eating poison on a cliff - 2026/02/16
i really don't want to write today, i'm so exhausted. BUT i almost died on the island, and i think that's notable enough to retell!
today we tried to go to vieques, which is an island on the east coast of puerto rico (interestingly, this island is very close to little st. james, which is also known as epstein's island). this island used to be a US navy bombing site, but now mainly is known for having that general caribbean island charm. notably, it has black sand beaches, the world's most active bioluminescent water, free-roaming horses, and generally lacks major human infrastructure (aside from a few roads and abandoned military sites (that still have active bombs!)).
there's a ferry that brings you there, but the times it departs are very infrequent. as such, the only time that would make sense for us to leave to go there was at 8:30. we got tickets and all, and woke up nice and early so that we could be there on time for a full day's adventure. we finally arrived at the terminal at 8:22, but when we went to the gate, the attendant tells us the boat already departed! i don't get how you can just leave 8 minutes before the stated ticket time!! the worst part was that the next boat was coming at 2pm, which would've both meant that we had to sit around for 4 hours, as well as have meant that we weren't going to spend any significant amount of time on the island. as a result, we decided to ditch the plans to Vieques. while i was pretty bummed, it wasn't the end of the world especially as there was still lots of things to do on the main island of PR.
we ended up going to some place called el hippie instead, which is a little secluded spot for cliff jumping in a remote village south of el yunque. took us a while to show up, and when we finally did, someone said we wouldn't be able to go cliff jumping due to the recent flooding that made the water dangerous. since we had come so far and already had a big blunder that morning, we decided to just climb up anyways to see the waterfall.
it was a bit of a tough climb, there was no clear path and the rocks were steep. if you didn't have the right footwear, it wouldn't be easy for you to get up. after some missteps, we managed to make it near the top of the falls. while we're sitting at the top of this cliff enjoying the view of water violently crashing, our friend from the island noticed some large flat brown medallion-shaped seed pods lying around, and recalled hearing his uncle saying that we could eat them. without much thought, we got to cracking them open and all took a bite of the flesh on the inside. it was very bitter, but had a strong floral element that i imagine would be a great component in some sort of perfume.
nothing really happened other than a slight gagging from the bitterness. we then noticed some others trying to cross the rapids in flipflops, and thought we were going to see them die. however, after spending 5 or so minutes talking about how stupid these flip floppers were for putting that much faith in their non-treaded footwear on slippery stone, our mouths started going pretty intensely numb. it started with our lips, then the tips of our tongues, to the entire tongue, and then finally the entire mouth and throat.
naturally we start freaking out, and start googling pretty intensely as to what we just ate and what we were doing. clearly kayno (our PR friend) didn't get the bean right. he called his uncle, and his uncle had no clue what he was talking about lol. after about 10 minutes with chatgpt, we had a few leads, and all of them were pretty toxic. in that time, we also started to get nauseous, and realized we probably should try to get back to the car asap so that we could at least go to a hospital if needed. but if our luck couldn't have gotten any worse, it started raining! i was worried earlier, but wasn't panicking since i knew that having a car meant that we could go to the hospital pretty quick if needed. but, seeing as it was a tough climb down, now i was worried we wouldn't have been able to get to the car at all (or alternatively, it would've been very hard for emergency services to get to where we were!). imagine if i had died on a random cliff in puerto rico. my mom would've been very pissed...
honestly, i got this far into the story and i'm bored lol. so i'm not even gonna try to spruce it up, just gonna rapid fire through the rest.
anyways, we did eventually make it down, and finally saw the area where we parked our car. but just as we were about to get in, a random hippie waves us down into a little shack. no words were exchanged, but it felt important to partake in this side quest, especially following a series of events that had us becoming a little more spiritual and appreciative of life itself.
this hippie says nothing, and then brings out two bottles. one, with soursop alcohol, and another with moonshine (both homemade). he takes out 5 plastic glasses, and pours out shots. as we're taking the moonshine, he pours some on the table and lights it on fire lmao. objectively, this was a bad idea, but it made an amazing memory to this sequence of events. the soursop liquor was also very good, we def need to make that a bigger thing on the mainland.
we then get in the car, vroom through the twisting one-lane local roads while blasting bad bunny at max volume.
what a day.
(oh and i forgot to add, we finished it by getting extremely high and swimming in the ocean at night. that was arguably even more stupid and dangerous than the bean or the stranger's moonshine).
(and i also forgot to add that we saw 3 wild mongooses that day on our hikes; they are PRs main carrier of rabies, with 40% of all mongooses on the island having rabies. another way we could've touched death, but man they were fucking adorable).