Day 14: Ruins Redux, without listening to horses.

I realized that if I was going to spend a few more days in vieques, I should probably find a cheaper place to stay. At my mom's recommendation I checked into Casa de Kathy, a B&B owned by a woman who visited the island in the 80's to protest the military bomb-tests and fell in love with the country. All her rooms were full, but her friend who had a house a few blocks back was out of town and she was renting that as overflow. So I'm not saving as much as I could be, but on the flip side I have an entire house. In fact, I'm sitting at the kitchen table eating spaghetti as I write this.

She was nice, but a little presumptuous. In particular, she told me there aren't daily flights to the VI (There are... anyone have any opinions on St Thomas vs St Croix?) and she told me I don't want to ride a bike to Isabella Segunda.

I only had 40$ cash, she didn't do credit cards, so after a bit of a fuss with paypal we sorted things out (Thanks mom!) - including a days worth of mountain bike rental!

I had been thinking about repeating yesterdays trip, only with more water and without the stupid horse-games. When I saw she had mountain bike rentals, well, that was fate. I lightened my back, reweighted it with 3 qts of water (which I drank 90 of by the time I was finished) and set off.

Yesterdays 2 hour hike was finished in about 45 minutes, which left me plenty of energy to explore yesterdays sugar-mill ruins more throughly. Hiking into the wilderness (but not super-wilderness, like yesterday) buildings began to appear out of of the trees, suddenly and at first surpringly. And always covered with lizards. I though about doing todays post as a lizard-based where's waldo, but they wouldn't stay still for the pictures. The mill were spread over a huge, and slightly disconcerting, area. Oftentimes you would climb a wall only to find yourself on ground level, although there were obvious rooms beneath you. Despite the trees growing out of the roof. I guess when a building lasts 165 years no one will complain when it turns into a hill. Similarly disconcerting were the tunnels below you... every step seemed to question the ground's integrity, but nothing ever gave way. A 165 year old tunnel is, I suppose, a cave.

One of the buildings was trapazoidally shaped and had no doors on any side. I climbed 20 feet up the wall to discover there was no roof, only trees growing up from inside. My guess was it was a cistern, though they had ground-set cisterns already. My favorite building had some boiler-looking things (see picture, guesses welcome) and brickwork arches with an arched ceiling. I'd seen a poorly shot picture hinting at it online and searched the entire ruins for it, and it was worth it. After a few shots of that, and a few further ruins across the road, I got back on my bike and set off for Mosquito Pier, which was only two miles away!

One of those miles was entirely uphill, and terrible; I walked the steepest quarter of it. The other mile was entirely downhill, and awesome; I had to slow down to not pass cars. Mosquito pier was a mile out to a fenced-off military? port, and pretty boring. But mercifully flat, and since I was there I figured I might as well. Then I set off for the only bank on the island, 7 miles away (from the end of the peir) in Isabel II.

There were a few leg-sapping hills, but I made it. Biked up to the fort which was closed today (so it must be a Monday or a Tuesday) - but I saw the walls and the cannons and that looks to be the extent of it. Then I set back off for Esperanza, another 7 miles to complete the square. The first mile had its ups and downs. The second just had ups, but I walked half of it. Then I set off on another mile of slowing-down-not-to-pass-cars and another mile still of coasting. When I slowed down I pulled out my GPS to check and I was still doing high 20's, a fair bit away from my 2mph uphill and 7mph flat speeds. I even screeched to a halt to take this picture. Any of you Borinqueñas know what it is? I've been sneaking up on them on my bike and catching meer* glimpses of them as they fled... I took to calling them evil squirrels.

I finished off with a few miles of flat, which was the worst part yet just because it was 25 minutes of boring. I got home, dropped off the bike (I'm sure 22 miles will cover me for today, especially because we're at the top of a hill) and went to the grocery store for a (abnormally) bad (but getting better) bottle of cabernet and a box of spaghetti.

*deer** English major fronds**, that was on porpoise**. They sort of look lichen** meerkats.

**okay, those were just mean.