While Ortiz focuses on lowering unemployment, others are imagining self-sufficiency literally from the ground up. We headed uphill, past the skeletons of once-showy homes, to La Finca Conciencia, where De Marco sources produce for her inn. This organic farm is aimed at social justice through food security and reviving local growing practices. Farmer Jorge Cora greeted us at the gate, and De Marco proceeded slowly around his terraced gardens, snipping holy basil, mustard greens, and fuchsia blossoms, pinching leaves, tasting, and asking questions. My attention was divided between the tiers of MacGyvered hives, home to Vieques’s unique species of honeybees, and the stunning vista of the sea beyond. The legacy of weapons testing on Vieques means farmers sometimes face contaminated soil, but Cora’s work is planting the seeds for a nascent food-autonomy movement. As a downpour broke, he packed up our crate of eggplants, and we departed.
On my last evening, I drove north from Finca Victoria, past the still-shuttered W, where vines and saplings are overtaking the whitewashed walls as nature reasserts its claim. I then cut back to Esperanza, a few square blocks of modest homes and small businesses on the southern shore. I sat on a fishing pier across from El Blok. Islanders have come to appreciate this Brutalist behemoth; the building, with its massive generator, housed relief workers and displaced locals after the storm, and became a hub for emergency services. Puerto Rican-born Carlos Perez, who became executive chef at El Blok’s restaurant Placita after Jose Enrique returned to San Juan, provided thousands of free meals.
El Blok was also the first hotel to reopen after Maria, welcoming guests just two months later. Since then, the property has renewed its commitment to community engagement, moving the restaurant from the rooftop to the ground floor to welcome locals. Perez is focusing on seasonal local fare: pumpkin soup, head-on langoustines, salads of greens from La Finca Conciencia.
El Blok’s Esquina suites have two walls of floor-to-ceiling windows.
SORAYA MATOS
Esperanza is a restaurant destination for visitors to Vieques; notable spots include El Quenepo, next door to El Blok, which serves small plates and craft cocktails. (They also opened a few guestrooms last year, after what the owners called a “Hurricane Maria Renovation.”) I walked down the promenade to dinner at what had become my favorite restaurant, El Guayacán, situated in an unassuming two-story cement building at the end of the Esperanza strip.
Its proprietor, Marcos Vegas Arias — who ran bars in San Juan, his hometown, for more than a decade before opening his modest restaurant on Vieques in 2013 — is a born host, and moonlights as a local tour guide. He has graciously driven me all over the island, bringing me to the most secluded beaches, including the rugged and beautiful Playa Negra: a volcanic black sand beach accessible only by hiking through a shallow riverbed.
He is also one of the few restaurant chefs on the island who serve traditional Puerto Rican home cooking: stewed chicken, tostones slathered in garlicky green sauce, vinegary conch salad. El Guayacán feels both of, and for, Vieques — a beacon of purpose that has survived both literal disaster and failed disaster management. I watched an electric-orange sun sink into the Caribbean as the musicians in the restaurant sipped Medalla Lights between sets.
A few people, reunited for another tourist season, greeted one another in Spanglish — “Hola, welcome back.”
A version of this story first appeared in the February 2020 issue of Travel + Leisure under the headline Viva Vieques.