Flamenco Beach — Attraction in Culebra

A long and pristine beach.A must visit for all beach lovers.

BOOKING & LOGISTICS: While booking usually you make a part payment and the rest is to be payed on the day of the trip at the boat counter. Remember to carry and ID card and the same CC using which the trip was booked. Boat operators usually cover your water, drinks ( Pina coladas and more) food for the day. There are many boat operators and most hotels can arrange for your trip. Those with sea sickness / motion sickness must take precautions. Do carry your gears and towels. The providers usually provide snorkeling gear as part of the trip.

THE TRIP: Usually the trips start around 7:30 in the morning with bus pick up from hotels. Finish your breakfast before you embark. You should be back in hotel by 5 pm. Takes an hour by boat to reach from the Peurto RICO main island. The trip is long and sometimes bumpy but was never scary. Those with sea sickness / motion sickness must take precautions. The boats are all big with adequate assurances on safety. The trip is beautiful with dark blue sea. If you are lucky as we were you will get to see Whales enroute. The first pit stop is for snorkeling. At depths of around 20 feet, clear water with beautiful marine life. Snorkeling pit stop is around 2 hours. We also had people diving from the boats top deck - it all fun. The boats usually have a floatation device that makes it easy for floating. Nevertheless if you don’t know swimming, you are likely to miss this adventure.

Second pit stop is the Fleminco island - pristine and beautiful beach. Lots of sun. Clear water and beach ( we had some shored sea weeds). The portion of the island was used by US as a missile testing site. There are still two army tanks which were used as targets in this beach - one say 100 meters inland from the waters and one right at one end of the beach in water. It’s an amazing site how sea is slowly eating in to that beast. At Flemignco beach the big boats doesn’t go to the shore. From where the boat anchored, one has to swim to the beach. Those who don’t know swimming will find this journey tough, especially on return. Our boat crew Tobias was excellent. They carried three of my non swimming friends to the beach using floatation device. They also carried essential electronics like mobiles and cameras in a water proof bag to the beach and back. Without that we would have missed a lot of photo ops. There were other boats where that option was not provided and hence people had to leave the cameras on the boat itself and ended up having no photos of the place. Assume there are no food and drinks available on the beach ( though there are few snack places inland 100 meter behind the bushes - usually crowded and will eat in to the actual time you have for spending...

Indeed, it is a beautiful beach. Clean, large, absolutely lovely, clear water. Some reviews state that there is no good snorkeling. I disagree. There's some coral reef right off the beach. We saw several beautiful kinds of fish and even an eel. Had we spent even more time looking deeper in the coral pockets, I'm sure we could've seen even more. If you only have time for one beach, you can still see some sea life at Flamenco. It's not hopeless. But yes, I'm sure Tamarindo beach has a lot more snorkeling to offer than Flamenco.

To ensure you have the most enjoyable experience on Culebra, if you decide to do an overnight and you've got kids (and even if you don't have kids), keep a few things in mind....

Stay somewhere very close to the ferry terminal if you don't want to rent a UTV/car. Kids under 12 years old are not allowed on UTVs. After people are are taxied from the ferry to Flamenco beach and back their hotels for the evening, all taxi's cease to work. We called over 10 on a list. No one responded. If you're not staying within walking distance of a place to eat, you will have to walk on foot to get there.

If you are currently staying on Vieques and endlessly searching online for a way to do a day trip to Culebra, you will find no info/direct way to get there, outside of taking the ferry to Ceiba (mainland PR) and then Ceiba to Culebra. It will basically chew up an entire day each way. Until we were on Culebra, we just happened to stumble on someone that runs a water taxi. He stated they would go between Vieques and Culebra -- it's called ($300 for up to 6 people not sure if that's one way or round trip) H20 water taxi run by Captain German. If you are able to avoid the Ferry to save some time and can afford it, I would highly recommend it.

Last, ensure that there is basically NO rain forecasted all day long at all for the day that you intend to visit. We went on a day that only had rain forecasted for the early morning and it ended up raining all day. When you chew up two vacation days for an overnight stay, pay for a room, all the transportation (taxi and/or UTV/car rental) and the $2/person entrance fee for Flamenco beach, you really want to ensure that it will be awesome weather at the beach. We enjoyed it but we didn't feel it was worth all the effort, time and expense to do it from Vieques and it was certainly a bummer that it was overcast/raining most of the day...

Ranked as one of the top beaches in the world, Flamenco is a postcard-perfect stretch of white sand and turquoise waters.

First thing first - reaching there is a pain - means a) Rent a car- 50 KM- 60-70 Mins ride b) Reach Ceiba -would suggest booking ferry tickets in advance (gets sold out quickly, especially on Weekends) 50 Minutes Ferry ride to Culebra Island c) $5 shuttle to Flamenco beach, as its a popular beach, you will get a shared taxi outside the terminal

It takes app 4-5 hrs and then you will reach there but trust me, that beach is worth it. The moment we saw this, we were like - "wowwwwwww"

The horseshoe-shaped silver beach is indeed picture-postcard pretty, but it can get crowded on the weekends. We went there on Tuesday so there was not much rush. It does have amenities though: the only beach on Culebra that does. Beach is practically wave-less, which makes it ideal for snorkeling, swimming, unwinding, playing in the sand, or simply beach-bumming.

If you were to spend the entire day at Flamenco, you’ll observe a spectacular show of color changes on the water, ranging from clear like glass, soft baby blue to turquoise to deep emerald green. We hit it at 2 PM, with amazing colors. also what amazed me- it's sand. The sand of Flamenco is light, white, soft, very fine, unlike Escambron-Condado beach. perfectly landscaped shore with green rolling hills as the backdrop, lush tropical plants providing shade to visitors

While you’re there, don't miss your chance to bump into Flamenco’s most iconic attraction, The Tank, which is a reminder of the US Navy’s occupancy of Culebra.

Food & Drink: there are 2 food trucks near to beach offering local food and drinks.

How to reach there by Car-

If you are planning to Visit Playa Flamenco and come back to San Juan then I would suggest taking route 3while going and Route 187 while coming back. a couple of reasons for this-

1. Take Route-3. You wanna save money on toll skipping Route-66 (no sense paying rental company for its transponder and $10/day)
2. while coming back to San Juan, take Route 3 & 187. Its Scenic route
3. On Route-187 - Pinones area which is famous for its street/roadside small/decent food joint - you don't wanna miss if you are a foodie

or...