Testimonials

We've included here testimonials we've received in the last year or two, as well as various comments and recommendations from our guest book which is at the house. These are reproduced here pretty much as they come to us, good and bad, as we'd like you to have a realistic view of our house and the island before you come!

If you have never been to the Caribbean before, please also be sure to read our Caribbean Chaos Alert, which will also give you some perspective on what it is like here.

We've added a few comments in place to clarify or expand on some things. Where we make a comment, we've put it in brackets [ ] so you'll know its us talking.

Please take all restaurant comments with a pinch of salt! We don't say that to be disrespectful of our guests comments. However, the definition of a good bar or good food is quite subjective. Also, the staff and service in many restaurants change from year to year and by the time you come and visit, the restaurant will likely be not quite the same as it was when the comments were made!

Thank you very much for your help. We had a lovely stay at Casa Violeta and enjoyed Vieques tremendously. We loved the sunshine and warmth and all got a wonderful introduction to the world of snorkeling. It was pretty depressing when we arrived home at JFK airport on a rainy evening still wearing sandals.

Everything is in good working order in the house. Some unwashed bed sheets are in the laundry room and some clean towels were draped over chairs to finish their last little bit of drying out.

Thank you again,
Dawn, Sharon, Dave, Tim, and Chris

Just wanted to drop a note and say thanks again for your help! I had a very relaxing vacation and I've come back to MD refreshed! You have a very nice, comfortable house. The beaches and other scenery were breathtaking; I have to say la Playa Verde was my favorite. 'Cept for those gnats in the evening!

Also, I wanted to tell you that a broke a plate. As a "good will" gesture, I left the beach chair (one of the low-to-the-ground kinds) I bought in your laundry room. I hope this OK; if not, let me know and I will pay for the plate.

Anyway, everything is much appreciated!

God bless,
Tom

We-Tim, Lisa, Michele and Fred, arrived here on 2-28-03 from Minneapolis, MN. I believe it was about 0 degrees when we left. This is the first time I have been here, and it is so much more than I expected!! The weather has been wonderful, so far we have visited 4 beaches, they are all unique, my favorite has been Media Luna. Tonight we are going to the BioBay, I am very excited ... "one of the worlds wonders". Last night we went to a steel drum Reggae Band, they were wonderful. I have a coconut and I'm going to try and bring it home. The flowers are beautiful here and the smells are overwhelming - I hope to come back soon.

Michele (March 2003)

Thank you for the wonderful stay on Vieques Roo! Our weather was warm and sunny all week, and we enjoyed our selves so much. Thanks for your e-mails and for making it so easy and hassle-free to arrange the accommodation. We enjoyed having extra towels, loved the lock box for the key, the furniture in the living room was cozy and clean and the kitchen was awesome. The ceiling fans were a plus too! We will definitely rent your Casa again when we return to Vieques, and I have passed on my recommendations to others. Thanks Again!

Tracy and Fred (March 2003)

JoAnna & Ben's Recommendations:

1. Go to the BioBay Tour - Its absolutely incredible.
2. Eat the"Pulpo" Salad (Octopus Salad) at "The Patio" in Isabel Segunda.
3. Take a snorkeling tour at Tang Reef
4. Make some homemade tostones & amarillos.
5. Buy as little food as possible at the Green Store.
6. If you are staying a while have someone FedEx you some decent coffee.
7. Have at least one fancy drink at the Blue Horizon Bar.

Joanna and Ben (4/24/2003)

Had a great time. The house was just right for us (six month old baby). Very hot here - Thank God for the wind coming through the house and keeping it cool. We lived the island. A few things that we recommend:

BioBay tour - very very Cool.

Good eats: Tradewinds Restaurant, Tropical Baby Cafe, La Sirena. Explore Green Beach - get lost, find a nice secluded part for yourselves.

Other Good Eats: The Patio restaurant in Isabella, where the Puerto Rican's eat. Cheap and good.

Not so good: Bananas - not so good bar food. Amapolas - bad Mexican food.

