A Full Day In Vieques, Puerto Rico

Grouper floating in paradise

By Michael Hooper

I wake up in the middle of the night to the sounds of a catfight. Two cats are howling and hissing and scratching. One cat delivers a low voluminous growl. After 20 minutes of this growling, I get out of bed and go to the window and shout, "Gatos, Get out of here!"

And then it’s quiet. At four in the morning, the rooster in our back yard starts crowing. He's followed by another rooster, a hundred feet away, competing in calls with his cockle doodle do. Then there’s a local rooster who is old and his voice is cracked, but he manages to croak out a short raspy cackle.

At dawn Heather sees a white cat with a gash of blood across his forehead.

At 8:30 am we join my brother's snorkeling crew at Secret Beach in Vieques. Our leader John makes us count. There’s 22 going out to sea. Let’s make sure there’s 22 coming back in. Most of these people are from Massachusetts. I follow them into the 10-to-20 foot deep water over rocks and coral. I see a multitude of fish, blue and yellow and white. A plump grouper is floating nearby. He sees me and darts away.

After 20 minutes I retreat to the shore. I visit with a woman named Sheila Mitchell from Miriam, Massachusetts, who came with the snorkeling group but decided to sit on shore. She’s an artist and manufactures' representative, who lives on Vieques in the winter months. We seem to click and have an engaging conversation and she invites my brother and me and Heather to visit her house. We go there in the afternoon, she lives on a mountain overlooking the island, we sit on her deck sipping drinks and looking at the boats in the bay at Isabel. To the west we see another mountain holding the Hix house, like a block of concrete against the hill, by architect and owner John Hix. 

In the evening, we eat fresh fish, such as red snapper, lobster or giant shrimps dipped in butter.  At the far end of the bay, I see a bomb fire. The Rastafarians gather there every evening to watch the sunset.

I'm in bed reading about American poet Harry Crosby in Paris in the 1920s. I hope the cats stay away tonight. I'm enjoying this book. I hear latin music in the distance and occasional co qui from the coqui frog. I hear the whirling ceiling fan. I hear a television from across the street, playing Sponge Bob Square Pants.