I had no idea that the week of President's Day was the busiest week in PR after the Christmas holiday season. We were scrambling to find a place to stay on the small island of Vieques the week before and were lucky to have found a room at Hix Island House. I LOVE this place!!! It was designed by Canadian architect John Hix and is definitely the most unique place we've ever stayed at in our travels.

For one, there are no glass windows. There are just openings out to nature. At the time of our stay, the weather in Vieques was perfect with good tradewinds blowing so it felt great staying in our room. At night you can lay out, look up at the stars, and listen to the frogs and geckos. Mosquito netting around the bed was a must, even though some little buggers found holes, came through and bit us anyway. That was the only complaint I had, but the rest of the place more than made up for this minor inconvenience.



The room was spacious, there was a kitchen stocked with fresh fruit, juices, coffee beans, grinder, a french press, eggs, jams, and fresh bread baked daily and delivered to your room. There was an outdoor shower (bottom left photo) with hot water that was solar heated.

It was great waking up to birds singing and gorgeous sunrises.


One night, we had a local lady down the street make us a home-cooked typical Puerto Rican meal. Had a wonderful candlelit meal under the stars. It was one of the best meals of our trip. Chicken and rice, tostones, and a squash & beans curry. Deeeelish!




Now onto the rest of Vieques. The incredible blue waters and soft sand beaches were one of the main reasons why we wanted to go to Vieques.




We definitely had a good day of laying out in paradise.




On our first day in Vieques, we did a tour around the island with Kristin of Vieques Rainbow Tours. Thank goodness for her because we couldn't find a car to rent on this tiny island the day we arrived...they were ALL booked! So Kristin drove us around the two small towns in Vieques, took us to some jaw-dropping beaches, and gave us the scoop on some of the locals and island life. I highly recommend doing a tour with her if you're traveling to Vieques. At the end of our tour, she drove us to a few different car rental shops to check and see if they happened to have any, and with luck on our side, we found a jeep to rent for a couple of days!

(Small individual photos were taken with a point + shoot camera)

On our tour, we saw this little kitty chased up a palm tree by three dogs.

Kristin decided to bring the kitty home.Needless to say, she's a huge animal lover with a cat, dog, and three foster puppies at home already.

One of the most charming things about Vieques is that there are wild horses EVERYWHERE! I had read about this beforehand, but didn't expect to see so many, especially right in the middle of town. Happy findings!

Definitely one of my favorite things about this island!


We found this guy around the property of Hix Island House.

Hammocks are hung up around the area for relaxing naps. We saw this hammock from afar and were about to lay down on it until we saw this:

Oh well, I don't care, I'll lay on it anyway!

Just kidding people! I found another -clean- hammock to lay on. =)

I'll end here today. More on the rest of our trip to Puerto Rico in the next post!