Part VII: Creatures of the sea

I was talking to my niece one time and she said something like "I'm not really a 'beach person.'" I was thinking about that while we were in Puerto Rico. Am I a beach person? What is a beach person? If it's someone who likes to sunbathe in a swimming suit—no, I am not one either. Good at surfing? No. Tan, with windswept, salt-water tousled hair? No. Likes to eat sand, as some of my babies seem to have? No. But I love the beach. I've loved it all this time even before I knew the water could be warm! I love watching the waves. I love just…I don't know, looking at the endless expanse of ocean, and listening to it. I love picking up tiny, pathetic pieces of shells or polished pebbles of agate and becoming attached to them, as if they were beautiful museum-quality specimens. So the other reason, besides the biobay, that I was excited about Vieques was that I read it had "some of the best beaches in the world." I don't know how one would even choose a "best beach." You'd rank them based on being beautiful, I guess, or peaceful or unspoiled. But who decides?

I still don't know, but whoever they are I think I agree with them. The main reason the beaches here felt "best" to me was that it felt like we were the only ones in the world to ever visit them! Of all the beaches we visited in a few days on Vieques (and we went to lots!)—there were other people on two of them. Maybe three. And even those times, it was maybe one other little group, way down at the other end of the sand, who left a half hour later. So it almost felt like Sam, Sebastian, and I were alone on some enchanted isle, enjoying the endless sky and the warm, calm, turquoise water.

The other "best," I guess, was the snorkeling! I haven't ever snorkeled much, but I was amazed at how many beautiful and colorful fish were even on the (comparatively) crowded beach we went to in Rincon, just swimming right around by the people! And here where there was no one around—I felt like we were in a nature documentary. Being able to swim and see under the water opens up a whole new dimension to the beach. It gives you something to do when you get tired of gazing at the ocean from the top side. It effectively doubles the beach's space, so you feel you're getting to see twice as much! The terrain underwater is always quite different than I would have imagined it, with trenches and hills and huge fields of water grasses you didn't even guess at from above. And underwater it's so quiet and strange. Even the filtered light is alien. I always came out with a sense of unreality, disoriented, as if I were returning to earth from another planet.

Another reason I think I'm a "beach person" is that I love seeing the water in different lights. I love how it changes all through the day, starting before sunrise when it might be pale and grey—under the marine layer in California and Oregon, misty and chilly—or, here in Puerto Rico, lavender as the sky starts to lighten. 

Even after sunset when you think it must have already passed its prettiest time, the ocean suddenly seems to turn into a huge silver mirror, as if it has collected all the light that just faded from the sky and spread it out paper-thin over its surface.

Sam and I went down to the beach early one morning. It was already hot, of course. The sun was peeking out through the cloud layer in the distance.

Looks like the beginning of a solar eclipse!

Ah, there's the full sun.

If there's one thing we like, it's crabs. Especially tiny hermit crabs.

The morning water looks so shimmery!

The trek to some of these beaches was an adventure. Dirt roads and potholes. It seems strange that you could ever feel "remote" on an island where you're never more than an hour away from everything else on the island! But I guess being on a tiny island at all is part of why it feels remote in the first place!

Puffy morning clouds

Another beach we really loved was Playa Negra, the black sand beach. This one doesn't have an adventurous drive, but an adventurous hike instead. The path is actually a stream bed, and it winds down through a green forest.

It gets pretty dense at times!

Along the edges of the path were banks with holes in them, and inside the holes were little orange crabs! We couldn't get them to come out (though Sam tried and tried), but every once in a while we would catch a glimpse of one scuttling quickly back into its hole before we quite got close enough to get a good look.

I found a huge palm frond on the ground and stood it up to see how tall it was. Even though the stem was mostly hollow, it was pretty heavy! I wouldn't want to get hit with it when it fell.

This is probably the tree it came from.

I love the exposed roots on this tree!

