Puerto Rico – Part Four

Inna, as usual, had ignored the prospect of rain – she’s good when it comes to keeping warm, but not so much when it comes to keeping dry. She seemed amazed that I hadn’t brought rain gear for her too. I told her there was a plastic garbage bag in the trunk, but she didn’t find that very amusing.

So, that meant we would eventually have to join the throng at the visitor center where we could pick up a trail map and a poncho. The deluge ended as quickly as it began, but showed signs that it wasn’t finished watering the forest.

El Yunque is a unit of the U.S. Forest Service and is supervised by the Department of Agriculture. I worked on the Kaibab National Forest, on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon in Arizona, for 15 years, and I had often heard of the almost mythical El Yunque Forest. I mean, how could there be a National Forest on a Caribbean island? There are several other rainforests in the National Forest system, including the Tongass in Alaska, and the Mount Hood Wilderness Area in Oregon.

El Yunque is one of the oldest forest reserves in the Western Hemisphere, and as you might expect, the story of its creation is a mixed bag of conquest and good intentions, starting in 1876 when King Alphonso Xll of Spain set the land aside. In 1903, three years before Teddy Roosevelt created the Grand Canyon Game Preserve (the precursor to the Kaibab National Forest), the General Land Office established the 66,000 acre Luquillo Forest Reserve, which morphed into the Caribbean National Forest in 1935. In 2007, President George W. Bush, in a gesture of curious goodwill, changed the name to El Yunque National Forest. And typical of W’s often confusing antics, no one really knows for sure what the hell the name means. It might be native Taino, meaning “white lands” – making little or no sense – or it might mean “anvil” in Spanish, which is equally nonsensical.

Regardless, El Yunque is a very unique place and home to over 240 species of trees and plants, and 23 – like the top ten endangered red and green Puerto Rican Parrot – are found nowhere else on earth. The forest is also world renowned for its tiny, but loud,Coqui tree frogs that are always singing for love and are an island favorite.

The visitor pavilion was filled with many informative multi-media displays. Friendly old geezers manned the information kiosks babbling like broken records about various must see sights in the forest. We checked out the busy gift shop that was doing a land office business – something I had never seen on a national forest anywhere in the States – and I bought Inna an El Yunque poncho which immediately went into my pack, never to be used again, because now that we both had rain gear, it never did more than sprinkle. Isn’t that always the way?

The forest map was a black and white, hand-drawn, tri-fold piece of paper – in English on one side and Spanish on the other. There wasn’t a lot of information on the simple handout which read like an amateur playbill – “Nowhere in the world will your eyes observe a greater wealth of beauty than what is waiting for you in the Luquillo Mountains. According to Indian legend, the good spirit “Yuquiyu” reigned on his mighty mountain-top throne, protecting Puerto Rico and its people. The name Luquillo is derived from the god spirit’s Indian name. Many of the sights you will see today are the same as those that dazzled the first Spanish explorers more than 500 years ago. You’ll see 1,000-year-old trees, strange plants and exotic rainbow-colored flowers, and thick vines with great masses of lush red blossoms waving in the cool breeze. From the heart of this breathtaking beauty you’ll hear the incessant, yet delightful, two-note chanting of the “Coqui”, the chattering of unseen tropical birds and, if you are lucky, the squawk of the endangered Puerto Rican parrot. And while you have already seen all the other wondrous sights this world has to offer, you will never forget the enchantment of … The El Yunque National Forest.

We decided to drive to the top of the forest and then work our way back down the mountain. It will take you at least four hours to adequately explore the forest, and you could easily spend a whole day. But all of the key points of interest are located off the main spine road, Highway 191, and unlike the rest of Puerto Rico, everything is well signed so you usually know where you are and what you are looking at.

It was about 8 miles to the end of the road where the trail to the Mt Britton Tower began. The 2-mile round-trip trail is essentially straight up, rising 595 feet in a mile and ending at an elevation of 3,087 feet. What made the hike like no other I had ever experienced was that the entire trail consisted of embedded blue stones meticulously laid a few inches above the natural terrain, a 3-feet-wide ribbon winding through the Sierra Palm forest, crossing two rushing mountain streams and leading steeply upward through the Cloud Forest until it reached the Mount Britton peak. Given the daily downpours, the trail would have been a muddy mess that would have eventually just washed away if it wasn’t paved in this unique manner. It made for easy walking and the jungle vegetation was like a green explosion of color. But I couldn’t even begin to imagine how difficult it would have been to build the jungle trail.