John, Angela and Charlie (5/23/2003)

Casa Violeta is larger than we imagined - very clean and airy. Our only complaint is that we arrived late (7pm) and there was no toilet paper or paper towels nor any stores open that we knew about upon our arrival. [We try to get this all organized and its rare that this kind of thing happens. But - this is the Caribbean, and its a dysfunction paradise! Nearest store is Green Store, open until 9.00pm)

Good Restaurants: Mucho Gusto (Isabella 2). Superb Fish !!! Three doors down from the ATM. Chez Shack.

The Beaches were fabulous. We especially enjoy clean white sand and non-rocky ocean with waves (so we preferred Garlic and Navio). Sun Bay has patches of clean sand (no rocks), and a shower & bathroom. Green Beach was great for shelling. Watch out for thieves at Sun Bay (3 females 30-50) who work around Sun Bay.

Best bets for food in Esperanza: 1) Bar menu at Blue Horizon. 2) Tipo Blocko - behind the dive center [heading up the road towards Green Store] just before you hit the Green Store. Excellent tostellos, and a good pool table.

Please leave toilet paper for next guests!

This is a great house! Lori and Barbara. (6/8/2003)

Loved this house! Perfect for our family.

Beaches we liked: for snorkeling - Green and Blue, also off the long pier in Esperanza and over to the island. Just playing around: Sun Bay, Media Luna, the beach off the Malecon [town beach].

Restaurants we liked: Banana's - good bar food. Island Cafe - expensive but delicious. Wonderful T-bone steak. Posada Visa Mar - Italian Food very good, nice to have a real salad. Pizza (the bakery that serves Pizza at night, just round the corner) - great pizza! Good prices.

We found that the best place to stock up on groceries was Morales in Isabel Segunda - most like stores at home. For everyday essentials we liked Lydia's Colmada (next to Pizza/Bakery).

Biobay tour was really special - worth the money.

For a bit of history the fort in Isabel Segunda was a good learning experience.

The historical trust museum, a few doors down from Banana's has nice souvenirs and great books about local flora and fauna.

All in all, an almost perfect vacation. The Tipelmans (June 2003)

15 jours de paradis avant de retourner l'hiver en Belgique.

Quel plaisir de plonger dans l'eau limpide de la "Red Beach", notre plage favorite.

Casa Violetta est bien agréable, et nous aurions davantage profite des terrasses si les moustiques n'existaient pas!

Nous nous souviendrons longtemps de la Biobay, de la plongée au milieu Des poissons (snorkeling) et du gâteau au chocolat du Blue Makauw.

Mercie Roo et Ellie pour nous avoir permis de vivre cela et peut-être a bientôt dans la vallée du Lot!

Nanou, Vincent, Gariance & Ysaline (December 2003)

[Which translates approximately as: 15 days of paradise before returning to winter in Belgium. What a pleasure to dive into the limpid waters of Red Beach, our favorite beach. Casa Violeta is very pleasant, although we'd have made more use of the terraces if it wasn't for the mosquitoes! We will remember for a long time the BioBay; snorkeling among the fish, and the chocolate cake at the Blue Makauw Cafe. Thank you Roo and Ellie for having given us the chance to live like this, and perhaps we'll see you again soon in the Lot Valley (that's in France)]

We had a wonderful stay. The house was great for our 2 young ones (3 months and 2 1/2 years), spacious bedrooms with ample closet/drawer space. Neighbors are friendly. We especially enjoyed:

1. Biobay trip with island adventure.
2. Huge playground - barely used by anyone else. [In Esperanza, about five minutes walk from house straight along Almendro].
3. Computer library (free Internet access in center of park). [Bibliotecha in Isabel]
4. Bakery - whole wheat bread, bread pudding, cookies.
5. Driving along the ridge, great views and houses.
6. Beaches: Media Luna, Calm and Shallow for kids, Blue Beach, pretty and good shade (cabanas).
Red beach, good shade and a more social beach.

