After a midnight bus ride with Chinese workers to New York, a flight to San Juan that we should have missed, an hour-long van drive to the port of Fajardo and a ferry connection that seemed to move vertically more than horizontally, a white van pulled up to the Dewey pier with italicized cherry letters that read "Playa Flamenco."
We had come to Culebra to confirm a rumor: That 17 miles off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico lies an island virtually unknown, alleged to shelter the best stretch of sun-kissed bliss this hemisphere has to hide. Tall tale or bust, I could already feel the waves of paradise lost pulling at my feet.
The van's driver, a ripe old wire from Brooklyn known locally as Kiko, told us he'd lived on the island for over 30 years, having carved out a nice business for himself shuttling Puerto Rican day-trippers from the pier to the beach. Judging from the Heineken caps sliding around the floor, Kiko also relied on a steady flow of suds to drown away the humdrum of driving the same roads each day.
To the dismay of our seasick stomachs, we now careened side to side past slopes of scrub brush and frangipani; to his credit, Kiko was cordial enough to at least offer each of us a cold one from a fully stocked cooler stashed under the passenger seat. Before I could refuse, the thatched rooftops appeared.
Flamenco Beach Villas flaunted the kind of low key static we swooned for: Spartan one-room cabanas, slapped with vibrant hues of yellow and green; sunken hammocks, rocking chairs, a grill, and just beyond the thick jade canopy above the entranceway, nothing but blue.
Stubbing my toe on a wayward plank as I ran down the boardwalk, I came upon an arch of palm leaves that seemed to part from a gust of wind that coincided with my arrival, as if to say, "welcome." I instantly checked for vital signs: Sand (creamy), palms (shady), water (crystal), sun (halcyon), waves (oh yeah), girls-gone-wild (none). The only thing more striking than the perfect crescent of beach before me that arced into oblivion was its emptiness. There were but five people to share some three miles of sand. This can't be right. I'm thinking a herd of broiled German retirees in florescent thongs are sure to emerge from the tree line any second after some cocktails. But Mallorca this is not.
Craning around, I realize that aside from a public campground tucked away at the far end of the beach, the cabanas where we are staying are in fact the only development on Playa Flamenco. It was as close as I'd ever felt to Robinson Crusoe, and, by some technicality, I was still on U.S. turf.
I dug into my own mile of private beach and gazed out onto a bald, azure horizon.Paradise found.
Marooned
Ask any one of the 350-odd American ex-pats happily marooned on Culebra and you'll hear an offshoot of the same yarn: Came down to help a friend build a house and never left; got off a boat and never got back on; or my personal favorite, ran away from the Barnum & Bailey circus after picking up elephant plops for five years and found fresh air.
Often testimonials are more vague, along the lines of "left behind some troubles back home," implicating the modest helping of ex-cons and ne'er-do-wells who found the ideal place to start over.
Even John Rocker, the former Atlanta Braves pitcher who was publicly ostracized for racist comments, showed up a year ago seeking a safe haven to relax.
Whatever one wants to leave behind, Culebra has been synonymous with escape since the swashbuckling heyday of Sir Henry Morgan - if not a little boredom.
Beyond its beaches and the giant leatherback turtles that regularly wash up, the island has little to boast about. Dewey is a place so small and non-descript the locals refer to it simply as "Puebla" (town). One local joked that I "should avoid walking too fast, or else [I] might miss it." Downtown consists of a couple of pizza parlors, some odd shops, a café, chinese take-out and a tourist bureau that amounts to a desk.
The man behind it, Tony Lebesma from Torrance, CA, complains of certain inconveniences, like having "to go to the mainland for a lot of basic errands." At the dive shop next door, Miguel Poston from San Francisco admits the diving is "average at best." A couple of blocks away at Mamacita's bar - the lone nightlife outpost
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