Culebra | Puerto Rico

A few years ago, Donovan and I traveled to Puerto Rico for a conference he was attending for work. Since the conference was a week long, I decided to tag along and enjoy some time on the beach.

We spent the first few days in Puerto Rico at Wyndham Grand Rio Mar, east of San Juan. Unfortunately, our hotel room didn’t face the ocean, but we did have a pretty awesome view of the rainforest, which was literally across the street!

We really enjoyed our time at the Wyndham, albeit I did spend one of the days completely hungover from too many painkillers at the pool bar. But that’s another story for another day!

When Donovan booked our trip, he planned for us to stay another day in Puerto Rico following the conference. At first we were considering just sitting by the pool all day and enjoying a day to ourselves. But then I started some googling and found out that there was a ferry that would take you to another island called Culebra.

I was instantly blown away by the photos online, and I knew I wanted us to go explore. One thing to know about me, though, is that I get insanely motion sick on pretty much anything that moves – especially boats. I didn’t know if I could make it on an hour long ferry ride, so I started asking some questions to the hotel staff.

The concierge told us that you could also take a quick 15 minute flight to Culebra instead of the ferry. What?! I can handle a 15 minute flight, so I started to look into that. I ended up bookings us round trip tickets on Air Flamenco. Flights were about $50/person each way, so I ended up paying just a little over $200. The ferry ride was only $3 per person, so obviously a flight was a bit extra, but for me, it was worth it to not have to ride the ferry for an hour.

Once we purchased our tickets, we had to figure out how to get to the local airport in Ceiba. I had purchased the 8am flight, because I really wanted to maximize our time on the island. Everything I read online said we needed to be there at least 2 hours before the flight leaves. When we told the concierge what time we needed a ride for, he pretty much laughed in our faces. He told us that they don’t usually have cabs running at 5am (the time we needed to leave to get there by 6am), so he ended up calling a friend to drive us. It seemed a bit sketchy at first, but we figured we’d give it a try.

The morning of our trip to Culebra was literally a comedy of errors. The concierge’s friend picked us up on the dot at 5am in a 15 passenger van. Donovan and I looked at each other like “oh man, what are we getting into,” but again, we thought “what the heck!”. The man brought us pretty speedily to the airport, and we arrived just before 6am. He dropped us off at the door and then sped off.

When we walked into the terminal, we died laughing again because there was literally no one there. I mean, no one. No gate attendants, no security guards, no people waiting -nothing except a bird chirping in the ceiling. We had another panic moment thinking that may be this wasn’t the right airport. Also, if it wasn’t how would we get back to the hotel? So many questions.

Eventually, about 7am, some of the attendants showing up. If you’re doing your math right, you’ve figured that we sat at the airport by ourselves for over an hour! When we checked in for our flights, the attendants weighed our backpacks (which seemed normal), but then he also asked us each to step on the luggage scale ourselves (which did not seem normal). Later I learned that they have to know how much the people on the plane leave so they can balance the load correctly – the more you know! But … in the moment, it sure felt weird.

Finally, we were able to board the plane (photo above). We cracked up again because Donovan was definitely too tall for the 3rd row of the plane. This was definitely the smallest plane I’ve ever been on!

The flight itself was very short – about 15 minutes from wheels up to wheels down. We also had some really great views of the small islands and water below.

Once we landed, we walked inside the terminal and rented a golf cart for the day. Yep, a golf cart! The island is so small that a real car is not really necessary. The golf cart only cost us about $40 for the entire day which was also worth it.

We drove down towards Flamenco Beach, and we were surprised that we were literally the first ones there! Since we took the plane instead of the ferry, we beat the 8am ferry folks by almost 45 minutes, so we had plenty of time to explore and claim our sport before it got busy.

We turned left on the beach and went to check out this really cool old M4 Sherman tank that were left on the beach. The story goes that the US Navy used Culebra since the 40s for weapon testing, until they left the island in the 70s.

We walked up and down the beach for a bit before settling on a spot under a palm tree. There isn’t much shade on the beach, and we didn’t have umbrellas so we just had to make due! We also didn’t bring towels (like dummies) so we had to sit on our beach coverups. (facepalm!)

Donovan immediately ran into the water. I swear, that guy can live in the water until his skin melts away. I’m surprisingly not much of an ocean person – not a huge fan of fishies and wildlife nipping at my legs and feet – so I prefer to sweat it out in the sand until I just absolutely can’t take it anymore.

After about an hour, the beach started filling up the the locals and tourists who had taken the ferry. We decided to take a break from the sun and search for some lunch. We drove around the island for a bit (yep, remember it’s small!) before settling on a burger place – Tiki’s Grill – that seemed pretty popular.

After lunch we chose to remain out of the sun a bit longer and do some more exploring to check out the houses on the island. The hurricane damage from Hurricane Maria in 2017 was still pretty evident. Many of the plants were still brown and crispy.

Since our flight back to Ceiba was going to leave at 3pm, we needed to start heading back towards the airport for our return. We were sad to return back to the main island, but also were ready for some aloe vera and a cocktail!

We thoroughly enjoyed our trip to Culebra and would definitely consider going back again in the future. My personal preference would be to do a day-trip to San Juan, as I didn’t find any of the lodging in Culebra appealing – it was a bit 3rd worldish for me – but Flamenco Beach is probably one of the most beautiful beaches I’ve ever seen.