Vieques Recommendations
I read literally every single post to Twitter containing the word “Vieques”. Other than mine, there are rarely more than a few per day, so this is not an arduous task. But it has been steadily growing from a year ago when I was almost the only one. I often end up providing bits of advice to people coming here that I find that way. I was just writing an email to one such person to answer a bunch of questions and, having answered most of the same questions several times before, decided to post the answers here too for future reference. So here you go, some somewhat random Vieques recommendations:
Yoga
The classes at Hix Island House are great. I go up there all the time for yoga. Jennifer does a great vinyasa class at 9:30 every morning but Monday.
Restaurants
Our favorite restaurant is El Quenepo in Esperanza. The food and service are consistently the best on the island. We love Duffy's for lunch or post-beach cocktails. Banana's next door has a cool beachy look that draws in the tourists, but the food, cocktails, and service are much better at Duffy's. Definitely more of the locals' hangout.
In Isabel II, we love Taverna for lunch. (Taverna for dinner is also good, but totally different chef and menu. It's Italian for dinner.) Panaderia La Viequense has good Cubanos and other local style sandwiches. (But definitely operates on island time!) Bistro Isleno is not bad for slightly upscale Puertorican cuisine and is very approachable. If you must have sushi while you're here, Mr. Sushi is actually pretty good.
You may see lots of positive reviews still out there for BBH. This used to be the case, but is no longer. (The former chef now runs Buen Provecho, a great gourmet market in Isabel II. So nice to be able to buy good meat and cheese on the island!!)
Beaches
We live just up the hill from the entrance to the east wildlife refuge, so tend to go to those beaches the most. Our favorite beach is Playa la Chiva (aka Blue Beach). Great snorkeling on the west side of the little island. Silver is the furthest out and is often fairly empty. Caracas (Red) has a bit more surf, usually enough to body surf and is very popular, especially on weekends. Playauela (Garcia) is right next to Caracas, but they've closed part of the road, so it's about a 10 min hike to get there so it's usually sparsely populated.
The Sun Bay beaches are all great too, but with the other so close we don't venture over there too often.
Playa Grande is great to take a long walk, but not to swim.
Biobay
There are several kayak tours of the biobay, but we haven't tried any of them yet. The only non-kayak tour is by Island Adventures (http://www.biobay.com/) and it's a great tour. If you're interested in a day sail/snorkel trip, we've done the trip with Marauder and had a great time.
Other
I'd recommend taking a drive out the north east part of the island at some point: drive out the navy pier, see the Ceiba tree, check out the old bunkers, go out to Green Beach and stop at the mangrove swamp along the way.
Two of my favorite activities you probably won't find in any guides are a hike out to the lighthouse ruins near Puerto Ferro (http://johnhat.posterous.com/vieques-hike-to-the-lighthouse) and hiking around the ruins of the old Playa Grande sugar mill (http://johnhat.posterous.com/vieques-sugar-mill-ruins) Let me know if you're interested in either and I can provide some more detailed directions.
Culebra
There's no ferry from Vieques to Culebra. Both have ferry service to Fajardo, but it would take most of a day to get there that way. There are flights, but I don't know specifics. We haven't been to Culebra so I have no real advice, but I've heard from several people that trying to do it as a day trip is more hassle than it's worth.
