Puerto Rico 67 - Vieques

Last year for my birthday, we did San Juan and the main island. We were convinced Vieques would be beach paradise after how nice the main island was, but there are a lot of downsides.

Our arrival in San Juan was on time to make our New Years dinner reservation! Five courses at Costa Azul (Isla Verde). Eleni said it tasted great! My taste buds were still dead from COVID😞. New Years day we walked the Isla Verde neighborhood and beaches, but did not swim, because . . . Vieques.

The next morning we were ready to walk out the door to catch our flight to Vieques when Cape Air canceled!!! And no flights the rest of the day (and no refund - I had to dispute the charge finally). The nightmare had begun.

I got ferry tickets online for 7:00 pm, but that would have gotten us into Vieques very late. I tried to work with the Avis place where we had a car reserved, but they close at 1:00 pm and wanted us to hand-fill a form and scan it to send. So, I asked them just to hold the car for the next day.

Meanwhile, the one hour Uber trip to the ferry terminal got us there in time to get tickets on the 5:30 ferry. Ferry went well, but I think the workers might enjoy herding a little much. Taxi to Hacienda Tamarindo

got us there barely in time to get our room keys. We walked next door to The Blue Horizon, which could not seat us for 45 minutes, so we walked the rest of the way into Esperanza to eat at Tradewinds. The bartender REALLY wanted us to eat there and served us Old Harbor El Yunuque IPAs, and finally seated us. The was good.

The next morning, I had to get our rental Jeep. So we tried to get a taxi. Never arrived. It was getting close to Avis closing time, so I walked 4 miles across the island in an hour to get to Avis. And I got rained on for the first time. Google was impressed at my speed, though. But Avis hadn't really saved my reservation, and I had to wait "15 minutes." That turned into about an hour, after which the really cranky desk person tried to charge me hundreds of dollars MORE for picking up the car a day late. She stayed angry, but at least got me the original rate and didn't charge me for the missed day. And she got me a pretty blue Jeep. So things were looking up.

Except, the exertion and the stresses caught up with me and put me out of commission for a couple hours. Eleni had scouted Black Sand Beach nearby, so we walked to it for a short swim. And got rained on HARD. From this experience, we learned to always bring our stuff in plastic bags, because everything was soaked. The walk back was total mud, of course.

The path to Black Sand Beach before the downpour

Black Sand Beach sidewall

Then it was time to drive into town for dinner and bioluminescent bay kayaking! Dinner at Bananas in Esperanza was really disappointing. The highly-rated kayaking company turned out to use old beaten up school buses to get from the meeting spot to the bay. But the kayaks and the guide were nice enough. My paddle was actually able to set blades at 90 degrees! The dinoflagellates were brighter than the main island bio-bay, but the moon was very bright. We did the tarp thing to blot out the light to see what it might have been like during no moon. And after that, the guide found where some fish were swimming around the surface, stirring up the dinoflagellates, and that was cool. Back to shore, where we got rained on HARD again.

I am pretty sure I picked up schistosomiasis there. Lab test was positive for anitgens, so I got the meds. De-worming was traumatic, as the guidance has the patient wait until the buildup of worms is maximized so the body's immune response is triggered. But that means there are a LOT of very angry worms when the anthelmintic hits. Second dosing a month later, to get any worms that escaped the first, was much less traumatic.

Finally, the next day we started to explore the fabled beaches of Vieques. And they were very nice.

La Chiva

Horses and people crowded Caracas beach

La Chiva

And the Puerto Ferro lighthouse/beach.

Dinner at Duffy's was better. More El Yunque and I had fried whole fresh red snapper. Yum.

The next day - more hiking and more time at the beaches. We set up at Secret Beach. The secret was that it was really Plata Prieta beach. And we went to the end of La Chiva and had a pavilion to ourselves in case it rained, so it didn't.

Dinner at Tin Box was a real disappointment except for a nice hostess. She said there would be a half-hour wait, but she got us a table to wait at. The server did finally have time to take our orders after that half hour, but then took another half hour to bring drinks and another 15 minutes to bring the food. During that time, 2 children were running around screaming. Not sure why that was acceptable to their parents or the restaurant. The food was not good. I had smoked chicken breast that was so dry it could not be swallowed without liquid (finished beer and switched to water). 