We went to a black sand beach in Hawaii a couple years ago with Abe. There, the black sand is formed fast and almost explosively when lava hits the ocean water. Since there is no volcano in Vieques, I couldn't imagine that the black sand beach here would be as good! I expected blackish sand…if that. So I was surprised and pleased when we got there and the sand was soft, fine, and just as jet-black as Punalu'u!

I read that the black color of the sand comes and goes to some extent, depending on how many minerals are washed down to the beach. And the black sand does, in fact, come from volcanic activity—just not recent volcanic activity like in Hawaii

Playa Negra’s origin goes back millions of years when the movement of tectonic plates and the volcanic activity in the area formed Vieques. It owes its black sand color to the leftover particles of the volcanic material and minerals left behind by the volcanic activity.

During the rainy season, the rain carries these minerals from Monte Pirata, located in the southwest of the island, out to the beach, giving the sand on Playa Negra its peculiar color.

I might have liked this beach even better than Punalu'u because the sand was so striking against the whitish-red cliffs! It was softer and nicer to walk on, too.

There was something odd about the sand. It seemed almost…sticky (like…instead of sifting down from your hand in grains, it stuck together). Globby. Like that stuff you make from cornstarch and water and glue. You can see it in the way it jiggles when Seb walks over it here:

As I was puzzling over this, I happened to drop my phone on the sand. When I picked it up, I saw this ring of sand where the metal ring is inside! I tried to brush it off and it clung to the phone, and I realized that the sand is magnetic! So interesting! I guess some of it is made of magnetite, rather than basalt. It made furry shapes when it touched metal or other magnets, just like iron filings do. I love it!

The wet sand was SO silvery and reflective that in the pictures, it's sometimes hard to tell it was black at all. But against your skin or against the white foam of the waves, it was obvious.

The beach was mostly deserted. A couple girls showed up, took selfies, and left, and then we had it all to ourselves. It was evening and the sun was setting, and the slanting light was so pretty!

After a while the clouds started to gather behind the cliffs. Sam was over on the path hunting orange crabs, and Sebastian went into the water. After a while I joined him to wait and watch the clouds. It felt so good! So comfortable and refreshing as always. We didn't want to get out.

The light was otherworldly. The whole ocean was a silver mirror. It was even more striking when you were inside that mirror looking out!

The clouds moved toward us, dividing the sky in half. Sam came over and found the camera and took some more pictures, then joined us in the water. Then the storm started moving fast and we realized we should probably get out of there! But it was all so beautiful and so mesmerizing, we couldn't make ourselves do it. Even as the first drops of rain hit, it felt so good and so dreamlike to be in the warm water while the warm rain fell all around! The raindrops turned the huge silver mirror into an endless sheet of ripples, and the wet rain fell on our wet faces and hair in the strangest way. Finally the cloud started surging around us and we got out and ran!

It started pouring when we hit the path, and then we saw that it really was a river bed! We were so wet—well, we were already wet, so we didn't mind much. But the rain soaked the rest of our clothes and our bags and our towels. The race back to the car was definitely exciting, with the rain pounding down and the water running muddy torrents down the trail! After we got back in the car and the air conditioning came on, it was the only time I ever felt chilled during the whole trip!

We would have chosen to do it again in an instant, though—to be surrounded within that silver sky and gold cloud and black sand.

The next day we walked down to the far end of another beach where some more of the black sand washes down. It was interesting to see how it mixed with regular brown sand.

This beach, Pata Prieta, was just a tiny hidden cove down a bumpy dirt road in a wildlife refuge. We liked how secluded it was, and how white the sand was. One whole side of the beach was covered with big pieces of coral, and once we got under the water we could see why—there were reefs along both sides of the cove.

The coral was really sharp! We all got cut by it at various times, in spite of having water shoes and trying to be careful. There were so many different kinds of plants and corals underwater. I loved this big piece of brain coral we found, and some other smaller shells too. The coral patterns are so interesting up close!

