It’s our first full day visiting Puerto Rico and the day we are visiting El Yunque National Rain Forest. We had to reserve our tickets ahead of time, so we knew this was the day we would be visiting the rain forest. I woke up at the crack of dawn with pure excitement. I am usually an early riser, but in Puerto Rico, I woke up even earlier. I think the sun rises earlier there because it would be 6:00am and the sun was bright as could be. Some of my family members made breakfast while I kept the conversation going (typical). After eating a full breakfast, we loaded the van and it was off to the rain forest.
I enjoyed being in the rainforest. It was fun hiking all of the trails and everyone we met was so nice. I was amazed how many people were from my home state. One family even used to live in the same exact town I live in. The father used to teach at the college I now work at. So crazy! I will talk to anyone, so it was no surprise I met so many cool people on the trails.
Some of the trails (like the El Yunque trail) were closed due to a recent storm, but we still got to hike a lot of the trails. Some of the hi-lights from the trip were visiting the Yokahu Tower and Mt. Britton. Mt. Britton was the highest peak we could get to on this trip. Yokahu Tower was the first hike we got to. It wasn’t much of a hike. You really just pull into the parking lot and hike up the tower. The tower, however, was very steep. It had great acoustics and a gorgeous view from the top. Watch the video attached to this post to see one of my friends sing in the tower.
After we visited Yokahu, we stopped for some empanadas before beginning our next hike. The empanadas were so fresh. These were actually the only empanadas I had the whole trip. I honestly thought I would have more but there were so many types of food I wanted to try. After lunch it was time to hike Mt. Britton.
Hiking Mt. Britton was definitely the hardest hike we did. It was straight up and went on for several miles. I was so glad I took my hiking sticks. Several folks on the trail said they had wished they brought hiking sticks as well. This was where I met so many people from all over the place, mostly North Carolina haha. My two friends and cousin made it up to the top of Mt. Britton with me. When we got up there, we were certainly in the clouds. It was really neat. The hike back down the mountain to catch up with the rest of my family seemed much quicker than the hike going up.
We were in Puerto Rico in June so it was hot. After we hiked Mt. Britton, we set out to find a swimming hole. With another short hike and good conversation, we found ourselves at a beautiful swimming hole with a beautiful waterfall. The water was so cool and refreshing. There was another waterfall above where we were that some of us wanted to go visit. We set out on another trail to find the other waterfall and ended up getting lost. The funny thing is, the trail we were on looked like we were on the right trail the whole time. It had clearly been hiked on quite a bit and even had perfect grooves in the trees for us to climb up, just like the other trail. Once we realized it was a dead end, we turned around to go back down. We thought we just weren’t going to get to see it. As we were going down, some other hikers told us how to get to the second waterfall. It was much closer to where we started than we had originally hiked. At this point, my legs were shaking from all of the climbing but I still got as close to the water fall as I could. My two friends, went all the way to the falls for me and took photos. We weren’t there very long because we knew the rest of my family was ready to leave. As we were hiking down the trail, my cousin showed up wanting to know how close the water fall was. My friend was able to take her to the water fall while I started the climb down. If we hadn’t of gotten lost and taken so long on the trail, my cousin may have missed out.
After this adventurous hike, covered in mud, we knew it was time to go get cleaned up and find dinner. Hiking in El Yunque was amazing. It was hot, but it honestly didn’t feel hot because of all of the trees. I only had one complaint…. It didn’t rain! We were in the rainforest and saw no rain! I am thankful God gave us a gorgeous day in the rainforest but I do have to laugh at the fact that it didn’t rain the whole time we were there. Maybe next time.