Day 3 - 3/31/24

 First of all, Happy Easter everybody! Hope you all had an amazing day.

We definitely had an exciting one. We started off the same way as yesterday and grabbed breakfast at the Panaderia down the road. This time I did not panic and ordered an omelette!

Also had bacon and bread in there (sorry for the bad quality picture).

Anika Rating: 9.7/10

Also only after I finished eating did I make the connection that it was Easter and I had eggs for breakfast.

"Ohhhh, it's Easter! So I got eggs, like Easter Eggs! I'm eating the eggs of my enemies!!" - me

"Please, never say that again" - Clover

Immediately afterwards we set off for El Yunque National Forest, the rainforest on Puerto Rico!

Immediately as we got closer we started to see more signs of tourism. Most notably, the roads weren't as full of potholes as usual. 

We ended up at the Visitors Center first so we could get a paper map to follow. It wasn't very crowded and entirely open air, I wouldn't want to work there when it rained though. There was a roof over most of it but it'd still be a lot of cleaning. Also on our way through the parking lot we saw a tree Clover called a Rainbow Eucalyptus, the picture doesn't do it justice but it certainly lives up to it's name.

The Green Parrots they had in the Visitors Center are endangered so they're attempting to bring back a steady population.

In the gift shop we were looking for a map and for a gift for Mom, we found both, but there was something in the gift shop that piqued my interest. I liked seeing the pictures of the flowers and frogs and everything but there was a repeating image of this bizarre castle-like tower. I had to see it, it was called Yokahu Tower. Dad wanted to go immediately so I'd stop going on about it but I wanted to save it for later and head hiking first! 

The tower was right on the road so we ended up passing by it on the way to our hike. I kid you not 3/4s of the trail descriptions were either 'difficult' or 'very difficult' and most of the rest of them were paved so I knew tourists would be all over those. I ended up picking out a trail that just said 'naturally paved' on the trail map so I assumed it was moderate, it was about 3 miles one way including the small trail we had to take to get to the actual trail. 

But once we got to the trail head we found a map that said this was one of the difficult trails but we were already there so we just went with it. I ended up carrying the backpack with all of the water bottles and Clover handled the GoPro. 

I don't want to say anything bad about them but I swear they stopped almost every minute to take a picture of a snail or a lizard. Not even kidding, the giant snails are awesome and all but you don't need to point out every single one.

The backpack wasn't too bad and the trail was nothing we hadn't seen before, it was rocky and muddy but it could've been worse, it was the humidity that was the issue, it felt like my clothes were so drenched they were sliding right off of me. It could've been hotter but that doesn't mean it wasn't already miserable, I felt like it was already raining even without the rain. The Coqui's (local frogs) certainly seemed to be happy, you could hear them chirping all along the path.

It was slow going to the top mostly for picture stops, there were some really amazing views of waterfalls and plants I'll admit, but my goal was to keep on climbing while Clover and Dad's goals were to take in their surroundings. Which is fair enough, I mean how often do you get to be in a rainforest? But if you were there you'd see, it was way too much. But at least we got some good sights out of it. 

There had been a sign about rabid Mongooses at the trailhead and we were hoping to see one. We caught a glimpse but couldn't catch a photo of it unfortunately. Overall, we took 3 or 4 hours to get to the top, it was a rough climb but it really was the length of a day-long adventure. Also it started raining when we were almost at the top but we were wet enough as it was, and the rain was refreshing. But then of course, the trail had to give us one final test of our worthiness.

It was a matter of keeping momentum but we made it! Only to be greeted by the unwelcome sight of...

After a while of waiting we caught a few glimpses of the mountains but never got the full view which was a bit disappointing. But at least we made it.

On our way down Dad took the backpack much to my relief because it was on the way down when my feet started to hurt. I mean if I stood still for one second it was unbearable, but we still took a few stops to get some pictures.

One which, almost cost Clover everything. They leaned over with the GoPro and slid off the ledge of the path. I was so shocked I just stood there, luckily Clover was fine but still. We just had to ask Clover what they were trying to take a picture of, I suspected the spiny Date Palm that was above us, but no...it figures....IT WAS A SNAIL

Clover slid off the trail for the sake of a snail. I swear. The rest of our trip down was fairly uneventful, it took us about 2 hours to get down so that meant we'd spent essentially our whole day on one hike.

But there was one thing left to do before we left El Yunque for the day...the Yokahu tower! It was much less crowded than when we saw it earlier so it was the perfect time (it was around 4:40 in the day by this point)

We got some pretty good views of the mountains and the ocean in the distance too. 

Edit: Apparently I was misinformed concerning who built the towers (Dad said it was the CCC), they were actually built by a biologist named Dr. Frank H Wadsworth because they gave him a view of 4 different forest types.

We left close to 5, almost getting locked in by the Ranger but we made it. We were all hungry and thirsty so I looked for a spot to eat that was fairly close. I ended up landing on this place called Patria Mia which has Puerto Rican and various other things. 

I got the burger because most of the stuff on the menu was fish and I wanted to grab something cheap. Dad got a Mojito, he's been looking to buy some Puerto Rican rum to bring back to the U.S. so I'm glad he got to try some even if it was a mixed drink. We ended up having to wait a long while for our food, during which we plotted to get Ice Cream. It'd been on our minds all day and we wanted to choose somewhere good and we had plenty of time to decide. 

But for the restaurant the burger didn't really have much flavor unfortunately even though the plantains on it were pretty great.

Anika Rating: 7/10

The Ice Cream place we decided on was called Gendy's, we headed there immediately because they closed relatively soon and we were an hour away from there (they were close to where we were staying, not the rainforest). I didn't get a photo but it was a pretty awesome place, had a lot of unique flavors like Italian Cheese and Garlic, it had normal ones too but immediately we each wanted to try something unique.

All I'll say is I should've sampled some of them, I got a scoop of Tamarind and Ginger, I thought it was a misspelling of Tamarine but apparently it's something totally different, also the ginger definitely added something... I think when I first took a bite I was physically knocked back by how strong it was. 

It...certainly cleansed my pallet, I somehow managed to eat the whole thing.

So tasty

Anika Rating: 10/10

And that was all we ended up doing today!

Thank you so much for reading and have an amazing evening.

P.S. It's sad we didn't get a live picture of a Coqui but here's a picture of Clover's stuffed one, Geoff.