Off one side of the island there's a long pier that the navy ships used to use. (This island held a U.S. Naval Training Ground until 2003! And they used it as a bombing practice range. There are signs everywhere telling you not to touch anything that might be unexploded ordnance, and showing how to identify it. There are even whole swaths of the wildlife refuge you aren't allowed to go in because it hasn't been cleared of explosives.)

We'd read that the snorkeling around the pier was good, so we clambered rather awkwardly down the rocks on the calm side. The long pier does a good job keeping the big waves away—it was quite choppy on the other side.

The pier was higher than the water by several feet, so you could easily swim under it without hitting your head or being trapped under there. But it was strange to go underneath it anyway. It felt scary. It was darker without the sun coming through the water, and the footings were covered with coral and barnacles, going way down until they were obscured in the depths. I had my phone in a dry bag, which worked for keeping it dry but not for taking pictures. I got exactly one picture, and it was this one:

which actually captures the feel of the place rather well. There were so many fish! Huge schools of them just rushing by just underneath you, as if they didn't even notice you. These were big fish, too, the size of dinner plates. Then there were thin silvery swordfish-looking fish (I don't actually know the names of any of them) that swam right at the surface, so shimmery that they were completely invisible until you came right upon them. And there were schools of pink jellyfish, too, transparent in the light, and so thin they seemed like they could float right up out of the water and away. It was so cool to see them! I don't know if we should have been worried about them stinging us. We weren't, really—we just tried to avoid them and were successful. But it probably would have been unpleasant if we hadn't been!

(Video from Sebastian's GoPro)

We rested on another beach near that pier when we were done. (It's surprisingly tiring, snorkeling. At least it was for me. After a while I would get a bit of a headache and feel a need to breathe the fresh air!) I love the clear water and the way the sun shines through it here!

Tiny hermit crab!

I'm always so proud of my little shell collections. Unreasonably proud, really. Somehow the fact that I found them transforms the shells into much more beautiful specimens than they were before! (Doesn't the Little Prince say something like that? He's right.)

And now, lastly, we come to our favorite beach—Playa Punta Arenas or Green Beach! It's far away from everything, out on the very tip of Vieques. The dirt roads on the way there are bumpy, but not too bad. Our little rental Kia was fine (though I was glad it was Sam driving and not me). We've braved worse going to the geode beds or Topaz Mountain!

We saw a few iguanas on this road as we drove to the beach. (We may have hit an iguana…Sebastian said "Hey, that was an iguana!" and Sam looked back to see a little shape tumbling, tumbling, tumbling behind us…but…we're going to assume he was fine.) The forest around this area was dense, but not really anything like the rainforest.

Through a little path and then you're onto the beach! I love (I discovered on this trip) forests that go right up to beaches! I guess there's a bit of that in Oregon, and I love it there too.

We explored different end of this beach on different days, and liked all of it.

The water is just so calm and peaceful. I could watch it all day.

Right when I first got in the water, I saw tons of huge conch shells. They were so pretty! They all still had conches in them. I love the pearly shiny parts of the shells. I wished these were empty so I could take one home! We did find several empty ones later.

This was a beautiful shell too…but we had to put it back in the water when a little hermit crab peeked out.

But the best thing at this beach was the snorkeling! At one point as I was swimming around, a huge school of big fish—probably 300 of them—went shimmering around, above, and below me. I was saying "Oh! Oh! Look!" to no one because it just felt like too much to keep to myself! It was amazing! There were so many different kinds of fish all around, in schools or in small groups…just hundreds of them. I wish I knew their names. All I know is, "That fish looks like Dorie!"

Another smaller school of fish Sebastian got a video of.

Then Sam went swimming out and saw a stingray…and then Sebastian saw one too! That really did seem too good to be true. I'd read that rays were sometimes at this beach but I didn't think WE could see one! Seb even got a video of it! I was saying prayers of thanks as I watched Sam and Seb excitedly comparing notes on all the things they'd seen. They loved it SO much. I think I felt even happier when they saw something cool than when I did!

Rays are so cool!

