* Spoiler alert: If you don't like pics of flesh wounds, proceed with caution. *
Wednesday we drove to Fajardo to catch the ferry to Vieques. Vieques is a smal island about 4mi wide and 10mi long off the East coast of Puerto Rico. It has some beautiful beaches, and is home to the supposedly brightest bioluminescent bay in the world. Fajardo has some crime, and leaving your car parked in Fajardo is always a slight risk, but we have insurance, and what else could we do? =) After about an hour or so ferry ride, we took a 15 minute ride in a publico (like a cab), except this guy was driving pretty crazy. The roads in Puerto Rico are terrible, with potholes all over the place, so this guy was bobbing and weaving through the street. Pretty crazy, but he got us to Esperanza, a small town on the south coast. We checked into our guesthouse in the afternoon, and strolled down the beach-front street. Beautiful view, but not much going on. We had dinner on the street, and stopped at the beach for a little while. Then we got ready for the bio bay, where the water glows from microorganisms in the water. There are only like 9 in the world, Puerto Rico has a few, but the one in Mosquito Bay in Vieques is supposed to be the brightest. We got picked up by our tour guide around sunset, and met up with about 15 other people. We opted for the kayak tour, which was awesome. There's no way to really explain how cool it was. You have to experience it! The most interesting thing for me was that the water doesn't just glow; you see the individual glowing particles in the water, like glitter. It was amazing. We also met a cool chick named Alessandra from Boston (almost everyone we've met is from NY or Boston), who we got to talk to during the truck ride back from the bio bay.
The next day we decided to rent scooters (aka mopeds), drive around the island a little, and beach hop. Riding scooters was pretty fun. For a while. Like I've said before, the roads in Puerto Rico are terrible. While I was riding, I hit some bad patch of road that had some sand, and...I crashed. I cut up my right knee and left foot pretty good, as well as a little on my hands. I got up and felt a little light headed, so I knelt down, and passed out for a second. Luckily there were some other tourists behind us who brought us to their house where a (pretty hungover) EMT cleaned out my wounds with rubbing alcohol (painful, yes). After that, Fed and I got back to our hotel, and Fed cleaned out my wounds pretty thoroughly with q-tips and hydrogen peroxide (very painful). Then he superglued some of the deeper cuts closed. Guerilla military medical tactics, maybe, but it worked. A little while later, he cleaned the wounds out again with iodine (also painful, especially considering I still hadn't taken any pain meds yet). I laid down for a little to recover before one of the ladies at our guest house drove us to the hospital. Here's how things looked; luckily my phone's camera sucks so you can't see all the gruesome details. =P
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| My right knee, though this picture makes it look like nbd. |
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| And my left foot. Gonna get me some decent battle scars. |
Note: If any medical schools are reading this, I would be happy to explain how Fed would make an excellent physician--one you would be proud to accept to your school asap. He took great care of me, and I would have been so much worse off if he hadn't been around to do so much all the time to make things easier and better for me.
At the hospital, the doctor cleaned out my wounds again (still painful) while he just whistled away (which is a dick thing to do while hurting someone). lol Then he gave me a tetanus shot (the reason we went to the hospital in the first place), an antibiotic shot, and - at the very end of all this - some pain medication. Priorities, doc, come on! =) That pain medication actually worked pretty well, cuz I was able to limp to get dinner when we got back to Esperanza.
The next day we had planned to go to Culebra, another island off the east coast that's supposed to have some of the best beaches in the world. Unfortunately, there is no ferry from Vieques to Culebra, so we had to get one from Vieques to Fajardo, and then from Fajardo to Vieques. =\ We took a publico at 10am from our guest house to catch the 11am ferry, which turned out to be the 12:30ish ferry. =P From Fajarado we drove to Walgreens to get an antibiotic prescription filled, and when we got back to the dock around 4, they told us to come back at 6 for the ferry to Culebra. We got back at 5:30 just to be safe, but we would find out that ferry was a small one for locals only. They told us we had to wait until midnight when a cargo ferry would come, and likely bring passengers back; they'd just have to ask the captain. Apparently the captain doesn't have a cell phone, or anything, because we were supposed to wait until he docked before we'd have a definitive answer on whether we'd get a ride. Also, we piad to park our car in a lot this time, instead of leaving it on the street, but we'd have to pay about $5 if we left for parking "one day" in the lot. So...we waited. For hours and hours, I sat--trying to keep my legs elevated to relieve the pain and swelling, and my butt from getting numb. lol
Fortunately, we met a local family and their friends, who were really nice, spoke english, and were great to pass the time with. I got to talk to a girl named Elena for a while, who studies mechanical engineering at the University of Puerto Rico (which Fed and I actually drove through while staying in Rincon). She speaks english really well, and it was awesome to have a cool person to talk to while we waited forever. It definitely made passing the time much more enjoyable. Since we would arrive in Culebra after hours, she offered to host us if our camping situation didn't work out, which was super nice. The ferry finally arrived -- at 2AM! Ugh. And unfortunately, it was a very old and slow cargo ferry, so it took THREE HOURS to get to Culebra. So a little after 5am, we finally arrived in Culebra. Fortunately, a bus came to take us to Flamenco beach, where we set up our tent while getting bit by mosquitoes. It was pretty dang hot in our tent, especially because we tried to start sleeping as the sun was coming up. I could only sleep on my back too cuz of my knee and foot. Needless to say, it was not our best night's sleep. We woke up around 10am, and I hobbled to the beach. Flamenco beach is possibly the most beautiful beach we've seen during our entire vacation, and I thought I'd try to see if the saltwater would feel good on the wounds. Sadly, it did not. I had been really uncomfortable and in a lot of pain, and so unfortunately, we decided to leave Culebra early so I could get back to Nancy's to recover.
I've been here now since last night, mostly resting and trying to recover. She thought it best to clean out my wounds a few times a day (always painful, when will people stop doing this to me?) Here is basically the highlight of my day so far, lol:
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| Yep, this is how I move around the house now. Yeah, I'm cool. |
Tomorrow we're going to try to spend our last day in old San Juan to grab some trinkets, before we depart early Tu morning. Even though this injury has been rather debilitating the last few days, and we missed out on a few things we wanted to do, it's still been a great vacation. =)