On the Atlantic Side

1) Baby Beach. [Take the north coast road beyond Bravos] and one 1/3 mile from the Humane Society turn left just before a yellow house on the left. Good beach glass and shallow. Watch for current.

2) Near La Chanchita. Great sea glass. Not for swimming but supposedly good for snorkeling/surfing.

Restaurants:

1. Inn on the Blue Horizon - Tasty reasonable bar food and beautiful setting.
2. Bayaonda - Very good food, gourmet.
3. Cafe Mamasanga - good nachos, muffins, apple pancakes [near Mar Azuls/Ferry Port in Isabella II].
4. Mar Azul's - great setting for sunset drinks.
5. Coconuts - good food and setting, nice family place.
6. Bakeries - Esperanza Dulce very good. Pan Lydia In Isabella II, very good Donuts and Sandwiches.
7. Vegetables - [Vegetable Stand at junction] - 200/991 intersection [just as you go into Isabella], Chef Michael's [at the Oasis, north coast road in Bravos].
8. Rum - Rum de Barrelito. 3 gold star - excellent.
9. Weekend stands in Esperanza - very good local food, cheap and friendly.

Great Trip!

Wilson - Etrentahl Family of Cape Cod, MA. (Feb 04)

Leaging Casa Violeta this a.m. A great, interesting action-packed week!! Thank you for making it availiable to "Hoosiers" like us!! Stunning beachesces, delicious food, and fabulous friends - what more to you need in life?

M. Kauffman (April 04)

Some thoughts to far:

1. Coco Beach - close but rocky and some rough surf.
2. Green Beach - beautiful and very few people.
3. Sun Bay Beach - all around great beach.
4. Great kitchen, but watch out for ants ie: wrap your food tightly.
5. Roosters are very loud!!! You might want to consider sleeping earlier becasue they will wake you up by dawn! [Note: as we have said elsewhere this is a noisy place ... bring ear plugs if you are a light sleeper].
6. Made a point of bringing my own coffee as someone suggested. Glad we did.
7. Supermarket in Isabel Segunda was very reasonable and had a good selection.
8. Flying into Vieques from Isla Grande in San Juan was conveient and affordable for two ($85 each round trip). (except troubled landing gear made for mild crash landing - not hurt, a little shaken though). [Isla Grande is small airport about 20 minutes, $20, taxi ride from San Juan International airport, and very close to downtown Old San Juan].
9. When eating out in Esperanza, try to find a table with a fan nearby to keep mosquitos away.
10. A very friendly gray and white striped cat comes to visit. She likes milk.
11. Excellent pastries at the bakery around the corner.

Thanks for the use of your house. We enjoyed Vieques greatly and hope to visit again soon.

Best Wishes - Stella and Peter.

P.S. We apologize for decimating the inscet life @ the house. The big black spiders were mellow and beautiful, but a couple of times they got just a little too close for comfort. The little geckos (where they technically small iguarnas?) were charming! The grey cat next door is a little ham! So cute!

15 days of dream - nice beaches, clean and warm water. The best to swim were Sun, Red, and Green beaches. Too hot to walk and bike! have rented a jeep and have explored the island. Have discussed with the taxi driver about teh Navy, now out of the island. A lot of it is closed [half of the eastern portion of the Navy lands still closed due to clean up from their operations, however, all the major beaches Blue, Red etc on navy land are open].

The museam at Furte de Mriasol in Isabel II is very documented on the history of the island from the very begining to these last years.

Thank you for this stay, we return to France with a lot in our head (mind?) and many shots. [photos].

Paul and Bernadette [from Reims, France] (June 2004)

P.S. The biobay is an astonishing, interesting, amazing and unique experience with the Kayaks. Do it with the small shop [Blue Carribe] on the Malecon. Banana's was best ratio price/quality!

When we arrived at Casa Violeta we were very pleased. We love the house. Its exactly what we expected and very comfortable.

Today we had lunch at Banana's resturant that we will not go back to. It had a limited menu or foods. The Pina Colada's were great though. The rest wasn't. It's not a good place for vegetarians and they had nothing with Banana's on the menu :-) If you want to go don't expect much for the quality of the food.

