Isabel Segunda, Isla de Vieques

I have been to Puerto Rico twice, but never to Vieques a nearby island. My sister-in-law went a couple of years ago and my wife liked what she heard. Then her oldest friend in a Key West wanted to take her to an island for a birthday vacation, because islands are, I suppose, what island dwellers visit, and my wife put up no resistance to Vieques when she was told that was where she would turn 60. That is why I have pictures of people riding horses in the Caribbean town of Isabel II.

When we drove across Puerto Rico the first time almost twenty years ago I have vivid memories of sharing the roads of the mountainous interior with riders on horseback, bareback, in pouring rain, stopped at traffic lights like furry tall cars. Things have not changed. Below the sign to the road to Esperanza, the tourist town called "Hope." Estacione is Puerto Rican English for "park." They speak another language in that part of the US of A...read on as the plot thickens.

Puerto Rico is a strange mish mash of a country, an overcrowded island in the Caribbean chain of big islands the "Greater Antilles" of Jamaica, Cuba, Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, but it's citizens are US nationals with no Presidential vote but the right to live and work in the US an inestimable privilege especially as the island has a debt of 70 billion dollars for a population of three and a half million, which is decidedly not a privilege. They sell gas by the liter but speed limits are in miles per hour (frequently not posted!) and distances are posted in kilometers. For a nerd like me it is a paradise of contradictions. Yet Vieques, a Puerto Rican municipality, is its own paradise.

My wife apparently took a walking tour of the main and only town on Vieques yesterday and sent me these phone pictures using a better equipped friend's cell. That's because Verizon doesn't serve Puerto Rico but AT&T does, making my wife madder than a wet hen. Isabel Segunda means "Elizabeth the Second" and refers to the Queen of Spain who authorized the first European explorers of these waters.

Ten thousand people live on Vieques, a hilly island twenty one miles long, four miles wide and about eight miles from the Puerto Rican mainland whence come the car and passenger ferries. And this being America (!) whence also come the airline flights. My wife, ever the careful shopper, wanted to rent a car in San Juan and take it to Vieques on the ferry, as rentals are in high demand on the little island. No can do they told her. Only passengers are allowed on the ferries, and privately owned vehicles. However the government run ferries only charge two dollars a head, and locals whose taxes help pay for the ride get to board first.

I wondered how isolated the "Little Sister" (La Nena in Spanish) would feel compared to the big island, but my wife says Vieques attracts some top flight chefs, especially in the smaller southern community of Esperanza, (Hope) said to be the tourist hub. My wife also told me she met quite a few former Key West residents in Isabel Segunda. I'm not certain I'm ready to make the switch to a tiny island with a 35mph speed limit, wild horses on the roads and not too much in the way of road trips.

As pretty as it may be it really is quite isolated, and for all that it is American, served by the US Postal Service (zip code 00765) it really isn't part of what one might call the United States. The language is Spanish though the tourist industry speaks English, so you can get by. But to live or travel off the beaten path in Puerto Rico is to be in Central America, not Connecticut. From what I see and hear Vieques too is that sort of rural community, leavened by mainland Americans and a lively tourist industry that keeps the island going economically. Vieques has its own police detachment my wife found out, with their own dedicated dispatch center...but no my Spanish is nowhere near good enough for that, especially considering one of these young officers had no English at all. Tourist be ready!

I think I can see the charm of living on an island with not a single traffic light, well paved, yet narrow lanes, isolated beaches and a community strong enough to enforce a strict dress code of no bathing suits on the streets. It sounds rather quaint, old fashioned perhaps, and there is nothing wrong with that. Indeed when I get tired of hearing the complaints how Key West has changed and deteriorated over the years, I shall rest assured a small Caribbean island will be there ready to take into distant exile the detritus of whiners who can't stand change in their beloved Key West. Me included.