Next day - more of the same! Lovely swimming. Dinner at Mango Public House, the only restaurant on the island that was not a shack. It seemed to be nice for drinks, but food choices were limited. My reuben sandwich was tiny and tasteless. French fries came from a freezer bag. Eleni liked her coconut rice, though. We had to dodge a cranky horse to get back to the Jeep. 

After 5 nights, we checked out of Hacienda Tamarindo and moved to an AirBnB in Isabella Segundo for 3 more nights. Along with the roosters and horses, we had a tree iguana.

This location was to make it easier to check out the northeast side of Vieques. Playa Grande was supposed to be nice. Except, the northeast side of the island turns out to be inaccessible by car. Google tried to get us there by taking us 1/4 mile on a jungle path

to a gate that we later figured was not supposed to be a gate - just a cut cable. We had to maneuver just to get through it to a gravel road that Google said ran to the north to get to the road to Playa Grande. There was no road at the end, just a cliff . . . and lots of signs saying not to go off the road because of unexploded ordinance. So, we took the road to the south side of the island. All the side roads Google showed did not exist. At the south side of the island, we found a locked gate. 

We tried to call the park office to see if we could be let out into a parking lot that we had already visited on another day. Phone number wouldn't ring. The gate seemed defeatable, so we tried. Nope. But I got defeated by stepping on an ant-hill. My feet were covered by biting, burning ants. Eight days later I still had pustules. Back to the cut cable, through the jungle, and to one of the original beaches before giving up on that day. Here are pictures from these idyllic days:

You may notice that you don't actually see anybody else at these beaches. That's only partially clever framing - the beaches are almost empty on weekdays.

Our private pavillion on La Chiva beach

This hermit crab needs a new home!

Hiking theTapón Bay Loop

John with the ceiba tree

Eleni with the ceiba tree

Vieques, or specifically the main town of Isabel Segundo, was a mixture of trash, dilapidated (or maybe not yet recovered from Maria) homes,

A somewhat nice mini-plaza in Isabel Segundo

and upscale homes off by themselves. Beer cans everywhere. 

Eleni at the Isabel Segundo overlook

Restaurants with little or no structure/atmosphere. Some agreeable food, but very little that didn't seem to be heated up from freezer bags. Taverna in Isabel Segunda at least had real food and a structure and some rugs hanging on the wall. We ate there twice because we ate there Saturday and then it turned out to be the ONLY restaurant open on Sunday. And we really liked Victor.

Wait - have I mentioned the roosters? Vieques is infested with roosters. Everywhere. They have a tight schedule of crowing interspersed with napping. If you want to sleep on Vieques, you either need earplugs or a copy of their crow/nap schedule to synchronize your napping.

Oh - and horses. Wild and domestic-uncorraled horses roam freely everywhere. Horse poop everywhere. Some are trained to shake down tourists for handouts, but mostly they left us alone. It was very sad, though, to see horses eating from garbage cans. One of the noblest of animals reduced to eating garbage. That is enough to keep us from returning.

January 10. Time to leave Vieques for the main island.

The welcoming iguana at Avis drop-off

Lots of horses waiting at airport, but I don't think they had reservations. Everything went well for the first time on the island, resulting in our getting to the airport very early. Cape Air had seats on a slightly earlier flight for us, so Goodbye Vieques. Hello crazy flight on a Cessna so small that one passenger had to sit in the co-pilot seat. The pilot deftly flew around some nasty weather and got us back to SJU reasonably safely. Except the flight was where I picked up some COVID germs, I think. The airport hotel charged us extra to check in early, but we had a free day to revisit San Juan.

It was still the nicest area we toured. We did the cat walk around the fort (see last year blog for pix). Ate lunch at a sidewalk place that still tasted better than anything on Vieques. We discovered why the ferry terminal had to be moved to the east side of the island - the old ferry terminal was now the new cruise-ship terminal. Two gigantic ships and one that maybe only carried a few thousand. Needless to say, the area was a lot more crowded than last year. Dinner at Cervecería del Callejón,

my favorite place to eat in that area, still undiscovered.

We scootered part of the way back to the airport hotel. The San Juan Airport hotel sucked, BTW.

January 11. Time to go home! But the FAA decided that we weren't ready. They shut down air travel for the morning.

Always good to have emergency response capabilites at airports!