This was another beach that had a bit of a current and it was easy to get pulled out farther than you realized. At one point I was swimming along happily following some fish when I saw Seb coming up out of the water and shouting at me. He was yelling, "Swim straight back! Turn around! The current is too strong here!" I felt pretty scared for a minute, because then I could feel it, and the shore already seemed very very far away. But I swam straight across the diagonal pull, as hard as I could toward the sand, and I saw Seb swimming to the side of me, keeping his eye on me, and then I felt safer. I was exhausted when I finally made it back to shore! I stayed away from that section of water for the rest of the time.

At one point when he was out snorkeling, Sam saw a HUGE conch shell and dove down to get it. He brought it back to shore to get a closer look, and when he picked it up…two enormous claws reached out! It was the biggest hermit crab we had ever seen!

Sam and Seb tried to get the crab to come out farther so they could see it.

When they set it down, the crab scuttled off into the water on its huge legs. Seb followed it and got a video, but it is hard to even see how BIG it is once it's in the water! We read that crabs that big can be fifty or sixty years old!

While Seb and Sam were looking at the big crab, I was off snorkeling again, swimming over beautiful waving fields of sea grass. This beach has a huge coral reef—more than one, but we were mostly going along the closest one to the beach—and there are so many kinds of coral, those rays Sam and Seb had seen, parrotfish, sea urchins, everything you could think of. I hoped I might see a ray too.

It's so strange to be in that underwater world. There are hills and fields and rocks. You can swim way out from the shore, and instead of just getting steadily deeper like the California beaches, there are shallow parts, tall reefs, and sudden trenches where it gets deep and so murky you can't even see all the way down. The reef I was swimming above slanted out from the beach quite a long way, and then curved and ran along parallel to the beach. There were buoys out farther to sea, marking the edge of the safe area, so every now and then I'd come up and make sure I was within those. On the other side of the close reef, there was a trench full of grasses, like a big seagrass meadow, and then another reef. I was swimming over the trench looking down at the big rocks that were scattered here and there among the grass, covered with coral and sea moss. There were fish hidden under the rocks and slipping through the grasses. The sun was coming down through the water and making bright diamond shapes on the ocean floor. And then I saw a huge dark shape drifting gently with the current. It was a big sea turtle lazily nibbling on the grass! I could see his big mouth (beak?) opening and closing and his flippers slowly waving as he floated in place.

I wanted to swim back as fast as I could and tell Sam and Sebastian, and try to get them to go out and see the turtle too! But I also didn't want to stop watching it myself! Finally I decided I better just stay and watch while I could. So I swam around and back and forth, watching the turtle as he relaxed in the water. There was a little silver fish on his back, which seemed to be nibbling at him! Cleaning algae or something off of his shell, I assume? They both looked so happy. And I was so happy!

Finally I tore myself away to swim back along the reef and back to shore. As I doubled back and forth over the trench and the reef, suddenly I saw another sea turtle below me! This one was swimming, looking relaxed but going surprisingly fast—faster than me, anyway. I followed him for a while, and he wasn't alarmed, but just calmly kept swimming in and out between rocks and alongside the reef, looking for things to eat, I suppose. 

Then, after I reluctantly left that turtle behind, I saw a spotted ray flapping along the reef, undulating in that amazing way rays do. And then I saw Seb and Sam's huge crab walking out toward the reef too! I felt so lucky to get to see all those amazing animals!

And, thankfully, Sam and Seb were able to take the good snorkel and get back out to the reef and find one of the sea turtles, too! That's how we got a picture and a couple videos—from Seb's GoPro. I was so glad he had it with him!

Could you ever imagine that all that life and activity is going on beneath these placid waters??

Another beautiful (and inhabited) conch shell

Pieces of shells—I loved the many different colors and sheens of white!

A couple big (uninhabited) conch shells we found. You can see my sunglasses for scale.

After snorkeling at one point, Seb came kind of half-hopping into shore, nudging something along with his foot. He said, "I found this little urchin, and I wanted you to see it, but I didn't dare pick it up!"