Vieques has community spirit to spare too. The island is responsible for chasing off the U S military who used the ends of Vieques as pin cushions for target practice. You may remember the sit ins and protests and the determination not to give an inch (or a metric centimeter) until the US Navy withdrew completely. Which they did in 2003, promising to clean up their mess. The clean up is almost completed though one area remains closed to civilians as munition and chemical removal continues. As you can imagine there was more than one naysayer who predicted economic calamity with the military withdrawal, and Key West has benefited as training was moved from Vieques splitting the increase between Key West and the Florida panhandle. I did read one blogger who suggested a high murder rate was created by the withdrawal of the US Navy. Vieques, Puerto Rico, Murder Rate Highest in the World though I must say the island is also voted the friendliest in the Caribbean so I'm guessing the killings don't affect tourists...

The net result of the anti-militarist shenanigans has been to create what is by all accounts an absolute paradise on the bulk of the island. The former military land has been turned over to the US Fish and Wildlife Commission so the islanders have smartly preserved themselves from development and given visitors an opportunity to enjoy secluded beaches, empty rolling hills and minimal infrastructure. Truly, by the sounds of it the Caribbean as it once was. In fact they recommend renting four wheel drive vehicles if you seek secluded beaches as the sand can be a long rough drive from the pavement according to the literature.

 

That then is my introduction as much as yours,maybe, to Vieques. I am promised more pictures of more places by my intrepid explorer wife. For more instantly: Vieques, Puerto Rico - Vieques.com - Island Travel Guide / Isla de Vieques or Vieques travel guide - Wikitravel

If you liked this third hand view of Vieques you might like this essay too:

Key West Diary: Finca Vigia. Or:

Key West Diary: Havana Part 1 Or:

Key West Diary: Havana Final Part

Travel by Conchscooter. Cheers!

Posted with Blogsy

Lechon

This story I posted originally on November 29th 2007, and it came to mind after I ate roast pork Italian style last month while visiting my sister.
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The weird moments in my life have all been powered by curiosity, and when I look back on those instants I find myself wondering how did that happen? The answer usually boils down to me being curious and taking advantage of the moment. Before our trip to Puerto Rico I had never heard of the "Suckling Pig Road;" then I was on it. Humor and curiosity are what create a marriage as far as I'm concerned so mine must be a match made in heaven. We're going into our 15th year of marriage and travel and we still amuse ourselves on the road. It took a healthy dose of curiosity to find ourselves sitting in what appeared to be a refugee camp chowing down on foods hard to identify by name or appearance in a lonely mountains fastness.Its a weird food, a whole pig, cooked and cut to pieces, but I've seen this style of cooking growing up in Italy, where rosemary is the flavor preferred by the locals. In Key West holidays are celebrated by Cubans cooking a pig in a box. Call them weird but they line a box with metal, put a heap of coals in the bottom and put the pig on top and replace the lid. It makes perfect sense on an island where digging a hole requires a back hoe and patience. In Hawaii the water table is lower and soil is widely available on the ground so they dig easy holes, drop in the coals and the pig and call it a luau.
There is a place in Puerto Rico's mountains, shaded not by palms but by pine trees called Cayey, and in this nondescript village every Sunday Puerto Ricans descend en masse and devour lechon, milk fed pork. We happened on the village mid morning and sensing an event we stopped our headlong flight along the tourist route through the mountains and, as I was accompanied by not one but two women, we inevitably started to shop.

Puerto Ricans like to shop too, as demonstrated by the fact that the more cars that showed up, the more people started to crowd the stalls and there was brisk business in knick knacks and objets de junque. My wife found a few oddities to cheer her up while I watched the human parade on the main drag. The street was lined with restaurants, each promising an "authentic" lechon and the women in town clearly preferred the yellow building with loud, very loud music, and an upstairs balcony giving them the opportunity to take a break from the music and observe the parade of talent in the street. On my side of the street the talent was in large measure, drunk and obnoxious, which made me feel right at home-all this way to find myself on lower Duval on a Friday night, thought I. However the Puerto Rican beauties defied convention and appeared to enjoy the raucuous attention from the slovenly imbibers of Medalla, and they preened and sniggered in a most alluring fashion on their balcony; the drunks own in the street thought they were alluring in any event.