Instead of getting in late Wednesday, we were getting in early Thursday 😒. Well, not so early Thursday because Southwest really knows how to make a bad travel day worse. After waiting for our luggage not to show up at ABQ, and checking with the Southwest luggage rep (she was very nice) to hear that our bags were in Denver, we got home at 3 am. Our luggage got home at 7 pm. Too bad we did not catch the delivery person and engage in conversation to stop her from trying to take SR126! She got stuck in the snow and our fire department had to go save her. I missed the call because I had one-day COVID. 

Happy Birthday Eleni & Zak

From the 18-guest birthday dinner at Taj Mahal in Frederick.

 

Fall in the Jemez

A lot of moss in this picture!

The colors are out in the higher elevations, so we went out, too!

The east end of the Valles Caldera as the fog moves in.

John, in what I call an Aspen tunnel

Eleni & John ditto

The falls at Jumping Rocks from my hike with the Drs. White. I was impressed by their hiking abilities. We had to go through some very cold water with the Drs carrying significant shifting loads.

Tiny - the other greatest dog ever. Originally posted in 1998.

We have been blessed with two of the greatest dogs ever. Here is the story of the other one, years before Chewie, when I was a better writer.

We didn't know what we were getting when we got Tiny. His first owners said he was a one year old Mastiff-Rottweiler cross. They explained that some people were trying to establish a new breed with the features of both. Many years later, we suspect that perhaps Tiny was more of a mixture than we were told, and perhaps a little older too. It was his first owners that were even less aware of what we were getting. We were getting the best dog ever.

Tiny's first reaction when we went to see him was a growl. This was one of his trademarks. You could barely hear him growl because both the pitch and volume were very low. But somehow, you could feel along your spine that he was growling. This same growl was repeated even for us whenever we would go near him when he had a bone. He never snapped or bit at us, but then again, we never actually tried to take a bone from him

We brought him to our new home in February, 1987. It was a really cold winter, so we were very concerned about what sort of shelter he would need while he was outside in the daytime. We weren't concerned very long. We quickly learned that Tiny was impervious to cold. He loved to sleep on a soft bed of snow. While we brought him in on cold nights, it always seemed to be our choice, not his.

We only saw a vulnerability in Tiny once. During one of the first years, we had him out on a walk up at the street late at night. When we got back to the house, we saw Tiny was leaving pools of blood everywhere he went. We found a deep gash at the rear and above his foot. He was bleeding so much, we felt he would die before we could get him to a vet. After finding and driving 20 minutes to an all-night pet hospital, we thought there was no hope left. While I had been applying pressure to stop the bleeding the whole time, it seemed that the slightest movement, or easing of the pressure, would allow another torrent of blood to escape. But Tiny is pretty tough. He got sewn up and was sent home the next day. We found the offensive stub of a broken beer bottle by following the blood pools back from the house - over a thousand feet. It amazed us that he lived.

Tiny was intended to be a "guard" dog. Back when we first built our house, we were at the end of a long rough gravel driveway, at the end of a long cul-de-sac, nowhere near a police station. For the 11 years we had him, I don't remember him ever not being the perfect protector.

That's really what this story is about, because that is what Tiny always was - our protector. He stood guard in front of the house, protected Eleni on her jogs, and protected all of us on our walks. Under normal conditions, he was the sweetest dog around. But the instant a threat arose, he became a deadly monster.

Tiny's sphere of protection was rather large. First, any vehicle entering our driveway, 700 feet from the house, was barked at the whole trip down. Tiny must have had remarkable hearing when he was young. We never needed a doorbell. Second, anybody going to the one house nearby must be warned not to come any closer. Like it or not, our neighbor's house was under Tiny's protection.

Upon arrival at our house, all persons exiting their vehicle were subject to Tiny's inspection and approval. Of course, we did not get too many people with evil thoughts brave enough to come all the way down the drive, so Tiny generally let everyone pass. Some visitors learned that a dog biscuit ensured a warm reception. But not everyone was granted approval.

There are still fools out there that think massage is a front for prostitution. Eleni's training included instruction for how to deal with such fools. Tiny's method was more effective. Unknown to Eleni, a new client showed up with the idea he would be getting sex instead of a massage. Tiny knew what was on this guy's mind, though. Tiny tried hard not to let this guy out of his car, barking up a vicious storm. Not heeding the warning, Eleni dragged Tiny away while the guy got out of the car and went inside. As a final warning, Tiny went over to the car and peed on it for several minutes. Tiny could really pee when the need arose. Once inside, this client's intentions became obvious, and he was back outside. Tiny allowed him to go.

