The sun sets in emerald seas below as our taxi races up endless narrow roads into thickening bush. We come to a sudden stop around a corner, facing a stallion acting as crossing guard for his entourage of mares, some obviously very pregnant. It seems they breed like rabbits; fences on Vieques exist only to keep out horses; cars and doors stay unlocked. We keep on climbing, the paved road turns into an eroded dirt path up a steep hillside, we bounce around a lot, Louis sinks into shock.

New Dawn "covered by flowers, was built for outdoor living by women participating in carpentry courses in '86-'87. The decor is pure tropics, bold Guatemalan textiles, woven palm lamp shades and numerous windows open to the trade winds." Which of course requires the use of mosquito netting and, in general, I am not fond of sitting on a commode with a boldly-patterned curtain inches in front of me, reaching down just to my knees, though I don't mind the open-air showers behind similar curtains. There are a few cabins and tent platforms dotting five landscaped acres. The tour ends outside our very airy second-story room of the main house with a dramatic "... and this is our veranda." It's a grand vista of tropical hillsides dropping to the ocean way below, inlets shimmering under a picture-postcard salmon sky, a hammock sways in the breeze. We settle down during dinner on a wide open first floor, watching two tattooed women from Maine doing the cooking, but Louis doesn't recover until morning, while snorkeling through a reef busy with tropical fish, just 15 minutes or so by car. At night, in the hammock on the veranda, we argue about which star is what, and an extra day gets added to our stay when the flight back to San Juan turns out to cost only $45 and takes less than half an hour across the ocean blue.