Mercifully the lechon was ready and my wife and co-worker were all shopped out so we got in line at the most promising self serve and watched the machete fly as they chopped the pork into plate sized pieces.

The pork was easy to order- we asked for two portions and got a plate piled high with the stuff. The vegetables were rather more tricky. We pointed and asked and when the young woman (mouth stuffed with braces, exposing this place as a distant branch of the US tree) said "patata" we were no more enlightened as to what we were ordering. This is where curiosity plays its part. We pretty much pointed to one of each and hoped for the best. Patatas turned out to be a firm, sweet, roasted type of yam or sweet potato. We got a helping of breadfruit and of course rice and beans. A Puerto Rican tamale appeared to be made of something green and slimy and was generally voted down as inedible, but everything else worked out.

I'm not sure why I like breadfruit, but ever since I first ate it in Grenada 14 years ago with a heavenly curry sauce it is a plant I try to eat every time I am in the (true) tropics, where it flourishes. I watched a local at a nearby table fork his way through a plate of pork and breadfruit and he speared the white starch and ate it with not a drop of sauce of any kind which to me is the mark of a true fanatic- its pretty dry stuff. My work colleague shook her head and would not taste it. My wife has eaten it previously and kindly left most of the big white chunks to me, and so I dipped them in the bean sauce, and continued to regret the fact the breadfruit doesn't grow in the Keys. And also i regret the fact that there is an agricultural inspection on flights between Puerto Rico and the mainland. It keeps pests out, but it also keeps breadfruit out too, a heavy price to pay for agricultural purity.

A beer, sodas, pork, beans, yellow rice and a plate full of starchy vegetables set us back $22, served on Styrofoam with plastic utensils. We ate at a picnic table in a fair approximation of a warehouse. It was entirely satisfactory and culturally isolating for we saw no other confused mainlanders poking strange vegetables on their plates with consternation writ large on their faces. We were alone in a hall filled with lechon fanatics.

Comida Criolla

This is not a Puerto Rican barbecue pit, its a car dumped and incinerated and cluttering the amazing verdant beauty because the government, along with its lack of interest in sorting out the stray dog problem, has no interest in dealing with the heaps of cars four million islanders drive literally into the ground every year.

Cuisine, including barbecue, was on my mind after our recent hop south for the weekend where we encountered a US variant on Caribbean food, so I was moved to contrast and compare Cuban food as cooked in Key West with creole food. Creoles in the colonial era were upper class people, possibly of mixed race who were descended from white settlers. The term is in use today in New Orleans, and in Puerto Rico where restaurants advertise comida criolla as an attraction for tourists.Like so many popular foods in daily use comida criolla started out as poor people's food. Nowadays mofongo is offered as haute cuisine in haute restaurants, though we found the national dish roadside, under a tarp on the outskirts of San Juan, the island's teeming capital.Mofongo is mashed fried plantains rendered into a starchy pudding, served with meat or fish. I think it works best with some sort of ajo sauce, citrus and garlic, to render the mound less dry. We ate some with chunks of fried beef which was also dry, and an ajo chicken dish which was excellent. Mofongo streetside is not a delicate dish and if you manage to down a plate piled high with those mashed plantains you will be good to work in the fields all day.

Puerto Rico is littered with modest cafes, all of which merit a stop. We found people everywhere who could mumble some small amount of English, indeed they were happy to ignore our reasonably fluent Spanish and help us find our ingredients in stumbling English. In an industrial village south of Fajardo we found a cafe offering creole food simmering in hot plates. We pulled down the Caribbean staples of rice and Puerto Rican red beans with barbequed chops American style and Caribbean pork.

Expecting macaroni and cheese such as might be offered in English speaking Caribbean islands, my wife opted for "macaroni" and got American style pasta salad. It was good, perhaps because we are flexible travelers! Our plates also included hard fried plantains known universally as tostones. All this for $5.25, about two thirds the price in the Lower Keys.