Before all the farmers left the area, there were still a lot of farm workers around. One night, we were being kept awake by loud voices and car radios on the hill behind our house. Since we knew most of the locals, I put Tiny on a leash and walked over to the source of the noise. It was the local farm hands, many of them familiar, having one of their spring parties. I nicely asked them to take their trash out with them, as we had been finding way too many beer bottles in the grass in that area.

There was one guy I'd never met before. He had a stringy build accompanied by stringy curly hair. He came up wanting to dispute my right to be concerned about my property. Tiny decided he was mostly looking for a fight. Tiny put his nose right up against this guy's crotch and emitted a growl that vibrated through the stringy guy's body, at a frequency below the range of human hearing.

The guy quickly promised to ensure that everyone took their trash with them, and they quieted the party down so we could get to sleep. While we heard later that Mr. Stringy swore he was going to come back and "shoot that dog," we were never really bothered by him. He did not last long on the farm.

Our kids were still very young when we first moved in and got Tiny. On days when both of us worked, we brought a baby-sitter out to stay with the kids. One baby-sitter was very impressed with Tiny. She was taking the kids out for a walk through the fields, with Tiny following along as always. According to all first-hand accounts, they were suddenly charged by a ground hog.

Now, ground hog charges are worrisome on several levels. Sharp digging claws and teeth are the basic worry. We have seen dogs torn up by ground hogs. Beyond that, a charging ground hog is not exhibiting healthy ground hog behavior. Healthy ground hogs duck down one of their many holes when they sense that a human is within 100 yards. If we got this story right, this ground hog must have been rabid. And even the calmest ground hog runs faster than a small child. It would have been ugly.

This story ends rather abruptly with the end of the ground hog. Tiny's approach to ground hogs has always been rather simple. He picks them up lengthwise, bites down, shakes once or twice, and carries on. Since this first ground hog episode, Tiny has sent all the local ground hogs to greener pastures and deeper holes - always without much fanfare. If they were not too near when he spied them, he would hypnotize them while he approached. Then bite, shake, drop. Groundhog Day has always meant something different to our kids.

Ground hog, Tiny-style, is not your typical delicacy. While we did not share Tiny's taste for ground hog, or approve of his method of preparing them, we do remain in awe. First, kill a ground hog (see above). Second, leave ground hog somewhere safe, where its flavors can mellow for a few days. A child's sand box is good, as long as the child does not find it (oh, no!). Once the ground hog has mellowed several days, chew off all four feet. Leave the rest to be disposed of.

Long walks during the early days generally included the farm road at the back of our property. Zak was about six years old and out on a walk with Tiny and me. He was 50 feet in front of me when suddenly he started crying, for no reason that I could tell. But Tiny, just to make sure, went roaring by me to rescue Zak from whatever was threatening him. Tiny checked from side to side when he got to Zak, but could not find the source of danger.

Hunters are sort of a problem here. Families have hunted the farms that used to be here for years. Now, all the farmland has been bought by the parks, at least the lower areas where the deer hang out. So hunting is illegal in most areas where people are used to hunting. And, only bows are allowed, no firearms, even when there is some private property to hunt on. So all the hunters in the park next to us are the die-hard, outlaw hunters The outlaws use guns.

Part of hunting is scouting before the hunt to find where the deer go and spot places to sit and wait. Two hunters were doing just that in the field behind our house, ignoring that they were so near a dwelling. They wound their way closer and closer. Our dam was the only way across the creek in sight. Just to squelch any possibility that these nimrods would think about coming onto our property, Tiny walked over the dam from the house, met these two right on the property line, and took a very long pee in front of them. Tiny trotted back up to the house, and the two hunters went back the way they came.

Bow season was gruesome around our place. Evidently, deer hit with an arrow do not always get tracked down by the hunter. Once a dead deer sent up enough of a smell, Tiny would track it down and carry it, or parts of it, to our yard. Even when a hunter got the deer, he would quite often leave the head, so we had more skulls than other parts. Other than the smaller bones, nothing went to waste. Even the skin had to be eaten, which made for the oddest poops. Tiny's crowning achievement was the day he dragged an entire full-grown deer across the creek and 200 feet further up to the house. What at feast.

We knew Tiny was getting old when the deer finally started tearing up our garden. Summer nights had always been interrupted by Tiny's barks warning the deer to stay away. But last summer, Tiny's hearing started to go, and it got too hard for him to get up and enforce his threat when he did know they were there. We did not get much from the garden last year and did not even try this year.