The trail to the tower was pretty busy, including quite a few younger folks hiking barefoot, which seemed crazy as hell to me but didn’t appear to be causing them any trouble.

The oddest thing about El Yunque for me were its tall, brown brick circular towers. They immediately reminded me of the Anasazi towers at Hovenweep in the American Southwest and seemed completely out of place in a jungle rainforest. Our destination, the Mt Britton Tower, dates back to the 1930s and was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and named after botanist Nathaniel Britton and his wife Elizabeth who discovered many of the native tree and plant species in the Luquillo Mountains in the 1920s.

It took us about 45 minutes to get to the tower which was perched above the jungle like the stone turret on a Scottish castle. We climbed up the interior steps to the tower’s observation deck and while we might have been standing at one of the highest points on the island, we found ourselves enveloped in clouds with very little to see. I gazed over the battlements and had a strong urge to pour some boiling oil over the side onto the heads of some silly, bed-wetting English pigs. Slowly, the clouds blew away like mist in the wind and there before us lay panoramic views of the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea and the lush farmlands and ranches of the coastal plain. Other hikers came and went, but we stayed there taking in the swirling sights until the clouds returned and we found ourselves covered in soft dew.

By the time we returned to our car the sun was back out and it was closing in on two o’clock. We could either keep exploring the forest or head back down to the coast highway and zip over to the nearby Luquillo Beach. We opted for the La Mina Trail, which led to the most popular waterfall in the park. By this time, the crowds had greatly diminished and we pretty much had the trail to ourselves. To be honest, there was nothing special about the trail that followed the La Mina River through a narrow gorge, dropping over 500 feet in the course of about a mile. It was slippery and muddy, and there were several small drop-offs, culminating at the crown jewel La Mina Waterfallwhere a large number of people frolicked in the pool below the cold cascade. I’ve never been much for swimming in a small pool with lots of other people, so Inna and I snapped a photo and then headed back to the car. What struck me the most about the trail were all of the elaborate picnic shelters, many of which had been built by the Civilian Conservation Corps. There were at least thirty of these attractive wood and stone pavilions, each with a picnic table, benches and barbeque grill. I could easily imagine hundreds – if not thousands – of locals, picnicking and god knows what else, along the La Mina Trail on weekends and holidays, undoubtedly making for a fear and loathing scene. But every picnic shelter was empty on this quiet weekday afternoon.

We noticed another trail on our way back to the car that led to Baño Grande and Bañode Oro, two small bathing lakes adorned with several sturdy CCC structures, including a native stone bathhouse and dam. The CCC was America at its finest, and there was nothing they couldn’t build. Their masonry and wood-working skills always stand out, even where you least expect it, like a jungle forest in the wilds of Puerto Rico, and their legacy lives on with a style and grace that always makes me smile. Thank you, FDR!

There were other interesting places to stop, like Juan Diego Falls, La Coca Falls, and the ever popular Yokahú Tower, but Inna and I had walked our tails off at that point and it was getting late. We still had a long drive back to Old San Juan and it was time to hit the road.

We got back to the Sheraton in about an hour without incident and after changing our clothes, we walked over to a very hip block of small restaurants along Calle del Recinto where every cuisine under the sun was well represented. We ended up dining at an outdoor table in front of an outstanding Japanese sushi bar called J-Taste where we downed another fine local beer called Magna and toasted our good fortune.

February weather is always a crap shoot in North America and we had decided not to take any chances when we booked our trip back in the Fall. We intentionally planned to arrive four days before our cruise and that was a great call because we ended up just missing a killer winter snow storm that cancelled thousands of flights and left passengers living in airports up and down the east coast for days on end. Our friends Richard and Olga from D.C., who were joining us on the cruise, were stranded back in Maryland, trying to find any flight south. Two days after their scheduled departure date, they had been reduced to options like flying north to Boston in order to catch a flight to Florida. They ended up arriving at two in the morning the day our ship sailed and felt lucky because many other people missed the boat. There were still poor souls arriving with their luggage on day three of the cruise, down in Dominica.

So my advice to you is give yourself at least three days leeway when booking a trip between December and March, because anything can happen, and it usually does.