From Vieques to San Juan

Date: 05.03.2014

...it was time to head back to the main island *sniffles*. We started the morning slowly and during our first cups of coffee our host James paid us a visit - fortunately we were all wearing pants (well, I was, for once :D). James was a fun and interesting guy, and he had been visiting Finland for 7 times in his life, what are the chances :).

After getting our gear ready, I called for a taxi, and once again problems - we can get there in one hour. With our stuff and my knee, I didn't want to walk to the centre, so we sat at the bus stop and all did our things (I was writing) and waited. For the first time the lady taxi driver was precisely on time, wohoo :D.

We went to Isabel, and I forgot to buy one cool shirt from Black Beard, and it's bugging me a lot. The guys wanted to eat some pizza for breakfast and I was too tired to argue - I managed to get one slice down, and the guys ate the grande bacon pizza by themselves, plus stnz ate a slice of meat lover's pizza, which almost came with the whole chicken on top as I suspected when he ordered it :D.

The guys sleeping on the ferry trip

We got to the ferry terminal and waited for the ferry. This time it wasn't full, so we got a place to sit and it didn't take long for the guys to start sleeping. I wrote some stuff up and played some Fallout2 on the 1 hour trip.

When we got to Fajardo, there was the minibuses waiting and trying to get us to their vans, and stnz declined them all. While waiting to see what the guys would do to get us to Ceiba to pick up our car, I noticed a woman in her panties and undershirt, wearing some platform shoes and completely out of it. If we'd be at home, I would've went to her and asked if she was alright, but here I didn't have the guts. So I decided to just watch what was happening, if she was drugged by someone and if someone was trying to do something to her. After keeping my eye on her for a while, I noticed that she was with a guy and a little (~6 yo) girl. The guy seemed to be clean and sober, and the kid was dressed and bathed, but I had the vibe that they were all homeless, and the kid was more attached to her father. It still made me really sad to watch how a person could end up in that condition, and make things worse, there was a little beautiful girl involved. I really hope that everything works out with them in the long run. Life usually does correct it's ways on some point..

After a while and when I asked when the car rental place would close it doors, stnz realized that we didn't have the time to clown around - we needed the ride and got one to Ceiba. We managed to get there like 5 minutes before closing time.. Stnz had rented us a small and cheap car and we were guessing what it was on the small lot. Imagine our surprise when the girl drove a Jeep in front of us :D. It felt like the universe was fucking around with us, because for the 5 days in Vieques we were all cursing our lack of a car and how all other tourists were driving by with their Jeeps :D.

Our ride

Then it was off to San Juan, and to the apartment Stnz reserved for us blindly. It was pretty interesting to find ourselves inside a closed community, right next to a beautiful beach. The neighborhood was a little step-up from where our earlier apartments have been located, but I'm not complaining. Still, I somehow already miss the simple life of Vieques. I wonder what I could do there so I could move and live there? Even the Fajardo ferry terminal seemed busy and quite annoying after the somewhat peaceful island living, not to mention what it's like in the busy San Juan.

The electricity work in the US is something... else. And even halen (170cm short) could touch these lines. And so could I with a bit of a jump :D

The beach 50m from our apartment

 I had a wonderful surprise at our new apartment: 1) there were dogs! Oh, how I've been missing scratching, hugging and kissing the dogs, and talking softly sounding like a crazy person (you aren't crazy when you do that while addressing the dogs, aren't you??)  2) the other dog was named Mia! I had a namesake! I'm forming an alliance with Mia, just because we are two Mias and we are awesome <3

My namesake, Mia the awesome dog (pic by stnz)

The private terrace we have by our apartment is great place to play a nerd (who am I kidding, I'm a nerd)  (pic by stnz)

It was my time to take the couch again. This time it was much better to sleep on than the plank in New York  (pic by stnz)

There was a nice and clear sky on the beach next to us, but I was too tired and hurting all over to have the energy to go there and do some night time photography. But I promised to myself that I was going to do it on the next day. We'll see.

San Juan to Vieques

Date: 28. 2. 2014

Today is was time to move our asses to Vieques. On 26th we were surfing on the net and looking for a place where we should move ourselves next. For some reason we stumbled upon Vieques and after some searching, we decided to go there. I found a place to do my open water dives for PADI OWD, and mailed them. It didn't take long I got the dives booked and couple of shore dives for the guys.

First we drove around San Juan - lost, because the rental car agreement didn't really give the correct address, and the site for the rental car company gave a completely wrong address. Fortunately, I found the nearby car company from a tourist map Halen had discovered from the flying school yesterday, and we finally made it.

The idea was that we'd continue the rent and drive the car to Fajardo, but the company didn't have an office there. Next company we asked had only a minivan, which would've cost 70USD + 40USD dropoff fee for leaving the car for another office on the island. That's when we decided to take a taxi, which cost us 91USD (including the tolls) and we got dropped off straight at the ferry terminal.

First we missed the ferry for 15 minutes, and the next one which was leaving in an hour was sold out. The cargo handler said that they'd start selling tickets for 16:30 ferry at 15:30. So off we went to a nearby pub and ordered some food. After eating halen and I had an eerie feeling, and halen went to wait for our tickets around 14:30. I went to look for a geochache by myself, but stumbled upon a guy who was.. uhm.. a bit drunk. And raging to himself. So I decided that it wasn't really a good place for me to be by myself. I got back to stnz and we went to see halen, he was the second in the line and they just opened the ticket selling office. Over 30 minutes earlier than the cargo lady said it would.

We had a long wait at the terminal, and managed to get into the wrong queue after listening one of the terminal workers yelling loudly in Spanish to everyone without us understanding a word, even by asking.

The ferry trip was 1h long, and you couldn't go up on the deck, you had to stay inside the whole time.

When we got to Vieques, everything looked a bit chaotic. Not-so-official taxi drivers were blocking the street and the traffic, and the road was really narrow. I spotted a cabbie, and asked the guys to go to him and as him if he was free. He said that he was picking up his wife, but could take us at the same time with him. After getting lost a bit (in Puerto Rico and on this island, there really aren't street names to navigate with..) we found our place - and it was couple houses away from the taxi driver's and his wife place :D

Local teens move around with horses, you could tell by these two which was the mare and which was the steed.

Because we didn't know how bad the rental car situation was in the island, we were without a car. Our host was kind enough to drive us to a restaurant with her truck - halen sat in the front, and me and stnz sat outside, true banana island -style :D. She also gave us a ride to a local market where we could get some breakfast before getting us back to the apartment. Which doesn't have wifi, which makes it a lot harder to post anything online.

Waiting for our dinner