Most animals knew enough to stay away from Tiny's food dish. One unlucky aninmal didn't. We heard it outside the window in the middle of the night, making enough noise that Tiny, even with his bad hearing, knew it was there. I was frightened the next morning when I stepped out the door and almost ran into a live raccoon. Strangely it did not run away, or attack as perhaps a rabid one would. The reason was soon obvious. Tiny had given it a partial groundhog treatment and its back was broken. The raccoon was half paralyzed. It could not move away from Tiny's dish, where it had thought to find a cheap meal. Before going to work that day, chores included finishing and disposing of a raccoon.

Large dogs like Tiny are not bred to run, so Tiny stayed behind when we went for rides on our horses. At least we told him to stay behind and he mostly listened. If not, we'd take off fast enough lose him, and he would walk back home. There was just too much excitement in the air the day the park two miles to the south had their Fall festival. We had ridden around the far reaches of the park and were riding back past the festival when we spotted Tiny lying next to the line of people in rocking chairs. He had made himself right at home, like he was part of the setup. I had to hand my horse off and escort him far enough away for him to follow the rest of the way home.

Boris is the Doberman next door that replaced Debbie, also a Doberman, when she died. Tiny and Debbie always got along great, so we thought it would be nice to introduce Boris. We quickly realized our mistake. Both dogs circled each other warily, then tried to pretend to ignore each other. The tension was already high when Boris innocently went over to check out Tiny's eating area. Tiny did not attack, but some invisible and inaudible signal passed between them and Boris ripped into Tiny.

By the time we had pulled each dogs jaws off the other, there was blood everywhere. Our neighbor rushed Boris to the vet with multiple puncture wounds that required stitches. We tried to staunch the flow of blood from Tiny, but could not find its source. Little by little, as we eliminated possibilities by washing away blood, we realized that Tiny was not bleeding anywhere. He had survived a Doberman attack without a scratch.

Since that first fight, there was always bad feelings between the dogs. Whenever there was even a hint that Boris was coming over to Tiny's yard, Tiny would attack and send Boris back to the vet. Before we finally fenced in the yard, there was no way to restrain Tiny. But both dogs knew generally to stay away from each other. But just to make sure, every single time since then and until he lost his hearing, Tiny would bark when Boris came out for a walk. Just to make sure.

The UPS driver (back in the days that there was only one on our route) knew who was boss. Before delivering a package to our house, he was required to submit his truck to a search by Tiny. Whatever Tiny was looking for, he never found. Perhaps nobody ever posted dog biscuits by UPS.

Towards the end of 1997, Tiny started fading. Eleni lost her jogging companion of 10 years. He just couldn't go faster than a walk, and not that far. Sometimes he got up to stubbornly eat the grain the horses dropped, but sometimes he didn't. We noticed his hearing was leaving him. Still, Tiny could perform some of his duties. He walked to the bus stop with the kids & Eleni. He announced visitors when he finally sensed their presence. But then he lost his bark. He couldn't make it to the bus stop. And he couldn't hear anything, except food hitting his dish. At last he even stayed behind when we were working around the property, putting up the fence he never had to contend with. We put off putting him down. With a dog like Tiny, it's tough to be sure.

May 25, 1998 - We dug Tiny's grave after dinner tonight. He's lost an eye. We have to take his food to him, though it is still not safe to try to take it from him. He mostly only walks when he needs to pee or poop. We have waited too long - and he is losing his dignity.

We picked a spot in front of the house, despite better judgement, because that's where he watched from for so many years. As evidence we picked an appropriate spot, we found an old deer bone near the surface. While we were digging, Tiny walked over and lay down near by with his face away from the grave and under a tree. It was a message, but we did not try to translate it, because any translation would be skewed. Tiny has always been more than we have known, and has transcended any understanding we had of him since he has gotten old. He'll pretty much know what is going on when the vet comes to put him down. We just hope that we understand enough that we are doing the right thing.

May 30, 11:15 - Tiny passed peacefully from our lives today. With his usual courage, he barked at the vet's arrival. Though he had not walked all day, he got up, walked over to the grass to pee, then quietly lay down behind the vet's truck without being asked. The last thing he felt was the hands of the four people that shared his love and protection.

©1998 John Fredlund

Lila

 Lila was a very good dog.