Puerto Rico Punch

Island Girl lives.

"Wheeee!" she screams, as her newly rented bike flies down a steep hill and over muddy potholes. The bike had been delivered by a battered VW bus driven by Dick, a throwback from the days when everyone was dropping out. Except Dick never dropped back in. He moved to Culebra and turned his hippie-mobile into a mobile rental bike shop.

Island Girl is coasting toward Flamenco Beach, where the parking area is abuzz with vendors, campers and beachgoers. At the end of the half-moon beach, a graffiti-covered army tank sits half sunken in the sand, a remnant of the U.S. military presence on Culebra.

Miss Isla swims and suns at Flamenco for an hour or two before pedaling over to Malena Beach. There she's alone, with only a few surrounding islands to keep her company. Soon she'll turn in her bike and head to the tiny airport for the short hop over to the island of Vieques. But for now, she indulges in the solitude, feeling very tiny in the largesse of nature.

3:35 p.m.

After a road-rally drive through endless mountains and countless tiny towns, Eco Guy arrives at a tidy green-and-white frame farmhouse just off the road. It's a former coffee plantation doing business as Hacienda Gripinas, one of several traditional Puerto Rican country inns known as paradores .

The veranda, wrapping around the main house, provides an overseer's-eye view of the lush gardens and tile pool and the town of Jayuya down the road. The mofongo here smells rich and garlicky, but Eco Guy opts this time for the grilled fish.

4:15 p.m .

Joe Beach rolls up his towel at La Playuela and makes it back to his home turf with daylight to spare. A popular whale-watching destination, Rincon is famous for its giant waves, as evidenced by the ubiquitous surfer-dude shops and bars. Joe's a loafer, not a surfer, so he heads to the park surrounding the town's lighthouse. From there, he watches as Neoprened specks hundreds of feet below ride the afternoon waves.

Dusk finds Joe on the terrace at Kaplash, a bluff-side bar where both the margaritas and sunsets seem to last forever -- and not long enough at the same time.

4:45 p.m.

Island Girl is soaring over the ocean in a toy plane destined for Vieques. The flight is only about 15 minutes long, and soon Thomas, the manager of Bravo! hotel, is greeting her at the property's iron gates. He shows her to her room -- a minimalist lair with white and light wood and hipster cred -- then invites her to an outdoor bash in Esperanza, the hub of night life. He'll pick her up at 7, leaving her enough time to veg by the swishy pool.

Twenty minutes after seven, Thomas, Island Girl and his pack of friends -- many young, some dreadlocked, most American -- slosh around in the mud in Esperanza, holding cans of cheap beer and listening to a reggae band. When the music switches to ear-blasting tropic-pop, they venture down the mucky road lined with boisterous restaurants and bars in search of food. Specifically, shark on a stick.

9:20 p.m.

Slick has changed hotels. Out in the Isla Verde neighborhood, a 20-minute cab ride from Old San Juan, it's all concrete and high-rises, but she can't fault the Isla Verde Beach Resort's beach, a pleasant strand lined with palm trees. Having escaped the air-conditioned hell of the hotel dining room for the pleasant outdoor grill, she's chowing down on grilled mahi-mahi and fried plantains.

Slick stops by the slots in the hotel casino and immediately wins a double jackpot -- $42 on a $5 bet. Emboldened, she tries again, loses and opts instead for a drink at Picante, the lobby bar. A live band is playing salsa music and the dance floor is packed with locals, most of them middle-aged couples out for a night on the town. The star of the night is a bald, bespectacled gent in a gray suit tearing up the dance floor with his wife. His shiny head gleams in the footlights and he sports an ear-to-ear grin as he hops around, twirling and dipping. He kisses his wife repeatedly and with each kiss, people applaud.

At least, Slick thinks it was his wife.

Sunday

11:30 a.m.

