Part VI. Blue Stars

This last place we stayed came about because I was looking up things to do in Puerto Rico, and I started reading about the bioluminescent bays there. I feel like we have learned a dozen different times about bioluminescence in homeschool; I'm not sure exactly why or in which units. (Electricity? Light? Animal kingdom? Insects? Oceans?) Anyway, I've always thought it would be cool to see it in the ocean, and one of the bays in Puerto Rico is supposedly the best and brightest one in the world. It's on a little island (off the island of Puerto Rico itself) called Vieques. First I had to look up how to say that (it's almost like V-A-K's) and then I started to get really interested in this tiny island. It costs a lot to fly there from San Juan airport. But then I learned you can drive to a different city and take a ferry, or fly a small independent airline from a smaller airport, and it's lots cheaper. The ferry is like $3 a person! People online were complaining a lot about the ferry (it's unreliable, weather is fickle, non-residents can get bumped off if there are residents who need to ride, etc.) so I almost gave up on the idea, but then I found a few threads where people talked about how the ferry had been privatized in the last couple years and was now way better. So I thought maybe we would risk it!

We got ferry tickets online a month in advance, but even though we had them of course I was nervous the whole time that we'd miss our time or go to the wrong place or there would be a storm or something. (That was the one trouble with going to this whole separate island…it added another ticket/schedule/timetable variable which could possibly go wrong.) But we got there in plenty of time and the only trouble was having to wait around in the heat for a half hour…it almost made me wish we'd been later!

The ferry itself was super nice, though. Air conditioned, with comfortable seats like a train. And the ride over to Vieques is quite fast, only 40 minutes or so.

It was fun to go up on the top deck or the back deck and watch us speed through the water!

Here we are coming up on Vieques. It's a long, thin island. On the map it's so small I didn't know if we'd be able to just walk around the whole thing or what! Ha! But it's not THAT small. We did need a car to drive around. (You can't take rental cars on the ferry, so we rented another car on the island.) And it takes quite a while to get to the far beaches on either end. Maybe an hour to drive the island lengthwise.

The water was so pretty!

When we got off the ferry, we saw these two missionaries coming to get on it! Of course we said hi enthusiastically. They were coming on to the mainland for Mission President Interviews, but their area was here on Vieques. It just so happened that before the missionaries came along, we had met some fellow members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by the ferry (I don't remember how we figured that connection out, but maybe because of a BYU shirt or something? And you can often just tell…) who were coming to stay with the husband's former mission companion, a man had left the church years ago and was now living here on Vieques working as a bartender. So…our new friends gave the missionaries their old friend's contact information and invited them to visit him soon! :) Kind of fun to be part of that whole interaction.

Our respective husbands went to pick up our rental cars, and Seb and me and the other family talked for a while we waited for them. There were chickens roaming around everywhere.

We took a picture of the Policia Jeep for Ziggy

We dropped off our stuff at our rental house and went down to a meeting place near the beach. You have to go to the bioluminescent bay with a tour group, so we had signed up for one.

The beach was pretty and quiet. That same calm, warm water.

I wish I could somehow describe the Bioluminescent Bay to you adequately. I just can't. It was so beautiful and so magical and just…indescribable. As it started to get dark, we rode on a rattle-y old bus through mangrove swamps on dirt roads with no idea where we were going. All you could see was the path of the bus's headlights bumping around in front of us. When we got out, we walked past the dark mangrove trees, and we could see little winking points of light bobbing around through them in the darkness. Fireflies! I don't think I could ever stop being amazed to see fireflies.

Then we waded into the water in our sandals (warm! Remember the water was warm! I can't emphasize enough how foreign that feels, to wade into water in the dark and not feel cold). We were going to kayak in the bay, and I was a tiny bit worried about remembering how (it's been a while since I was in a kayak!) but it all came back when I got in the boat. Sam and I went together and Seb went in a different kayak with some other guy.

The whole group had to follow our tour leader in his kayak—there was a little red light at the tip of it so we could see to follow it. This whole area was SO dark. They keep it dark deliberately—the whole island, but especially this area—for the sake of the bioluminescence. And everyone was mostly whispering, so you could just hear quiet whispers and little splashes and a few little insect sounds—not frogs, though! I didn't hear any coquis in this area.

When we had paddled a little way out into the bay, the guide said, "Dip your hands into the water." We did, and—the water started to glow bright blue! I think Sam and I both just gasped in shock when we saw it. It glowed around your hand like a blue halo, and when you waved your paddle, it made a bright blue path in the water, like a flame. It got brighter and brighter the farther out in the bay we went. 

