Day 2

Day 2: Exploring the island, Abe's all in one tour; snorkeling, kayaking, explored the mangrove tunnels, mud baths, and the Bio-luminescent bay.

We started the day off exploring some of the beaches that the island had to offer. We ate lunch of fish and chips at a little place in Esperanza (yummy!) and then headed on our snorkeling, kayaking tour. We decided to bring some disposable camera's on the tour since we were going to be kayaking and thought that they might get wet. And we didn't want to take any chances of our camera's getting stolen. This was one of my biggest regrets! We didn't get really any pictures of our favorite experiences of the entire trip.

All the locals in Vieques start the morning, the afternoon, and the evening off with alcohol. They can pretty much be seen drinking at all hours of the day and night. Our tour guide drove us to the beach with his alcohol in hand.

We started the tour off in double kayaks. We kayaked to a gorgeous private beach that was only accessible by boat and played and snorkeled the afternoon away. Kayaking and snorkeling are now my favorite things to do...I think I could have been there all day. I was amazed how easy it was to float on top of the water and swim with flippers. We saw a lobster and many beautiful colored fish. We were able to touch and pick up a star fish. We however to my relief did not see a shark or Manaray again.

I found a huge conch shell in the water while snorkeling...after making sure that nothing was still living in the shell I picked it up and kept it. One of the tour guide's lectured me about taking the shell because it could be a home to a hermit crab or something. After giving it much thought I decided to keep the shell anyway :)...your only in Puerto Rico once. Our tour guides were actually pretty dang awesome and they made the tour a huge success.

After snorkeling our tour guides gave us some drinks to enjoy on the beach. After drinking a few glasses of it we realized we had been drinking alcoholic drinks. Now, I just wanted to make sure that you were still paying attention. We were offered alcoholic drinks we declined and drank some mango juice instead. The tour guides were bewildered that we had refused.

Next we hoped back in the kayaks and went and explored the mangrove tunnels in our kayaks. For those of you who don't know what a mangrove is they are trees that grow and live in salt water. They multiply like crazy and create this organic compost...eventually creating land. They are so important because they house many small baby fishes, and other marine life.


The mangrove trees create natural tunnels...we kayaked through and explored many tunnels and lagoons through the mangrove trees. We stopped to eat dinner in our kayaks and then had mud baths/pedicures with the soft mud compost from the trees. The mud has been rumored to be miracle mud. The mud is highly enriched with vitamins and minerals.

As we kayaked out of the mangroves it started getting dark. We started to see that our oars started glowing and sparkling as we moved through the water. We kayaked back out the mangroves and into the bio-luminescent bay (aka mosquito bay) were we hopped out of our kayaks and swam in the glowing sparkling water.

It was amazing!! It is so hard to explain but I will try. There are tiny micro-organisms that live in the bay. When they come into contact with another organism or shaken they create a bright burst of blue light. Mosquito bay is the perfect place to see this...the bay is small and shallow and the entrance to the bay is narrow so the organisms get trapped and protected in the bay making it very bright. We went on a pitch black night (no moon and very minimal light from the small city in Vieques that could be seen). The water around you as you moved would light up and sparkle. You could let water drip down your arm and it would just sparkle. This was by far my favorite part of the trip. It was so magical!!