Things to do in Eastern Puerto Rico
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Dinghy Dock
If you can brave the gauntlet of cigarette-smoking expats that requisition the steps nightly, you’ll find the DD to be something of a culinary revelation. Unusually for Puerto Rico, there’s an all-you-can-eat salad bar to quell your early hunger pangs, and you can chomp on your lettuce and cucumber while watching the kitchen staff throw morsels of food to the giant tarpon that swim right up to the deck. Fish is the obvious specialty here – fresh catches such as swordfish and snapper done in creole sauces. The busy bar is a frenzy of expats nursing Medalla beers and acts as the unofficial island grapevine. If you haven’t heard it here first, it’s not worth hearing.…
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Bahía Mosquito
Locals claim that Bahía Mosquito, a designated wildlife preserve, has the highest concentration of phosphorescent dynoflagellates not only in Puerto Rico, but in the world. Indeed, it's also known as Bioluminescent Bay - and it's magnificent. A trip through the lagoon is nothing short of psychedelic, with hundreds of fish whipping up bright-green sparkles below the surface as your kayak or electric boat passes by, but the best part is when you stop to swim: it's like bathing in the stars.
Don't ever accept a ride in a motorized boat - the engine pollution kills the organisms that create phosphorescence. You can just drive east on the rough Sun Bay road (you'd better hav…
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La Casa del Mar Dive Center
Set inside the grounds of El Conquistador resort, the PADI-certified La Casa del Mar Dive Center is great for all levels. The ‘Bubblemakers for Kids’ appeals to the younger crowd (8 to 15 years; $49); more experienced divers can take the trips to local reefs (one/two tanks $69/99). A two-tank dive over in Culebra is $125.
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Island Adventures
Island Adventures offers 90-minute tours ($30) in an electric boat just about every night, except when there’s a full moon (take the trip to learn why!).
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Las Cabezas de San Juan Reserva Natural ‘El Faro’
A 316-acre nodule of land on Puerto Rico’s extreme northeast tip, the Las Cabezas de San Juan Reserva Natural ‘El Faro’ protects an historic lighthouse, a bioluminescent bay, rare flora and fauna, lush rainforest, various trails and boardwalks, and an important scientific research center. Despite its diminutive size, the reserve shelters seven – yes seven – different ecological systems, including beaches, lagoons, dry forest, coral reefs and mangroves. Animal species that forage here include big iguanas, fiddler crabs, myriad insects and all kinds of birds. Such condensed biodiversity is typical of Puerto Rico’s compact island status and ‘Las Cabezas’ is highligh…
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Sea Ventures Pro Dive Center
Sea Ventures Pro Dive Center has three outlets in Fajardo, Palmas del Mar and Guánica. They’re staffed by very experienced professionals offering one-week PADI certification courses. For those who just want the basics or already know how to dive, there are multiple trips to Palominos and Icacos Cays daily (one/two tanks $65/99), and on Sunday there are trips to Vieques and Culebra.
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Duffy’s
Esperanza’s newest bar is a sleeker and slightly more refined version of Banana’s next door. It fills a gap in the market with fresh salads and creative seafood, but still nurtures an undone Caribbean flavor. Opening out onto Esperanza’s main strip, the laid-back street atmosphere infiltrates the shady interior where expats and locals mingle over beer and scallops.
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Caribbean Fly-fishing Company
Fishing is sublime in Vieques. Imagine Florida Keys with about one-tenth of the fishermen and enough bonefish, tarpon and permit to stock a mini ocean. Fishing boats can also allow you access to isolated stretches of coastline in the former naval zone. Caribbean Fly-fishing Company has received a favorable New York Times review.
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Captain Frank López
Captain Frank López offers fishing or snorkeling trips and sea excursions to Cayo Santiago. Prices are negotiable: start your bidding at about $30. Look for La Paseadora boat at Playa Naguabo.
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Caribbean Walk
Tiny, but full of local art, this creative shop in Isabel Segunda harbors intricate jewelry and plenty of other dexterously sculpted crafts.