Our guides explained about it (ALL about it…repeatedly…over and over…to the point where we wanted them to just STOP and let us explore the water, for crying out loud!): there are tiny organisms in the water that can bioluminesce (? is that a verb?) like fireflies. They glow when they're touched or moved. But they are microscopic and unless they appear in really high concentrations, you can't see them. This place had the ideal conditions—I can't remember them all, but the mangrove trees contribute to it; their roots act as a filter of competing organisms, I think. The abnormally narrow channel this bay has to the ocean is another factor. The seawater doesn't come in very much to dilute this organism-rich area. All that was interesting and I was glad to learn it, but it got old when not one but three different tour guides all gave us the same little spiel, down to the same lame jokes, and tried to stall for time by pointing out constellations with their laser pointer (I assume they were on a time frame so all the different tour groups could explore the different parts of the bay without crashing into each other). They kept going on and on, trying to convince us of how great this bay was, how unique, how vastly superior among all the biobays in the world. Only…we were already here. Here we were! Having already come here! So…why?

But none of that matters because the bay itself was SO AMAZING. We were in clear-bottomed kayaks, so  as we paddled we could see the water glowing as it rushed by us. The microorganisms glow when you disturb them, and the faster and harder you paddle, the brighter they glow. Or if you just dabble a finger in the water, there is a small soft glow as if your finger is creating a little patch of moonlight as it moves. We put our feet over the edges of our kayak and they glowed too, each toe and each movement outlined with that unearthly blue color. It felt like you were creating that blue glow with your movement, as if you'd suddenly gained the ability to see energy as it left your body. And if you put your hand in the water and then pulled it out into the air, it would drip and fizz with tiny blue starry sparkles, like glitter or stardust dripping down your hand and then fading back into darkness. It felt more like magic than anything I've ever seen.

We hadn't brought the real camera because it would have been just too hard to keep it dry in the wet kayak, and it would have been tricky to get the settings right anyway. We tried a couple phone videos which are dark and don't show it nearly well enough.

But this video—not mine, just some guy's on YouTube—shows it way better. You can get an idea of how the bioluminescence surrounds and envelops you as you touch it. IT WAS AMAZING! I would have totally gone back again the next night if I got the chance. And again. And again. It was one of the most incredible things we've ever seen or done.

Well, after that, how could anything compare? We could have gone home happy right then. But we were excited to see the rest of the little island and explore the beaches, which we had heard were amazing too.

It was interesting (I use that phrase too often. But it WAS! Everything was! But maybe I should say, I found it interesting…) how different Vieques felt from the rest of Puerto Rico! You would think it would be so similar. Still tropical. Still an island. Still the same ocean, the same types of weather, everything. But it just felt quieter, smaller, and more relaxed. The roads were narrow and less maintained. There were a couple grocery stores and some restaurants and we even saw kids getting out of school, so people do live here. But we also saw some residents riding the ferry back from the mainland with a wagon full of cinderblocks from Home Depot or somewhere. So if you lived here, life would definitely be slower and less…convenient? You'd have to haul things back across or do without! Even the trees were different—still dense, still covering everything—but not as vine-y and jungle-y. And of course, there were those chickens running around all over the place—and also, as we saw the next day, horses!

Another outdoor eating area, like every other restaurant in Puerto Rico. I love this.

A huge box of food we shared one day. Chicken, pork, plantains, bananas, corn fritters. When Seb looked at this picture he said "That was the best thing we ate in Puerto Rico." He might be right.

Baby chicken!

The horses are everywhere on Vieques! They aren't technically "wild," our rental house host took pains to tell us. They are "free range"—meaning, I suppose, that they belong to people. But how does that even work? When you want your horse, how do you find it? Do you have to drive around hunting it down? Call it? Tell your neighbors to send it home? Go outside and whistle?

They weren't in the least scared of cars. You just had to drive slowly in case there were horses ambling along the road! And there were lots of babies, so many babies!

Many of the horses just had birds sitting on their backs, like this. Some kind of symbiotic relationship, I assume? It looked cute and kind of silly.

I liked the babies best, of course.

This wobbly little guy was so cute! He came right up and nosed at our car!

I'm pretty sure this is not the bioluminescent bay, but it has a similar shape, and you can see the huge mangrove swamps surrounding it. The channel of this bay is pretty narrow, but the channel to the biobay (Mosquito Bay, it's called) is even thinner. 

Our rental house was up in the hills in the middle of the island. We could see the ocean on one side.

There was a huge mango tree in the front yard. Our hostess said, "You can eat as many as you'd like—if you can get them before the horses get them."

The horses mostly just ate the ones on the ground, so we picked some that were almost ready to fall but not quite! They were so good! So sweet! We had mango slices on vanilla ice cream one night and it was heavenly.

A big ceiba tree on Vieques.

Look how tall and wall-like those roots are!

A view down the road near the rental house. It's funny how when you look at a place on a map, you (at least I) don't even think about the topography. The hills and valleys and trees make such a difference when you're actually in a place. Even though the hills are so small, they really feel big and majestic when you're on top of them looking down!

Next and last installment: Beaches!