Quite a day here in the rain forest.
It started with reading the NY Times (only moi). Sounds like we didn’t miss to much except perhaps in Yemen, Tripoli, and Lebanon. Then we had a great breakfast with the other people staying at the ecolodge. There was a biology professor from a college in Connecticut and her stay-at-home ex-nuclear sub navy husband and their three year old that had more energy than should even be allowed in a human being, two women from Atlanta that were foodies, and a very young and hip couple from New York who were “getting away”. Great time was had by all. Then we hiked down to the falls and the pool of water that was a bit too cold to swim in so it ended up that wearing my bathing suit wasn’t such a grand idea…but hey, be prepared. The walk was astounding…orchids, impatiens, all kinds of ferns on steroids, bamboo everywhere…snails the size of cinnamon rolls. The forest is amazing. Many species of birds that don’t exist anywhere else, 28,000 thousand acres of green house plants the size of which would definitely not work in your home as a house plant. Problem was the entire hike was downhill to the falls…and you guessed it…what goes down must go up. And when we arrived at the falls, we traversed the falls on a rope because if the rope wasn’t there and you didn’t hold on to it, you would slip and fall and never be heard of again. Here’s some pictures.
Ray on the trail. Me pointing at a snail.
Pretty amazing. And then we drove out of the rain forest down to the freeway heading north, turning on to another road that led to another “portal” to the rain forest. On the way, we saw this interesting sign:
Then we went to the visitors center and saw a movie about the rain forest and then we preceded to drive up the road for a bit and saw this fall.
I did mention that this was a rain forest? It didn’t rain the entire day until we parked the car at the ecolodge and walked to our room and opened the windows. Then it started to rain. Watch this movie.
Well, as it turns out, the movie is a problem so I can’t use it. I’ll take this up with the Apple people when I return.
And then we went to dinner and ran into the same principal/superintendent that we met the night before. He was there with three of his friends and we had a grand time talking spanish/english or spanglish. He invited us to return and stay in his home even though he found out that I don’t care for basketball (apparently the Miami Heat were playing tonight and his son teaches in Miami). I reciprocated and invited him to Cayucos. We had a great time, exchanged addresses and hugged. Ray in the meantime was trying to explain what happened to his toe and didn’t know the word for “boat” in spanish along with “blood” and “smashed”. But a reenactment did wonders for his cause. We all laughed and had a great time.
The Puerto Ricans are fabulous, friendly people. They are generous and thoughtful and willing to help strangers. They also have great senses of humor. We loved them and we think they liked us too. This led to Ray remarking that the value of travel is really meeting the people. And he is so right.
Then we came back to the room and there we are. I’m blogging, he doing a numbers puzzle and we’re both listening to the calphony of coquis doing their thing along with the sound of the raging waterfall. It is priceless.
If you’ll turn your computer or your head sideways (your choice), you can view and hear the falls we are listening to right now. Can’t show this to you, dear reader, either. So sorry.
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