Gas stations across the island offer snack food, much of it a replica of processed foods found in the US but shelves were also loaded with items that rated exotic, Italian chocolates imported to the Caribbean, sweet crackers and sodas based on tropical fruits like tamarind, a sweet/sour drink that is pretty harsh to a palate raised on the delights of colas. My young colleague did her shopping at four am:

Crackers and OJ to fight off breakfastless nausea from speeding, twisting roads. The further we were from fast food offerings the better off we were as usual, but some forms of processed foods one cannot avoid. I, for instance, can rarely resist Latin pastries, a delight to the eye but rather less to American taste buds. Coffee generally was fairly insipid too, lacking the Starbucks verve we mainlanders have come to expect from a cup of java.

Our journey across the back of Puerto Rico on the narrow, steep Ruta Panoramica, through the mountains brought us to the high altar of island cuisine. Where we came face to face with the national culinary obsession: lechon.Lechon is roast suckling pig, pork on a spit. The center of this cult is located in a village called Cayey. But that, as they say is another story, a story unto itself and a memory I want to savor in more leisurely style.

Going hungry in Puerto Rico's hinterlands isn't easy because the golden arches litter the landscape as much as creole cuisine does, so for those that can't stand being far from home, home on America's true caribbean island (not Key West!) is always close to hand, and they even enjoy servicarro service for tourists who miss drive thru windows. Personally I miss the lechon.

El Yunque

Its a mountain peak on the northeast corner of the island of Puerto Rico that dominates the surrounding countryside. It's peak pops in and out of the cloud cover that streams overhead dropping frequent rains that give it the title of the only tropical rain forest in the US Forest Service system. Its not a National Park, so there's no fee to enter and there's no guard hut at the entrance,there's just a sign though there is also a visitor center near the entrance on the only road in. That would be Highway 191 which is barely marked at the turn off on the major Highway 3 which runs from Fajardo to San Juan through the snowbird condos of Luquillo. The southern entrance to the Forest has apparently been closed for years by landslides so you can only get in from the north, and I am guessing that in winter the place is a raging zoo. In November, even on Veterans weekend it wasn't crowded at all. This is a place of abundant flora, eg: bamboo, extra large of course, on the road in. We discovered a place that was fantastic beyond our wildest dreams. It had a magical quality that wasn't the least bit expected. The roadway is a series of undulating curves winding around the hillside, with ample pullouts to allow riders to stop and check out the waterfalls, still wet even as dry season takes over: And overgrown fantasy creeks, with my youthful colleague leaping from rock to rock for the perfect picture: and views across the mountain to the ocean

with Cayo Icacos nestled just offshore from Fajardo:

The vegetation is astonishing, fairy-tale like. Such is the abundance and size of the trees, palms and ferns, one feels transported to another planet. This is the Caribbean as it must have been 600 years ago before European development of agriculture and plantations, or the arrival of crisp white rental Toyotas, I daresay. It was, as my wife, a native Californian reluctantly put it, "more awe inspiring than the redwoods." How true.

There are some oddities about El Yunque (pronounced: Ell Jew-nk-ay, by locals), that include stray dogs abandoned roadside by people I would like to strangle were I to meet them. I'd rather not dwell on that aspect as the dogs wouldn't be lured to the car for transport to Save-A-Sato, Puerto Rico's humane society in San Juan...Another issue is locals who run knick knack shops in the forrest who oppose the organization of the Forest into a more eco-friendly and less car oriented attraction:

"Say NO to the trolleys of El Yunque" Conch trains are a bone of contention in Key West so I have some sympathy with the locals on this one. I'd have more if the store owners in the forest treated the dogs better... (gotta let it go!). And then there is the Puerto Rican penchant for just stopping wherever the urge takes you. If you see a fern you want to photograph, stop the car immediately, let the family pour out and start clicking. I got into the spirit of this craziness and we learned to do as the locals do and stop the Corolla anywhere the fancy took us. Our white rental car wasn't the fanciest vehicle in the park by a long chalk.

