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Islas Bonitas: Vieques and Culebra
CARIBBEAN TRAVEL & LIFE
January/February 2010
The leading ladies of Puerto Rico's unspoiled Spanish Virgin Islands, beguiling
Vieques and Culebra are getting ready for their close-ups.
by Christopher P. Baker
Photo by: Zach Stovall
Not often do I share a swimming pool with a horse. Well, three horses in fact.
They're not actually in the pool, although as I watch them drinking just five
feet from where I'm soaking, I harbor a crazy desire to see the little foal take
the plunge.
"Oh, they come every afternoon," says another guest as we lean against the edge
of the pool, cocktails in hand, at the Inn on the Blue Horizon. Two more of the
animals emerge through a gap in the hedge and lope across a lawn that slopes
toward the beryl-blue sea.
Paso finos - the local criollo horses - are part of the Vieques landscape.
They're everywhere, roaming free. Driving around this small island, I find
myself easing past skittish foals and beeping my horn at stubborn stallions and
mares that won't budge from the road. "If a horse damages your car, it doesn't
belong to anyone. But if you hit a horse, it sure does!" So says Garry Lowe,
owner of Vieques Adventure Co., the next morning as we cycle along dusty trails
that cut through dense stands of tropical foliage. Horses peer out from the veld
as Garry and I stop to explore huge bunkers cut into the hillside; part of the
former U.S. Naval Ammunition Facility, the empty structures now provide dank
roosts for bats. Emerging beside Playa Grande, I see hoof marks in the sand.
Turtle tracks too, where a female leatherback had hauled out of the sea to lay
her eggs above the high-water mark.
Vieques + Culebra Essentials: Where to Stay + What to Do...
Garry chops open two coconuts with his machete, and together we slake our
thirsts. I admire the champagne-colored sand unspooling for several miles
against a backdrop of cactus-studded wilderness that extends virtually unbroken
from one end of the isle to the other. "Wait till you see the beaches beyond the
Camp Garcia gate," says Garry. "They'll blow you away."
Camp Garcia is the name of the former U.S. Navy base that until recently was
considered a curse on Vieques, the largest of two dozen mostly uninhabited
islands and cays comprising a mini-archipelago east of the Puerto Rican
mainland. During World War II, the U.S. Navy expropriated a portion of Vieques
and neighboring Culebra, and the islands took a pounding during subsequent
decades as gunnery and bombing targets. The Navy left Culebra in 1975 and
finally pulled out of Vieques in 2003, ending an increasingly vocal battle with
islanders, who were demanding to be left in peace.Ironically, the Navy was the
unwitting steward of a natural treasure: Camp Garcia is now managed by the U.S.
Fish & Wildlife Service as the 17,673-acre Vieques National Wildlife Refuge, a
mélange of coastal lagoons, mangrove wetlands, subtropical dry forest and
pristine beaches that encompasses more than half of the island. During the
Navy's tenure, much of Vieques and Culebra was off-limits, and tourism
entrepreneurs gave the isles a wide berth. But since the Navy stopped shaking
the bedrock, the Puerto Rican government has marketed the largely undeveloped
archipelago as the Spanish Virgin Islands. The focus of the campaign is on
eco-tourism and active adventures that take advantage of the islands' unspoiled
charms.
And that's just what I'm here to do: take full advantage. The military is long
gone, and though there are signs that the rest of the world is becoming aware of
these islands' breathtaking allure, the tourism industry hasn't really commenced
a full-scale invasion yet. Vieques and Culebra are islands in transition, places
with more horses than cars, more dirt roads than paved, more beaches than beach
resorts. And for me, that's just about heaven.
Rest assured, there's more to the Spanish Virgin Islands than just miles of
unspoiled natural beauty. Vieques in particular has seen the arrival of dozens
of expats from North America, whose entrepreneurial spirit is bringing a cachet
to the isle. Artists too have started to flock here, giving the island a
decidedly bohemian vibe. And Vieques' newfound cosmopolitanism is poised to
reach a new high when the über-hip W Retreat & Spa, scheduled to open in March,
welcomes its first guests.
Vieques + Culebra Essentials: Where to Stay + What to Do...
Formerly the Wyndham Martineau Bay Resort & Spa, the 157-room W promises to turn
Vieques into a trendy hot spot for urbane fashionistas. A $150-million
metamorphosis replaced the Wyndham's dowdy colonial features with W's trademark
sexy sophistication in a surfeit of white, taupe and chocolate-tone wenge wood.
The resort, which hovers over twin beaches on the north side of the island, five
minutes from the airport and 30 minutes by air from San Juan, hopes to lure a
well-heeled clientele with its 6,000-square-foot spa and artful Mix restaurant,
serving French-Caribbean-Latino cuisine courtesy of Michelin-star chef Alain
Ducasse, fresh from his engagement at the Jules Verne restaurant atop the Eiffel
Tower. It's a light-year leap for Vieques, a place where things happen poco a
poco, on the Viequenses' own time.
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