A Day Trip to Vieques

A few days after our day trip to Culebra (read “A Day Trip to Culebra” here), we headed back to Fajardo to board the ferry to the other main Spanish Virgin Island – Vieques. Vieques lies about 8 miles east of Puerto Rico, and is an easy ferry ride from the mainland. Although there were a few raindrops on our ride over, we were greeted with a full day of warm sunshine upon our arrival.

Wanting to explore as much of the island as we could in a day, we rented a Jeep from a small car rental agency just a few blocks away from the ferry.

So what did we do during our day on Vieques?

Vieques is known for its beautiful beaches, and our goal was to see as many on the south side as possible. We left Isabel Segunda and headed down island, entered the US Fish and Wildlife Reserve on the east side and took the road as far as we could. There are still some areas of Vieques off limits due to the cleanup of former military exercises (see a brief history here) and several of the beaches in this area were closed during our visit. It was a pretty, but bumpy ride through the Reserve and the area had an abundance of horses roaming around.

We got a chance to peek at several beaches, including Pata Prieta, Red Beach (or Caracas Beach), Navio Beach, Media Luna and Sun Bay. Our favorites that day?

Media Luna because it was shallow, sandy and calm…

And Sun Bay. A beautiful long expanse of tan sand with calm clear water. Sun Bay also had a small restaurant/bar/gift shop and a bunch of wild horses meandering the area around the beach.

After an hour or two in the surf and sun, we wandered into the small beachside town of Esparanza. The town was quiet and laid back – just the type of town we could see ourselves hanging around for a while. Thirsty, we stopped at a colorful place called Bananas for a beverage.

Rum Punches were the Happy Hour special, so we ordered a couple.

The drinks were delicious and the view across the street wasn’t bad either.

We could have stuck around Bananas enjoying a few more cocktails and chatting with the locals and other visitors, but we were determined to find the black sand beach – and headed west. We took a hike down to the beach on a dry river bed and spent a couple of minutes enjoying the contrast of colors with the sand and the cliffs.

The afternoon was flying by and we started back to Isabel Segunda to return the Jeep. We made a stop at Al’s Mar Azul (read more) to grab some dinner and a drink and enjoy a phenomenal sunset before heading back the the ferry for our ride back to the mainland.

As wonderful as our day on Vieques was, we just couldn’t squeeze everything we wanted to see into just one day, including more beach time, time to roam around some of the towns to check out the local shops, restaurants and bars, learn more about the history of the island, enjoy more wild horse sightings and take an evening excursion through the Bioluminescent Bay. Another visit of several days or more will remain on “our list”!

Have you been to Vieques? Tell us about it!

Find Vieques on our Puerto Rico Map

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