El Yunque

El Yunque

Today we visited the Caribbean National Forest, el Yunque recreation area. We drove out of San Juan on 3. The drive was slow since traffic was thick and there seemed to be a red stoplight every mile. The stop light situation got a little better once we got out of San Juan. We turned off onto 191 and stopped at the visitor center which was very nice. We caught the end of a video presentation which mostly talked about reintroducing the Puerto Rican Parrot back into the wild. The number of parrots is low because many of the Palo Colorado trees that the parrots next in have been destroyed outside of the park. We parked at the Big Tree Trail trailhead and hiked it. There were some larger trees and a nice waterfall. The trail was paved because otherwise it would erode away. We continued on the Yunque trail to the top of El Yunque. Alan and I ascended the mountain really fast. Marion was pretty quick too. Near the top Alan and I climbed up to an overlook. All you could see were clouds. The wind gust were quite strong. We ascended to an old cement structure on top of the mountain where it was equally clouding and windy. We ventured inside the structure when it started to rain again. It had poured on us 2 times already. We determined it’ be neat to be inside the structure during a hurricane. We hiked back down El Yunque and accidentally went to the Los Puachos overlook which consisted of a low circular wall. It was rather strange. On the way down we cut onto the Bano de Oro trail and hiked the road back down to the car. I hadn’t taken any food and was quite hungry. I had an 800 calorie lunch but was soon hungry again. On the way out we stopped by Cascada La Coca which was a nice waterfall.

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Fotos de El Yunque

Taken by Brian Killingbeck

Taken by Alan Cressler

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