Vieques Day Two: True Connection and Blue Perfection

What's happening everybody? Wow, Day Two in Vieques was wild. Waking up at 6:45 sharp, all of us listened to a man named Andy (I think he may be related to Siri from the iPhone) and meditated. This was the perfect way to calm ourselves before our very busy day. After breakfast, we headed down to the local market and got some fresh fruit and veggies for later. And apparently Spongebob's realtor lives in Vieques because there were plenty of houses for sale just like his...

 Next, we were off to the El Fortin Conde de Mirasol, a museum on a cliff overlooking the ocean...

Although the view was distracting, we learned a lot at this museum from our friend Bob. Bob gave us 4,000 years of Vieques history in 10 minutes. An impressive feat, especially from a Boston-born man. However, his knowledge was very useful in understanding our purpose on the island. 

The U.S. Navy's bombing practice on the island has made half of it useless. There are still undetonated bombs laying around a restricted part of the island and in the water around it. This practice stopped in 2003. The restricted area is not heavily guarded, however, so this causes issues. People who don't know about them can get hurt if they draw too close. Bob says that, if immediate action is not taken, fatalities are inevitable. Not only did the U.S. Navy's occupation cause serious and dangerous damage to half of the island, but it has been concluded by scientists that the bombing practice has increased the cancer rate here by 30%. A very scary thing especially on an island of around 10,000 people. Bob's talk was eye-opening. After listening to him, we ate a quick lunch and visited a few historical places on the island. One of them was an area with sacred rocks...

Our group determined rather large rocks definitely were sacred because the rest of our day was blessed. We drove down to the beach and had a blast there. Please be advised: the following picture may cause serious headaches (to people surrounded by snow) due to extreme, envious infuriation...

The beach was great, but what followed was the highlight of most of our days. We met up with some of the local youth here on the island. Our expectations were meeting some kids that only spoke spanish and having a very awkward time with them. The complete opposite happened. The kids we met spoke great english and we all connected with them in different ways. We ended up spending most of our day with them, surpassing the time given to us. It was an awesome feeling to make friends with people from a different background. 

Mr. Little's spiderman web doesn't just extend through New Hampton, but now Vieques!