Another kind of hibiscus

Anyone know what this is?

Unused trails and roads are swiftly overrun with foliage

morning glory

two dimensional palm

big bromliad

This looks like an orange chantrelle. We saw dried chantrelles for sale in a market.

Making our way to beach

Sometimes we had to wade

mangroves

Boardwalk through a mangrove forest to a brackish lagoon.

Vieques Beaches

Vieques is known for miles of beautiful beaches. Much of the island used to be a US naval bombing range. That ended maybe ten years ago. Now that land is owned by the US Fish and Wildlife Service however much is still off limits due to unexploded ordinances. Fortunately many beautiful beaches are open. There are also coral reefs that provide good snorkeling experiences. I am not a swimmer but have always thought I’d like snorkeling and indeed, once I got used to putting my face in the water, I really did like it and at the end of the trip, I was wishing for another week just to snorkel!