We slept in on Friday and checked out of the Airbnb at 11, got some food at Amigo, then drove to Luquillo Beach.
It was cloudy, and sprinkled a little at first, but it was warm enough, so we picked a spot on the beach and played for a few hours.
The beach closed at 5, and we barely made it to the showers in time to get changed into regular clothes.
Because of our ridiculous departure time of 3:38am we didn't bother getting a place to stay that night. We still had time to kill, so we drove the Mall of San Juan, which is close to the airport, and wandered the stores for a couple hours.
We had dinner at a nearby Chinese restaurant that was open late, then went to the airport, dropped off the rental car, went through security (including an agricultural scan that made us throw out our apples), then waited several hours for our flight to Orlando.
We had a long layover in Orlando, which was then extended by two more hours because of weather delays before we could fly to Houston. The delay messed up the timing of my motion sickness drugs and I ended up getting so sick I had to wait while Amber got our van from the lot and came back to pick me up. It was several days before I got back to normal, but it was worth it for a fun trip.
We got up at 5am on Wednesday morning to drive to the ferry terminal, where we caught the ferry to Vieques, a smaller island east of the main island. We wore our swimsuits, not knowing that the ferry would be freezing inside. After shivering for what seemed like forever, we disembarked, and got a taxi to take us to La Playa Negra.
We had to follow a short trail to get to the beach, and when we arrived, it was deserted.
More people showed up soon after, but we had fun playing in the water, looking for shells, and of course, playing in the black sand.
We walked from there to Esperanza, where we got lunch at a burger place called Lazy Jack's.
After lunch we walked to Hombre de Puerto Ferro, or the "Vieques Stonehenge". It was a bit of a hike, but we saw lots of horses along the way.
It was not as impressive as we'd hoped, but there were some very big rocks that apparently shouldn't be there.
We walked back to Esperanza and still had time to kill, so we looked unsuccessfully for a magnet, got some mango popsicles and water, then just rested along the seawall, which had stairs going down to the beach.
Eventually it was time for our kayaking tour. We met up with the guides, who drove us in a van through the woods to Puerto Mosquito Bioluminescent Bay. It was not fully dark when we got there and the moon was bright. We were assigned our clear-bottomed kayaks and kayaked across the bay while we listened to some sub-par tour guiding about the water, plants and stars.
At the beginning it was hard to tell if our oar strokes were causing bioluminescence or not, and I was about to consider the excursion a dud. However, by the time we started heading back, it got dark enough and the clouds covered the moon enough that we could see a bluish glow clearly with every oar stroke or any time we swished our hands through the water. It was very cool, but hard to get on camera.
They drove us back in the van, where our taxi was waiting to rush us back to the ferry terminal to catch the last ferry back to the main island. We waited for about an hour, suffered through the even colder ferry (now that we were damp), but finally made it back to our rental car. We drove to our last Airbnb in Luquillo, where we skipped dinner (we ate snacks waiting for the ferry), took showers, and crashed around midnight.
On Tuesday morning we walked back to Escambron Beach, where we had an appointment to go snorkeling in the area in the right of the picture here.
We got checked in, got our gear, got a quick lesson, and got snorkeling.
Our guide was really good, and we got to see sea turtles, puffer fish, reef squids, and tropical fish.
They also had a bunch of concrete items below for the fish to swim around in, like benches.
It was really fun be we were tired afterwards.
We walked back to the Airbnb, then tried to get lunch at the supermarket deli we found yesterday, but it ended up being a fiasco because they didn't have anything on their menu. When we did find something they could make, it still took forever.
After lunch we walked to nearby Playita del Condado to play on the beach for the rest of the day.
It had a lot of cool shells, and also an area full of fish, sea urchins, and crabs.
Our crab enjoyed reading as the setting sun made the water sparkle.
When we'd had enough sun, we walked back to the Airbnb, took showers, and had leftovers for dinner.
We used to go for a long weekend in Galveston every year in September after the prices went down, but with kids in high school it became too hard to take them out of school and we hadn't done it in years. I wanted to do a beach trip this year, so we paid summer prices and did a 3-day weekend in June at our favorite condo, Seascape.
We drove down Saturday morning and were at the beach before noon.
It wasn't long before Amber was doing her favorite beach activity, pretending to read a book while falling asleep.
The kids had fun building sand castles and playing in the water. I had fun not having to worry about them and reading a book.
I brought my running shoes, so I went running along the beach after dinner to see how it was. Running on sand was actually pretty nice, but it was too hot and humid, even with the ocean breeze.
On Sunday we went to church in Galveston, then spent the afternoon hanging out at the beach.
After dinner, the kids just wanted to stay in the condo, so Amber and I were able to go for a long walk on the beach together.
By Monday morning, everyone had mostly had enough of the beach, so we lazed around the condo then went on one last walk on the beach before heading home.
