Plan · Bucketlist Tours
Bringing Your Family to the Bioluminescent Bay
Children, parents, grandparents, and the one in every family who does not swim.
Before any of this, I am a father.
I started taking my son out to see the cucubanos when he was three years old, and when he turned seven I took him into the bay. So when a family asks me whether this is something their children can do, I am not answering as an operator. I have done it with my own.
Ask about age limits first
Ask before you plan anything else around this trip. It is the question most likely to end the conversation, and you want to reach it before the flights are booked.
Most kayak tours and group boat tours will not take anyone under fifteen, or seniors. They are right not to. On a kayak tour, in the dark, with twenty people spread across open water, nobody can watch a twelve-year-old or an eighty-year-old the entire time.
If you are travelling with your children or your parents, you need a format built for it, and you need it confirmed in writing.
On my departures there is no age limit. I have had two-year-olds and eighty-five-year-olds in that water.
Why this bay works for families
- You float. The bay is saltier than the open sea, and it surprises people in a good way. It matters most to older guests and weak swimmers.
- Nothing on the bottom. Where we swim it is ten to thirteen feet deep and the bottom is mud. No coral, no urchins, no rocks.
- The water is warm, warmer at night than you expect.
- Life vests and floaties are included, and I show everyone how to use them before anyone is floating in the dark.
- You do not have to tread water. Under the pontoon the ribs of the platform work like monkey bars. A child or a grandparent can hold on and still be surrounded by light.
- I am in the water with you the whole time, and I go in first.
- Very little walking. No hiking, no climbing in and out of kayaks.
- It is only your family. No strangers on the boat.
The afternoon is for them too
Before the bay there are close to two hours of snorkeling at a cay, in calm, clear water, with gear in every size.
What to tell children before the night
- The water will not look blue. Every photo they have seen is blue because a camera took it. In the dark our eyes see whitish sparkles. Tell them now, and they will not spend the night comparing.
- The first fifteen minutes look like nothing. Eyes need a quarter of an hour of darkness. No phones, no tablets.
- Slow is better than fast. Splashing chases the sparks away. A slow hand draws them.
- The light is alive. Each spark is a living thing answering their movement.
The parts I will not hide from you
It is a long day. La Parguera is two to three hours from San Juan each way, and small children will sleep on the road back.
There are no bathrooms at the water, at any of the three bays. We use our partner hotel before and after.
If anyone in your family has allergies, bring Benadryl, and an EpiPen if one has been prescribed. I grew up severely allergic to insects and so did my son. I never travel without them. In three hundred nights I have been bitten on maybe one in a hundred, and by noseeums, not mosquitoes.
If anyone gets motion sickness, Dramamine has to be taken before boarding to work.
After the swim
Everyone showers and changes into dry clothes at the hotel, and dinner is on the table fifteen minutes after we get back. Nobody rides home wet and salty, and nobody rides home hungry.