Day 7 – Beach Exploring, Off-Roading & Seafood

Our second day in Vieques is exactly what you would imagine a rural Caribbean island to be like – heavy off-roading in a jeep to get to beautiful secluded beaches during the day and then an evening with a delicious authentic Puerto Rican seafood feast and a local dive bar.

The day started out early with Garrett, Mo and Matt taking a quarter mile swim/snorkel to the small deserted island just off the coast.  After about 45 minutes of mainly coral and a few small fish, we headed back to clean up, eat and begin our island exploration.

Garrett and Mo walking up to the island after swimming across the small channel

After a quick bite to eat at Duffy’s (our go-to spot), we rented a jeep and hit the road to explore .  We’re not saying we’re better than other tourists who visit Vieques, but we’re definitely not your average visitors.  We were exploring roads, or should we say paths, that didn’t appear to be well traveled.  Our jeep had 4-wheel drive and we put it to the test.  

Lauren with our new ride

Lo & Mo = LoMo; bump in Spanish = Lomo

A view of some of the off-road terrain we explored

Our off-the-beaten-path adventures lead us to a handful of beautiful secluded beaches all over the island including Red Beach, Secret Beach, Blue Beach and Green Beach – almost the whole rainbow.  We jumped in the water at each spot and explored a bit and then moved on, too much to see in too little time.

Red Beach - The boys do their best yoga pose, except Garrett, he's signalling touchdown

Secret Beach - Garrett and Mo on a jog along the long stretch of empty sand

Matt off in the distance exploring the tide pools of Secret Beach

Shhhhh, this beach is a secret

Greg hanging with Los Gallos again

Garrett with an animal skull he found

We made it back to our bungalow in the early evening where we showered up and headed off to dinner in the island’s main town, Isabel.  We heard and read great things about EL PATIO and it didn’t disappoint.  Greg, Mo and Matt all ordered the snapper, which to their surprise was served in its entirety meaning head-to-tail.  Lauren ordered the Caribbean lobster which was so massive it hung off the plate and Garrett rounded out the bunch with a chicken stuffed with ham and cheese…all delicious authentic Puerto Rican cuisine.

The jeep was both our off-road machine and our luxurious evening chariot

We sat bar top at El Patio

"I have a pina colada and you ain't got one!"

Lauren ordered the caribbean lobster and ate the whole thing!

Red Snapper before...

Red Snapper after

Once the last bit of fish, lobster and chicken were scarfed down, we made our way to what many consider the most popular bar on the island, AL'S MAR AZUL.  It’s owned by a guy from Detroit so it had a hint of Midwest dive bar mixed with a heavy island persona and atmosphere.  It had darts, board games, TVs with ball games (Yankees v Rays), nice people and strong drinks, can’t beat that. 

After a bit of bad directions from our new friend Chris, we found Al's

Matt didn't know he was on the menu

After a couple cocktails we made it back to our side of the island and we called it a night.

On Thursday we’re taking the ferry back to the main island where we’ll jump into our rental car and head to the Puerto Rican capital of San Juan with a stop-off at the El Yunque rain forest, the only sanctioned rain forest in the U.S.