The Pizzaria 2 minutes away from this house was where we had dinner. The pizza was good and it was made in only 20 minutes, but since nothing is perfect we thought of only one complaint: too little sacuce, good on the cheeze but more sauce would have made it much better.

Media Luna is a beautiful small shallow beach which is perfect for small kids. It you plan to snorkel you will barealy see any fish. Also the sand barely has seashells, but its feeling and texture is very different from others. The water is very clear. One bad thing (not really that bad), it has a lot of sea weed.

Navio is a good beach for boogie boards and skin boards. It has medium waves which could be dangerous for kids to swim in. Water is not very clear but it is a wonderful place to realx.

El Patio [in Isabella], the food tasted good but service not good at all.

Green beach. No Good.

Red Beach: beware of the Ninja Stars that look like this: * [Sand Spurs] These little things grow from the grass next to the shore and if you step on them they will hurt. Wear sandles!

Blue Beach: Great spot, shite sands, relaxing and cool. Waves Perfect.

Bill (July 2004)

We really enjoyed our time here in Vieques. The Casa Violeta was perfect for the three of us despite some of the probably common little problems. First no water, tank fell off the roof and water, like gas [gasoline], was in short supply. Of course the ferry strike prevented us from bringing over a car, but we were lucky to get one a few days later.

Great little reasturants, especially the bread by day and pizza by night around the corner [the bakery]. Convenient little stores to buy groceries [but] were expensive.

Explored the island and enjoyed almost all the beaches. Our favorties were the furtehr ones out, both west and east.

All in all an excellent stay. Thanks so much for letting us stay at your home.

Paul, Luciano and Janelle.

P.S. Roosters have got to go! Thankss to Cindi at Tradewinds [and also our manager at the house]. She was very helpful in assuring us about the hurricane that turned out only to be a tropical strom. It did make for an excellent night to see the bioluminescent bay beacuase of all the cloud cover. That was spectacular. Also enjoyed your book [at the house], "Worlds Collide" [a history of Vieques]. Well, thanks again! Cheers!

[Note: Paul and family were very unfortunate with the water situation and expereinced the city water being on for maximum of only a couple of hours each day while, for the first time in four years, our emergency supply was out of action. Our 600 gallon water tank blew off the roof of the house while the house was vacant! Since no one was here, we are not quite sure what happened, but likely it was something like: 1) there was a water shortage, 2) a neighbor "borrowed" some of our water via an exterior faucet since our house was empty, 3) the water tank now weighed next to nothing and a big wind blew it off the roof, plumbing and all. The tank is now plumbed in on the ground and hopefully this is very unlikely ever to happen again. Also, the water company is building a reservior on the island to ease dependency on water being pumped over from Puerto Rico, this should be in place by mid-2005 at which point the city water will also be much more reliable.]

We had a great time! The weather was perfect, great snorkelling, and we loved our house. Go to Green, Red and Blue beaches.

Tim, Kim and Jeff

P.S. Try the BBQ Rooster!!

Vieques is beautiful with all her beaches, mountains and people. Take soem time to notice the culture and its people. Since the military left the isalnd has grown and been the source of a lot of financial gains. Unfortunatley the people who make $ are usually people who come from other lands to profit. For example don't bother going to the floris/souvenier shop on the broadwalk, everythign is way over priced.

We had a lovely dinner at the Blue Horizon, by far the best resturant on the island. Don't bother going to the Wyndham hotel, the food is lousy, hte seervice is loudsy, and it is overall poorly planed and sterile.

My favorite beaches are Red and Garcia, very very stunning. Vieques is a magical place.

Casita & Eric, PR/Cambridge, MA. Newly Weds! Great honeymoon spot. (September 2004)

Found Casa Violeta on the internet after extensive research on rental houses in Vieques. In the website the house looked average and sort of cute, with the bonus of being right in Esperanza. (Plus a great price!). When we got here my expections were far surpassed; the house was super!! Very clean, tasteful, comfortable, kitchen greatly equiped wiht Everything, even a loaded spice rack! Blender, toaster, great gas stove and portable BBQ.