Eco Guy is soaking wet and nearly blind. He's deep in the gloom of a massive cave, a soaring underground chamber that is part of the world's second-largest network of river caverns, the Rio Camuy Cave Park. There is a steady plop from the perma-drippy stalactites 20 stories above. But Eco Guy's soaking came from the torrential downpour that hit just as he walked from the tourist tram to the cave entrance. Still, a clinging shirt can't lessen the wonder of this truly spectacular setting: a subterranean hollow the size of an NBA arena, lined with underground streams and otherworldly stone filigree. Talk about your island interior.

12:10 p.m.

On Vieques, the cockfighting ring is dark, so Island Girl and Thomas instead opt for El Fortin Conde de Mirasol, the last Spanish fort built in the Americas. Island Girl circles the stunning white ramparts for a 360-degree view of Vieques in all its glory. Which is far from faded.

In May 2003, the U.S. Navy left the island. Now, parts of the old bombing range are a national wildlife refuge, and Vieques is growing popular for lovers of pristine beaches and jungly terrain. After poking around deserted military storage units, Island Girl and Thomas roll on to Nevia Beach, where they outwit the mosquitoes by plunging deep into the sea. Safe inside the giant hug of cliffs, they float lazily on their backs in the silent cove. Soon she will be airborne, flying toward San Juan -- but for now, she's content just drifting.

12: 35 p.m.

Slick is walking, all agog, through the striking sculpture garden of the Museum of Art of Puerto Rico. It's like the Hirshhorn but better -- no crowds. The $55 million museum and cultural center, which opened in 2000, is an ambitious showcase of Puerto Rican art from the 17th century to the present. And for the next two hours, Puerto Rican art history comes alive as guide Glenn Patron points out his favorites, starting with Jose Campeche, Puerto Rico's first artist of international renown and the son of a freed slave. They pass through social realism, Spanish surrealists and 1960s feminists.

After multiple recommendations, Slick heads to a little cafe called Casita Blanca, packed with local families for Sunday lunch. When she enters, she's handed a welcoming aperitif of anise-flavored rum. The first course, hunks of garlic toast and an incredible chicken soup with everything but the claws, would have been plenty, but that's just the appetizer -- she then goes through a buffet line and emerges with her plate heaped with beans, rice, fish, fried plaintains and salad.

2 p.m.

En route to San Juan and ensnared in traffic again (on a Sunday?), Joe Beach makes a pit stop in Aguadilla. It's another surfing hot spot, but Crashboat Beach gets particularly high marks even from those who aren't board silly.

On one side of a long pier, surfers hotdog for a rapt crowd. On the other, the beach is wide and tidy, with volleyball nets, brightly painted fishing boats and a ferocious undertow. Joe fears he'll end up a safety statistic if he strays too far from the edge, but he stands at the ready, watching kids wade perilously into the froth. Everyone makes it out alive.

3:40 p.m.

Eco Guy has one more stop before he leaves the hilly interior and heads back to San Juan to meet his friends. He's standing on the ridge of a mountain basin, looking over the world's largest radio telescope, Cornell University's Arecibo Observatory. The valley is covered by a kind of satellite dish the size of a Disney World parking lot. The receiver suspended over the center is the size of a construction crane. It's surrounded by an excellent interactive visitors center and a building where, one imagines, the best minds of Cornell are trying to unscramble the Playboy Channel.

9 p.m.

City Slicker, Island Girl, Joe Beach and Eco Guy reunite at the Parrot Club, a jubilant bistro in Old San Juan. The crowd is a mix of locals and tourists, the space all bright Caribbean colors. The house band, Son del Pueblo, is pumping an irresistible salsa beat when suddenly the crowd erupts with cheers and clapping. It's Eyeri Yrady, the 2-year-old son of one of the waitresses, going nuts on the bongos and bringing the house down. "For Christmas they gave him drums," the manager explains.

Monday

6:15 a.m.

Before the ride to the airport, Joe Beach sneaks down for one last stroll on the sand. The beach is empty, the early sun already hot. And hours later, his favorite souvenir from Puerto Rico pours out of his sneaker and onto his living room floor.

Eco Guy and City Slicker will be online to discuss this story Monday at 2 p.m. during the Travel section's regular weekly chat on www.washingtonpost.com.