[trekker]

My husband and I were recently in Miami for a meeting, and decided to go to Puerto Rico for a few days afterwards (I wanted an island with a direct flight back to Boston on AA).

We spent two days on the main island, at a funky little place called Mary Lee's by the Sea, outside Guanica. We had a very roomy one bedroom casita called "Contenta," which had a lovely view of the bay. While there we did some hiking in the Guanica tropical dry forest, and a little kayaking in the bay. We also had an unexpectedly fantastic lobster dinner at a little hole-in-the wall restaurant just down the street from Mary Lee's called San Jacinto Seafood Restaurant. If you go, get the lobster in garlic! We also visited the art museum in Ponce (which has a lovely garden restaurant for lunch---the food was good, too).

Then we went to Vieques for three nights. We stayed at Bravo Beach Hotel, which we liked very much. The concierge, Marietta, was very helpful with making dinner reservations, and arranging a kayak trip to the bioluminescent bay, which is not to be missed. Even though the moon was quite bright the night we were there, it was fantastic! You HAVE to get in the water; the experience of swimming in a green glow is magical. There are several good restaurants. The one at Bravo does a sort of tapas menu, and they have an excellent wine list. We had a terrific meal at Tropical Baby, which is a tiny place just up the street from the better-known Cafe Media Luna. Media Luna is prettier (and also good), but we actually had better meals at Tropical Baby. The beaches are, of course, wonderful. We particularly liked Green and Blue. My husband had good snorkelling karma; I did not, but enjoyed it nonetheless. (We never made it all the way to the southern end of Green, where it's supposed to be best.)