We only enjoyed Vieques partially (Esperanza, Town Beach, Sun Bay, Read beach (perfect beach!)), because we couldn't rent a car, bike or scooter (all booked). So we must return to visit the other beaches and biobay. Yet the experience of just doing nothing has been wonderful.

Recommendations to visitors:

1. Bring your own cooler with a cart or the ones wiht wheels. It is a must for the most remote beaches!

2. Buy the great fresh bread in the corner bakery (go before 8am if you want the whole wheat).

3. Bring groceries from the main island [if you can]. The stuff in the Colmada [corner store] and the resturants is over-priced.

4. Book all car, bike, scooter rentals in advance - or bring your car (if Puerto Rican). [But see notes in travel section about bringing cars from Puerto Rico to Vieques].

Greatchen, Jorge, Karla, Daniel; from San Juan, Puerto Rico (September 2004).

[Note: cost of living on Vieques is estimated to be about 5% more on average than on the main island of Puerto Rico. None the less, it seems to us to be on an approximate par with mainland USA (or at least where we live in Atlanta, GA)].

Loved the house; great location, good price!

A couple of things:

1. Always buy gas for your rental car bfore the weekends; no gas on the island on Monday!

2. From Labor Day to mid-Oct lots of businesses and resturants are closed: the bakery in Esperanza; Posada Vista Mar; Bananans undergoing major rennovation; even the museaum on the Malecon was closed until Oct 8th.

3. There is free internet access at the public computers library ... down the street, past the school and ballbark; on the left; opens 8am M-F. Basic service; no program on the computers so you can't open attachments in word or PDF files; Pad access with more files @ the Island Hop (DSL) in Isabel Secunda, $3.50 a half hour.

4. Best alcapuenas availiable @ the trailer across from the entrance to Sun Bay (after 2pm and not on Monday/Tuesday).

5. San Juan Star (english language newspaper) avialible @ La Tienda Verde - on the way to Sun Bay.

6. New ownership and higher priced food at Amapola ... still have the big screen TV though.

7. Best beach - Playa Navio, small, bit of surf, clear water.

8. East end of island closed [this was due to Tropical Storm Jeanne that dumped 24 inches of rain in 24 hours and washed away a lot of roads; as of Nov 04 Red Beach and Garcia Beach are open again, Blue Beach officially closed].

9. Some bridges out on South Side making roads back from west end of island limited. [Again due to Jeanne ... should reopen soon].

10. The Roosters are loud!

11. The orange tabby cat who comes to visit is sweet ... likes a little milk.

Claire, Javier and Ben, from Richmond, VA (Oct 04).

Today we are leaving - looks like a storm coming in, same as when we arrived!

Had a great time! The house is wonderful with lots of cats coming to visit. Of course, as all have said, the Roosters make sleep impossible unless it is raining and they aren't crowing!

Beaches that we loved for snorkelling were Coco, Media Luna and Navio. Sun Bay is great if you just want water and sand.

Buy all foods in Isablel II, the best is right on [route] 200 at supermarket "Morales", good prices and large selection.

Tradewinds has excellent dinners and prices are what you would pay @ a good resturant in the states.

Definately recommend having a car waiting here - 4 wheel drive - we rented from "Steves" (he delivered it to the Casa). Publicos are not real reliable.

Pizza, guava and wheat bread and brownies are great right down the street [at the bakery].

Have fun if you try to use the ferry. They leave when they want and do not really follow teh schedule.

Anyway! A great experience.

Dave, Cindy & Bob. (Oct 04)

Thank you so much! The house was delighful! I agree with the rooftop access idea, but the Roosters aren't that bad if you stay long enough to get used to them. We made [it to] Red, Green and Navio [beaches]. (Also Coco to snorkel), but left some places to explore next time.

Tom & Colleen (Nov 04).

P.S. Ensalade Pulpa @ El Patio my bueno!