2015-03-31 - Part II - Hiking within the Clouds

An one hour drive from the San Juan area brought my brother and I to the El Yunque National Forest, the only tropical rain forest in the United States. After drinking a delicious coconut for $3, the first things we saw were the tourist-friendly Cascada La Coca on the side of the road, and the Torre de Yocahu with a nice view from the top. You could see the peak of El Yunque where we were headed.

It was a short drive from the tower to the visitor parking lot. The main El Yunque trail entrance was closed so we had to walk 0.2 miles to use the Bano de Oro trail to start. We then followed the El Yunque trail towards the peak of the second tallest mountain in the rainforest.

At one point, it became obvious that we had reached another layer of the rainforest. The vegetation was different; we were mostly above the misty rain clouds, and had a less forested view of the sky. Everything had a white glow to it and on the false peak, rain water was being blown diagonally upward by the strong wind currents.

The El Yunque trail intersected an actual road that workers use to drive up to the top. From that intersection, it was a short but slow uphill trek to the stone building at the peak of El Yunque.

From the top, we went on a short but rather difficult excursion on the road to Roca El Yunque, another peak near the Pico El Yunque. The start of the trail from the road was not easy to find and we did not recognize it from even within a few feet of where it was. The literal climb up slippery rock after the rain was precarious and not recommended. A fall certainly would have caused injuries.

Then we backtracked back to the El Yunque Trail. 

We hiked down to the Torre de Mt Briton via the El Yunque Trail and Mt Briton Spur.

A short but steep trail from the main road led to the base of the tower. After walking around the tower, we climbed to its top where we looked towards both ends of the main Puerto Rico island.

We hiked down from the tower to our car and took a break with some food. Afterwards, we followed a stream-side path that led us to the beautiful Cascade La Mina, passing by many pools along the way where people could bathe and play.

It was a beautiful day and about a total of 9 miles of hiking. Then followed another hilly drive out of El Yunque National Forest to Fajardo where we had a kayaking tour.

With us in double-kayaks, several guides directed us towards a narrow channel of mangrove trees.

We entered the mangrove trees in a single file to avoid the trees and other kayaking companies.

Going through the virtual tunnel was quite fun.

After a winding path, we eventually reached the salty lake on the other side. The sun had not set yet so we had time to look around for a bit. After the sun set, the bright moon and stars came out. Soon after, by moving our paddles and hands through the water, we could see the light sparkle of dinoflagellates in the water. It was a great experience with the bright night sky above and the dimmer stars below. Unfortunately, it was too dark to capture any of it.

There are five places with these dinoflagellates in the world, three of them in Puerto Rico. They have short lifetimes and die easily. Most of them are being heavily harmed and destroyed by human pollution.