Naturally we barely had time to drive up and back, feed the stray (gotta let it go!), and get out of the park before dark. Next time I'd like to spend real time in El Yunque and explore the myriad trails that disappear into the jungle. Now that I know what an enchanted forest this is, complete with its own fairy tale castle drifting in and out of the clouds at the top of the hill

I would put The Caribbean National Forest of my list of places to see before I die, had I not see it already. And I will advise visitors to bring along some dog food and water for the Satos crouching, waiting hopelessly for their owners to return to collect them...Strays. I just can't let them go.

Driving The Speed Limit

So, the question for me is whether Puerto Ricans, taken as a whole, are imbeciles or mathematical geniuses, and the line between madness and greatness is a fine one. Here's the thing: get into a rental car at the airport and the whole experience is pure US. The rental agent is spiffy in her uniform, even at 3:30 am, cheerful and efficient. The car looks like a US rental, steering wheel on the proper side, speedometer in miles per hour, and the vehicle comes dent and scratch free.

On the road, signage is all American, yellow center lines and white speed limit signs in miles per hour (millas por hora, I suppose), and then you notice the mile markers- in kilometers! What the hell? Distances are in metric? Then, eventually you go to fill up and it just gets worse. The first weird thing you'll notice is that the octane rating sticker is cross hatched with a blade to make it impossible to remove so the operator can't sell you regular for premium. Like any other state Puerto Rico's office of weights and measures certify that the pumps spew gas at the indicated rate, but the pumps are calibrated in liters- actually in litres. The average price for regular was about the same as the mainland, around 75 cents ( which at 4 litres to the US gallon equals a tad under $3.00).

I'm fussy about these kinds of things and my mind is reeling. I'm measuring speed in mph, distances in kilometers and measuring my gas in liters while cars are rated at mpg. Its a system of such mind boggling complexity one can only assume that Puerto Rican drivers are geniuses at mental arithmetic, all of them, or more likely they just don't much care. This alone would make me crazy were I to live on the island. A solid decade of prosperity has changed a lot of things on the island and driving habits are among them. There are malls, sprouting to service new housing developments and traffic signals everywhere to slow traffic to a crawl. Certainly the population has increased to about 4 million and the island is still only 100 miles long (160 kilometers I suppose) and half as wide making it the highest density neighborhood in the Caribbean. However Puerto Ricans seemed more friendly and relaxed than I remembered them. Perhaps it was the time of year, which was the end of hurricane season yet not quite crazy tourist time so people were less stressed.

Most chose not to run traffic lights and very few passed on the shoulder when we were driving the expressway (autopista). Most surprising of all was the way everyone obeyed the speed limit, which was ridiculously slow, 55 or 60 mph.Motorcyclists, almost all of whom rode Suzuki Hayabusas ("the fastest production motorcycle in the world"- possibly) helped to make me feel a little less lonely at the front of the pack of slow moving cars. I developed a theory that people drove slowly because they liked to make the island feel bigger. After all one could drive from Fajardo clear across to Mayaguez on more-or-less four lane expressways in three hours, easily. On a Hayabusa in two, and at either end there is nothing but open ocean.

This was also I am proud to announce one motoring trip where I never got pulled over. This summer I was nabbed in Croatia doing 74 in a 50 (kph) and only avoided a fine by the skin of my teeth. I also got pulled over for doing 50 in a 30 (mph) on Grand Cayman and got off with a warning. However my pride at not getting stopped is tempered somewhat by the odd nature of Puerto Rican policing which for reasons known only to themselves requires police cars to drive around in the hours of darkness with their blue lights flashing. This makes concealment difficult, to say the least. And the hordes of early morning drunk drivers take full advantage. That was exciting driving.

I loved the winding twisty roads, the sort of terrain one doesn't see anywhere in Florida, least of all the Keys, and the mountains of Puerto Rico deserve an entry of their own, their beauty is staggering, but for some reason Puerto Rico has more vegetation over their roads than any place else I've driven and it makes the most mundane road delightful.The towns we passed through on the secondary roads exuded a European air that gave the drive an exotic flavor. Churches faced on squares that centered the communities in defiance of the US habit of creating urban agglomerations that are centered on sprawl. The homes were modest for the most part, but I was surprised by the civic spirit that got the Christmas decorations in place so early in the "season" as it were. Yacubo at dawn on Saturday was cheerful with festive lights twinkling overhead.

