I didn't want to stretch this trip report over weeks and weeks. I
didn't want to break it up into a zillion parts either, but would one post
with 5000 pictures have been better? I don't know. At any rate, we are
pressing on. I love the rainforest! Love it! It seems like it
must be the most beautiful place in the world! I suppose this is,
amazingly, the third
rainforest
I've been to…although temperate
rainforest
(the Redwoods) doesn't quite seem to count.
What surprised me is that the rainforest in Puerto Rico looked/felt
different from the rainforest in Hawaii! It makes me wonder if the
rainforest in Brazil, or Peru, or Africa is different still? I suppose it
must be. That makes me wish I could visit all of them. (When I die
and become a being of light and spirit…I will!)
After we
got to
our rainforest house, we spent the next few days either in the
National Forest rainforest—El Yunque, it's called—or just
outside it, in what was still the same rainforest, but not National
Park land. I was actually quite worried about this, because you have to
have tickets/reservations to get into El Yunque, and I had read lots of
people online saying they hadn't been able to get them. You used to be
able to get tickets 30 days in advance online, but in July of this year
they changed the policy so you could ONLY get tickets 24 hours before you
wanted to enter. (And now, as I'm writing this post, I read that as of the
end of August, you don't need a reservation at all anymore! Make up your
minds, people!) Anyway, I was so afraid we wouldn't get any tickets! And
then we would never get to see it!
But, once we were actually in the town of Luquillo, I saw that the actual
National Park was not ALL the rainforest. The actual forest extends
outside of the boundaries of the Park, so if you can't get El Yunque
tickets—there is still a lot of rainforest to see! Especially if you are
staying right there as we were!
Then we actually DID manage to get tickets too, for both days we wanted
them. I just logged on to the Recreation.gov website right at 8 am when
the tickets opened up and we were lucky! I'm so glad, because I loved El
Yunque…but if we hadn't gotten tickets, I think we still would have been
okay.
Anyway, the pictures in this post are of actual El Yunque. There is a nice
visitor's center with a walkway over the trees, some outdoor exhibits, and
then a small "discovery trail" where some of the plants are labeled. It
was cool, but probably the least cool part of the forest we saw.
The ocean looks so far away in this picture. It felt close in real
life. Like you could just hop over the trees and be there.
Some of the flowers from the discovery trail…they looked fake, as tropical
flowers always do
Admiring some huge leaves
A "clearing" in the forest—still completely covered in green, but bare
of trees. I was curious about this. What made it? Fire? Lightning? Wind?
Or does this just happen when the soil isn't quite right? It must allow
a whole different ecosystem to grow in this spot!
Some cool mushrooms (probably not called that…fungi, anyway) on a branch
I wish I could give more context to these pictures. So many of them just
seem like unbroken greenery, and it's probably hard to get a sense of
depth. The foliage had so many layers, going back and back and back.
This tree had such interesting, smooth bark!
A closer look
Here's a little place we ate at near the rainforest. So typical of all the
restaurants we saw here—it felt like something in a movie to me. Hot. Fans
blowing. Sticky tables, a little run-down looking, bottles of drinks
behind an outdoor bar.
This was some ginger lemonade we ordered, and it was SO GOOD. Cold.
Lemony. And a little spicy.
Some of the trails in the rainforest are closed right now, due to damage from
Hurricane Maria or whatever else. We were sad to miss them because they
sounded cool, but the trails we did hike were really good too. And it's pretty
tiring hiking here. The heat and humidity made us lots more tired than we
expected! So only doing a few hikes probably worked out better anyway.
Looking down at a waterfall (hard to tell from this picture whether you're
looking up or down)
Lizard friend
The great thing about hiking here, especially since it was so hot and
humid, is that the water is so pleasant and if you get hot, you can just jump
in! I already went on and on about the warmth of the ocean here. I could wax
equally fervent about the warm rivers, which were more astonishing, if
anything! I suppose I've never so much as put my toe into a river that wasn't
made from snowmelt. And when I read online that the rainforest rivers were
"refreshing," I thought, "that's another way of saying COLD." But no. They
were, quite simply, refreshing and wonderful! A little cooler than the ocean,
perhaps. But just SO nice when you were hiking and hot. We made it a point to
hike only by rivers. When they are so easy to come by here in the
rainforest, why would we do anything else?
Some of the trails were a little slick and muddy, as you'd expect here. But I
wore good hiking sandals and was fine. We also sometimes brought water shoes
and hiked in those.
This was Juan Diego Falls. There's a lower falls, which had a nice pool below
it but was full of people, and then this higher one which was a little harder
to get to, but worth it!
Seb was brave enough to climb up even beyond this waterfall. I didn't
dare, but Sam eventually went up there with him.
Way up here! Scary!
They found another waterfall and a deep natural pool a little way up
the river. It looked so beautiful!
We were lucky to have this place to ourselves for so long. After this,
several girls in bikinis came and posed for so many photos for
their instagram feeds. Soooooo many. I thought they would never stop. They
didn't play in the water, though—just got their one million pictures and
moved on. Not that I have any call to criticize, with the million pictures
I took myself! :)
As we hiked back down the trail, there was a sudden downpour! It was SO wet!
(And I wish I had a dollar for every person that wrote, smugly, on a travel
forum about how "I saw so many people on the trails who were unprepared for
rain. Hello, don't people realize it is a RAINforest?" I suppose they would
have thought scornfully that WE were some of those very people. But really, we
just didn't want to wear rain gear! Why would we? We had just been getting wet
anyway, and it wasn't cold. The only trouble was that we didn't dry out very
quickly afterward, and our car suffered from it. Oh well!
The rainstorm made for the prettiest misty clouds over the forest!
We went to a lookout tower so we could see out above the canopy. It was
magical.
The sun behind the mist was so pretty!
You can see the city and the ocean out there. That's "downtown" (?) Luquillo,
I'm pretty sure.
There are so many different textures of forest. Each little emerald leaf
dripping with rain. I love it.
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