Ahhh, your final approach to paradise. The prop job from San Juan circles over the 10-square-mile island. Frigate birds soar over scrubby green hills. You see several cays nearby and the Virgin Islands off in the distance. You see dots of people below stretched out on the beaches. Beans and rice, conch and lobster, here I come.
Then you look ahead in the direction the plane is headed. Mountain!
You gulp. You say your last rites. Your life passes before you. Both men and women are hollering. Shirts and blouses become instantly soaked with sweat. The name Jesus is heard more than once, and it’s not Sunday. I pinch myself to make sure I have not drifted off into a bit part in a disaster movie. Ouch. I only hurt myself. And the trees of the hill are closing in. The runway is a few thousand feet ahead. The trees are within about 100 feet.
“Don’t worry,” the pilot says. “This is normal.”
We scream some more. The wheels seem to barely pass over the trees. We dip down onto the runway. As we walk away from this tourist hazing, a resident of Culebra says, “I make the flight several times a year. I scream every time.”
After five days on Culebra, screams become a hum of quietude. Twenty miles off the east coast of Puerto Rico, with no nightclubs, few T-shirt gift shops to speak of and industrious, early-to-bed, early-to-rise people who work at a pharmaceutical plant and on public works projects, Culebra has really only two attractions: beaches and coral reefs. That is perfection enough.
A quarter-century ago, Culebra, once an island the Taino Indians used as a refuge from the conquering Spaniards and then for a time after 1898 the United States’ main Caribbean military base, was on its way to becoming an ecological wasteland. In the early 1970s, the Navy used the island for round-the-clock bombing practice. The bombing scared humans to the point where the population dropped from 1,400 to 580. Fishermen angrily protested scenes of bombed, belly-up fish from the coral reefs. Flamingos, which once lined the beaches, disappeared. The people banded together in what became a nationally publicized protest that reached the halls of Capitol Hill. The Navy left the island in 1975.
During the two decades since, the human population has grown to 3,000. But the atmosphere of people saying hello to each other and old ways of picking up hitchhikers and leaving doors unlocked remain the same.
Once out of the only town on the hilly island, Culebra becomes a place where the only sounds are that of cackling, smooth-billed anis, braying goats, crickets and tree frogs. There are no hotels, only an assortment of villas and guesthouses. There are classic beaches that are reachable by car and therefore are the most visited: Flamenco for swimming (and a rusted tank from the military days), Zoni for surf and Molinas for effort-free snorkeling.
But the most unique beauties of Culebra await those willing to bushwhack through overgrown trails and beachwalk along rocky shores and over boulders. This may not be everybody’s idea of quietude, but the reward is hours without seeing another person along what has to be some of the most pristine series of coral reefs so close to any shore on a populated Caribbean island.
We had not exactly planned on it, but a buddy, John, and I spent most of our five days on Culebra in a hypnotic rhythm of hiking and snorkeling. In most auto-accessible places in the Caribbean, the strongest memories from beach snorkels are spectacularly colored fish. Because Culebra is so relatively undeveloped, the coral is the star. In one spot, John and I drifted with a light current over a forest of green boulder and golden brain corals seemingly as massive as small automobiles. Among them were tall orange sea whips and purple sea fans, and golden-bronze staghorn coral. The visibility, 100 feet, gave us views no different than being on a mountaintop, with walls rising to the water’s surface and dropoffs to 40 feet.
We were to realize how the effort of walking gave us so much more to appreciate when, on another day, we took a boat ride over to Culebrita. Culebrita, a nearby island cay that is now a federally protected wildlife preserve, seems to be on everyone’s must-do list. Culebrita was beautiful for the walk up to the top, the view from the lighthouse and the spotting of several kinds of birds including the American Kestrel and brown boobies. The reef itself, praised in tour guides, had been ground into virtual gray matter.
Even two guys fixated on nature have to get out of the water and eat sometime. On Culebra, the restaurant list is short, but fun. On one walk, we stopped for lunch at Happy Landings, right at the airport. Here, you get a solid Puerto Rican grease fix of fried chicken, pork chops or beef and rice and beans for $5 a person.
On another walk, I satisfied a craving for conch and plantains at Dingy Dock, a favorite lunch spot for locals with a fabulous view of Ensenada Honda, one of the safest hurricane harbors in the Carribbean. One of the most pleasant spots to have a drink and mingle with local folks is Marta’s.