Even in broad daylight the village of Palmer, the gateway to El Yunque, is a profusion of green, some of it out of control in this overly fertilized island.Motorcycling certainly looked appealing, despite the abundance of holes, countersunk manhole covers and sudden, poorly marked road works. The twists and turns, spectacular views and abundance of destinations made Puerto Rico look like Bonneville country to this Triumph rider. I did actually spot three Vespas (Puerto Rico Vespistas I have no doubt- I am a fan of their occasional website entries) among the multitude of Chinese scooters on the roads and I have been pondering the feasibility of a road trip to Puerto Rico on my own wheels even though Harleys are for rent in San Juan. Air freight to PR anyone? Not all Puerto Rican riders looked self assured though and I always cringe when I see scooter riders in Key West pulling this stunt: Hitting your foot on the ground as you roll along is an excellent way to walk with a limp for the rest of your life. At least he was complying with the new Puerto Rico motorcycling rules (since suspended temporarily) requiring all riders to wear protective clothing with additional dorky reflective vests at night. The Puerto Rican Legislature has now decided to hear from actual motorcycle riders about the best way to reduce roadway casualties. Education would be my bet.

Driving a car was fun but riding a motorcycle... I was almost glad to get home and prep the Bonneville to resume commuting.

Enchanted Island

A weekend in Puerto Rico- que rico! It wasn't so flavorful the last time I was there, fully 14 years ago, a stop over on our honey moon (spent sailing the Grenadines- She has put up with a lot). Naturally because I don't do beach vacations we rented a car and I started driving the hell out of the little island as soon as we landed on Saturday at 4am, Atlantic Time at La Mercedita Airport at Ponce ( pro: Pon-say, not "ponse" as English speakers tend to; in British English that would be suggestive). It was pitch black and my wife and I were tired, not nearly as worn out as the third member of our little troop, a colleague half our age and twice as exhausted, who had never been outside the USA. I know Puerto Rico, la colonia, is part of the US, but it isn't in any cultural terms other than shopping and currency. It was a fine place to step outside oneself, even if only for a short weekend.

In the viewing tower in the Caribbean National Forest.

It was a hallucinogenic drive after arrivng so suddenly from the order and banality of urban South Florida to find ourselves darting through villages, under spreading canopies of imposing trees, dodging drunk drivers, getting lost in picturesque towns with Spanish Colonial plazas and helpful islanders who took pity and kept re-directing our Toyota full of gringos, Spanish speaking its true, but unable to decipher the multiplicity of vague roadsigns.

We found a hotel overlooking the Caribbean, facing east down a slope of green to a deep dark sea below, the island of Vieques on the horizon and we fell asleep Saturday morning. We awoke four hours later, to a world neither my wife nor I remembered, 15 years of prosperity have created a new more self confident, Free Associated State, with cleaner streets, better roads and happier people, it seemed. Our young colleague spent the 48 hours struggling to absorb a culture that she had never even come close to encountering, never having been further from Florida than the venerable state of Oklahoma, which though a fine place in many respects is poor preparation indeed for Puerto Rico, the enchanted island.

The whole weekend was a series of wild trips, El Yunque, San Juan the capital, seen at night, la Ruta Panoramica across the mountains and roast suckling pig eaten under the pines of the highlands, in Cayey, where else? A series of wild postcards, plopped into two very full days living, and a sudden undramatic flight back to Fort Lauderdale before dawn Monday morning with reinsertion into our daily, sub tropical lives. From 90 degrees to 70 degrees in two lofty hours. Here's Cabo Rojo at the southwestern tip of the Island at sunset, as mosquitoes descended in hordes to ravage us. Quick! A Medalla Light for him and a Rum Punch for her to revive their bloodless bodies! You don't see cliffs like these in the Florida Keys.

One excellent feature of my eccentric job is long alternating weekends, one of work followed by one of freedom. This trip was an experiment to see if two red eyes connected by unplanned travel might work. It did, and I have tons of stories and pictures for my diary. Que sabroso!