Today (Sunday) was our first full day on the island. We left Salt Lake City at 11:30 PM on Friday and flew on a 3½-hour redeye to Atlanta. We had a brief layover in Atlanta and took a second flight, also about 3½ hours long, to San Juan, Puerto Rico. In San Juan, we took an Uber to a small airport where we were on a 10-person charter plane which brought us to the island of Vieques. We arrived here about 2:30 on Saturday. Our Jeep rental company meet us at the airport with a jeep and we were quickly on our way.

It is a little bit weird for me to be traveling on a vacation in this mode. I think I’ve been doing the bike vacations for so long that I had become comfortable with the chaos that those create. Also, there is something about landing in a country with a bike and a tent, and not really needing to depend on anyone else, that is comforting to me. My friends at work thought it was really funny that I was more stressed about taking an Uber than I was about putting my bike together in an airport.

All the logistics worked perfectly and we were in our Airbnb before dinner time. We are in a small town named Esperanza on the south side of the island. We drove to a grocery store and bought supplies for Sunday and then ate at a small food trailer near the beach. (Delicious veggie tacos!) We then drove to a beautiful black sand beach and walked on it until it started to get dark.

We both slept for almost 12 hours. We had missed a night of sleep due to our redeye flight, and so we had a little bit of make-up work to do. Gratefully, our Airbnb has a Minisplit air conditioner so we could keep our room nice and cool. (It is right around 80 degrees here. Back at home it was only in the teens this morning. We chose a good week to go to a warmer place.)

We woke up and ate some breakfast and headed out for church. It is kind of nice to be able to drive anywhere we need to go. On our bike trips we have to plan our Airbnbs on Saturday to put us really close to a church. Here, we just drove to the other side of the island. It was no big deal. Same for going to stores. We don’t have to plan ahead and if we forget something we can just drive back. Fancy.

There was something extra special about church today. It was a very small branch. There was a brother in a wheelchair, two sisters, and a brother who conducted the meeting (and then us). He did everything, including playing the music on his phone, making the announcements, blessing the sacrament, giving the talk. He invited Natalie or me to say the prayer at the end of the meeting. He seemed extra humble. The way he approached conducting and blessing the sacrament seemed to be that he was trying to follow every rule to the T. As he blessed the sacrament, I had to think carefully about the prayer to know what he was saying. In a way, this helped me think about it more intently than normal. And as he knelt on the hard tile floor, there was something that made me think of how it must’ve been when Christ instituted the sacrament during the last supper. 

We used Natalie‘s phone and Google translator to keep track of what he was talking about when he gave the talk. He was quoting a talk from General Conference that was about the need to forgive 70×7. It was simple and sincere and seemed to follow the talk from General Conference closely.

After church, we stopped by a grocery store that was very close to the church.  The one in our town was small, so we had a few additional things we needed to purchase. We drove home and made lunch. 

In the afternoon, we decided it would be a good Sunday activity to drive around the island and look at the different beaches that we could go to during the week. We got out several times and walked along the beach. This is a beautiful island with so many beaches and so few people. I think we’ll be able to find a beach tomorrow to swim at with almost no one else there.

I am wondering how I’m going do mentally. I don’t idle well, and there’s not a lot to do but sit on the beach and watch the waves and maybe swim. I had made a small effort to get Natalie and me certified for scuba diving, but ended up not making the needed arrangements. 

While I am a little bit lost as to what I’m going to do, I am so grateful to be in a situation where I can spend a week doing nothing and still know where I’m getting my next meal. There’s so many people in this world who live on the brink of survival. I wish I could do more for them.