It was such a cute little ball! Like a hedgehog!

As soon as we stopped looking at it, it rolled itself back down to the water and back out to sea!

It was getting toward dusk now and we knew it would be time to go soon. We didn't want to drive the bumpy roads back in the dark. But this was our last night and we just couldn't bear to go! We wanted to stay there in the warm water, under the slanting light of the sun, forever!

Seb and Sam went out to the reef one last time. Here Sebastian is standing up on a tall part of it—see how tall he is, way out there in the water?

Sam saw a little pile of rocks with a bunch of shells in front of it like decorations, and he thought, "That looks like an octopus den!" Then he saw two little eyes peeking out and it WAS an octopus! He changed color and texture a couple different times as Sam watched.

The clouds started building as the sun got lower.

You can see some hills poking up beneath the clouds—that's the main island of Puerto Rico over there.

The water turned into a big mirror again. And at last we sadly got out, dried off, picked up our things, shrieked repeatedly at all the tiny biting bugs that were suddenly attacking us on every exposed surface, and leaped into the car. Didn't hit any iguanas on the way back, either!

We knew most of the big shells would be too hard to take home, and the little ones too delicate. But I lined all mine up anyway so I could congratulate myself on what a nice little collection they made. Notice my sea sponge! I did bring that home, and it's in my shower right now! It's pretty rough for scrubbing with, but I like it anyway.

Corals

I like my sea glass, and those little spiny hollow urchin shells (whatever they are)

This is Seb's shell collection. So many good things!

We ate fish that night—some of the very little friends we'd swum with earlier? Ha ha. I hope not. It was delicious, though.

Our last day was a blur, as I'd known it would be. There were some more fun things. Since we had to catch our flight out of San Juan later that day, and didn't want to risk any delays, we flew on a tiny plane back to the Ceiba airport instead of taking the ferry back to the mainland. The flight only took about 10 minutes, but it was so fun! I knew Sebastian would love it, and he did—it was one of his favorite parts of the whole trip.

The Vieques airport was so small! It didn't have air conditioning and it was HOT, too. We had to wait indoors, but it would have been better to wait in this little outdoor area where there would have at least been a breeze!

Our little plane—it only held eight passengers! We just stuck our bags in a little compartment in the back.

After we boarded, the pilot just said, "okay, everyone in?" and then cruised casually down the runway, his arm sticking out the open window. We lifted off steeply and suddenly and then we were above Vieques looking down! SO different from a flight on a big airliner!

I love the blue blue water, with reefs beneath. You can see the airport and then long empty strip of green which is the runway we'd taken off from.

There were some little reef islands not far offshore. I bet it would cool to go swim by those!

There's Mosquito Pier, the long pier we went snorkling by on another day

And here we are back over the mainland, about to land at Ceiba Airport

And that was that! Would that our flight back home would have been so simple…

There is really not much more to tell. Our flight out of San Juan was delayed, which we luckily found out about early enough that we had time to stop in Old San Juan again, get gelato, and eat lunch instead of waiting an extra two hours in the airport.

Had this delicious elote, which I've tried to make myself (grilled corn with a sort of mayo mixture  and cotija and lime and chili…it's so good) but which was even better here.

And some good tacos.

Seb tried to convince us these churros were disgusting and we shouldn't even try them.

Then we waited at the airport. Flight got delayed again. Then again. Then, when we feared it would be cancelled altogether, the guy at the desk had us race across the airport to catch a different flight to JFK in New York. So we got there…but too late for our connection. After two hours waiting in line, a few unsympathetic employees, a broken terminal tram, and a hotel shuttle that didn't run…we made it to an airport hotel to wait some more. 

We did sleep pretty well in an air conditioned room!

And we made it back to Utah the next day.

And we got to see the rest of the children, who we'd been missing terribly!

And to do laundry. And to jump back headfirst into everything else that had piled up while we were gone.

So all was well.

But every once in a while I still think about those sunsets over the warm, calm ocean…and think I'd like to go back someday.