Puerto Rico, day 4 - the jungles
Aparently the jungles close at 6pm so with all of our adventures the last couple of days we could not get there on time. So today we got up early (no surprise there) and headed straight for El Yunque rain forest. Even though it “opens” at 7am, the visitor “centers”, where one can get trail maps, do not open until 9am. That would explain why there was absolutely no traffic when we got there a bit before 9.
Our first stop was La Coca falls, just by the road. After making some moderates efforts to get closer to the falls, we got some pictures taken and headed further. First, we decided to hike down to La Mina waterfall and found out that the trail was not exactly natural. Instead of tracking through a jungle, we were walking on a concrete pathway with stairs and other features one would not expect at a rain forest. The rain portion of the rain forest did materialize in a form of a torrential downpour during our hike.
By the time we got to the falls, we were completely drenched, which removed any doubts on where we should jump underneath the falls for some pictures. After lots of those, some people made it further down the stream for more pictures and we “hiked” back out to our car. At that point we decided not to go on the trail to the top of the rain forest because everyone was not looking forward to marching along another concrete pahtway for a couple more hours. Nor did we see much in the forest that we were dying to see - no birds or animal or any interesting looking vegitation. With that in mind, and because Phil had to catch his flight back in a few hours, we jumped in the cars and headed for old San Juan.