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La Tienda Verde
For groceries, La Tienda Verde near the baseball field in the center of town is your best bet in Esperanza.
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Morales Supermercado
If you’re looking to stock up on provisions, try Morales Supermercado.
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Area Arqueológica Hombre de Puerto Ferro
You will find this site marked by a sign on Hwy 997, east of Esperanza. About a quarter mile east of the entrance to Sun Bay (Sombé), take the dirt road on your left (it heads inland). Drive for about two minutes until you find the burial site of the Indian known as the 'Hombre de Puerto Ferro', which is surrounded by a fence. Big boulders identify a grave where a 4000-year-old skeleton (now on exhibit at the Fortín) was exhumed.
Little is known about the skeleton, but archaeologists speculate that it is most likely the body of one of Los Arcaicos (the Archaics), Puerto Rico's earliest known inhabitants; this racial group made a sustained migration as well as seasonal …
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Chez Shack
What have ’60s psychedelic band the Mamas and Papas and Vieques’ most bohemian restaurant got in common? They both owe at least a part of their success to expat impresario and restaurateur Hugh Duffy. In the 1960s, Duffy owned a restaurant called ‘Love Shack’ on the nearby island of St Thomas, where he hosted folk-music nights with a quartet of spaced-out hippies called the New Journeymen. It was an important first break. But while the Journeymen changed their name to the Mamas and Papas and headed off to LA for some California Dreamin’, Duffy transplanted himself 13 miles to the west where he opened up Chez Shack, a quirky Caribbean hangout that quickly began t…
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CORALations
Two of Culebra's most isolated beaches - Resaca and Brava - are nesting sites for the endangered leatherback sea turtle, the largest living sea turtle in the world. The nesting season runs April through early June and each year small groups of volunteers are recruited by the US Fish & Wildlife Refuge to oversee the delicate egg-laying process.
Volunteers meet at sunset before traveling out to the beaches where they are required to count eggs, measure turtles, and document the event for environmental records. At the same time, participants are able to witness one of nature's most transfixing and timeless events in stunning close-up. Volunteer postings are understandably li…
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Culebra National Wildlife Refuge
More than 1500 acres of Culebra's 7000 acres constitute the Culebra National Wildlife Refuge, which US President Theodore Roosevelt signed into law almost 100 years ago, and which is protected by the Departamento de Recursos Naturales y Ambientales (DRNA; Department of Natural Resources & Environment). Most of this land lies along the Península Flamenco, and from Monte Resaca east to the sea, and includes all of the coastline as well as more than 20 offshore cays, with the exception of Cayo Norte. The US Fish & Wildlife Service administers these lands.
Monte Resaca, Isla Culebrita and Cayo Luis Peña are open to the public from sunrise to sunset daily, and all have some f…
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La Coca Trail
This popular 1.8-mile hike will take you a little over an hour each way. The trailhead is just up the road past the falls of the same name - just before the Yokahú Tower - and there is a small parking lot here. It's a fairly benign, low-altitude trail following streams through tabonuco forest.
La Coca made its mark on El Yunque history when a US college professor disappeared here for 12 days in 1997, claiming after his rescue that he got off the trail and was lost. The Forest Service, which had enlisted a search party of 60 volunteers and aircraft, was hardly amused. If you follow La Coca to its end, you can go left (east) along Carrillo Trail to the eastern part of the …
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Playa Luquillo
Set on a calm bay facing northwest and protected from the easterly trade winds, the public part of this beach makes a mile-long arc to a point of sand shaded by evocative coconut palms. The beach itself is a plane of broad, gently sloping yellow powder that continues its gradual slope below the water. Although crowds converge here at weekends and during holidays, Luquillo has always been more about atmosphere than solitude. With its famous strip of 50-plus food kiosks congregated at its western end, it’s also a great place to sample the local culinary culture, including scrumptious surullitos (fried cornmeal and cheese sticks). There is a bathhouse, a refreshment stand,…
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El Yunque Trail
This is the big enchilada for most visitors and takes you to the top of El Yunque (3496ft, 1049m) in 1½ hours or longer. Starting on Rte 191 Km 12.2 opposite the Palo Colorado Visitor's Center, the 2.4 mile trail is mostly paved or maintained gravel as you ascend through cloud forest to the observation deck, which is surrounded by microwave communication towers that transmit to the islands of Culebra and Vieques.
If you want a rock scramble from here, take Los Picachos Trail (0.17 miles) to another old observation tower and feel as if you have crested a tropical Everest. You can return via a different route by descending down the Mt Britton Spur/Mt Britton Trail and the…
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Isla Culebrita
If you need a reason to rent a kayak or hire a water taxi, Isla Culebrita is it. This small island, just a mile east of Playa Zoni, is part of the wildlife refuge. With its abandoned lighthouse, six beaches, tide pools, reefs and nesting areas for seabirds, Isla Culebrita has changed little in the past 500 years. The north beaches, such as the long crescent of Playa Tortuga, are popular nesting grounds for sea turtle, and you may see these animals swimming near the reefs just offshore.
Bring a lot of water, sunscreen, a shirt and a hat if you head for Isla Culebrita, because there is little shade here. The Isla is also home to a ruined lighthouse earmarked for extensive r…
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Puerto del Rey
This marina stands behind a breakwater in a cove 2 miles south of Fajardo. It is the largest marina in the Caribbean (1100 slips). You will find a complete marina village here with restaurants, stores, laundry facilities, banking and all manner of boat-hauling and maintenance capabilities. Many yachts stop here to take advantage of the marina’s courtesy car and Fajardo’s supermarkets when stocking up for a winter in the tropics or the ride back home to the USA. Travelers will find that many of the sailing, diving and fishing charters run from here. It’s about 5 miles south of Villa Marina.
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Museo de Esperanza
This tiny museum, on the Strip in Esperanza, is operated by the Vieques Conservation and Historical Trust (founded in 1984 to save the island’s bioluminescent bays). The museum contains exhibits on the ecological efforts of the trust, the island’s natural history and its early Indian inhabitants. Donations are welcome. Behind the gift shop, the museum runs what is supposedly the smallest aquarium on earth, a series of tanks in which baby sea creatures are displayed for a few weeks before being returned to the ocean. There’s also a rotating exhibit on the island’s flora and fauna, and an internet facility.
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Juanita Bananas
This revolutionary restaurant gives new meaning to the words ‘fresh’ and ‘sustainable.’ Sporting its very own greenhouse and garden, almost all of the fruit, vegetables and herbs listed on the menu will have traveled only a few hundred yards before hitting your plate. The seafood is also local and fished using sustainable methods. Specialties include tasty soups, fruity desserts and the famous sofrito sauce (garlic, onions and pepper browned in olive oil and capped with achiote – annato seeds). The restaurant is situated on a small rise about half a mile from Dewey. Reservations are necessary.
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Belly Button’s
Make a beeline for breakfast at Belly Button’s and bring a good appetite. Your belly will be more than happy after you’ve heroically demolished the three Frisbee-sized pancakes that appear rather magically on your plate here. Consisting of a small collection of alfresco tables located outside a kitchen trailer on the malecón, this expat-run breakfast phenomenon conjures up enough food to keep you going until 6pm. Grab a copy of the San Juan Star, help yourself to a mug of gourmet coffee and make plans for a day of breathtaking action – or indolence.
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Baño de Oro
Baño de Oro is a former swimming hole that is now a popular spot for photo opportunities. The water hole takes its name from the Río Baño de Oro, which feeds the pool. The name means 'bath of gold' in English, and Spaniards gave the river this name because they mined for gold here in the 16th century. The Baño de Oro Natural Area surrounding the pool is the catchment area for the river and pool.
In addition to the short Baño de Oro trail to the pool there are two overgrown trails in the Natural Area, which the National Park Service plans to open in the future.
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