Part Four: Destination Puerto Rico-An Epic Class Trip

Backing up a little, but during the time the kids were receiving their marine biology lesson I noticed this blimp off in the distance. One of the guys on the tour boat, a retired Air Force NCO, told me it was actually a tethered aerostat radar system employed by the good folks in Homeland Security. That bad boy is raised to an altitude to well over 20,000 feet allowing them to observe air and sea activity all the way south to the nations of Colombia and Venezuela, west to the Yucatan peninsula.      

Also, during the last post I made a reference that we visited one of Puerto Rico's bioluminescent bays and even had the chance to swim among the tiny microorganisms that create such a miraculous display. Being in a rush to get that last post online, I forgot to say more about it. I also didn't get a pictures since it would have required me to swim at night while holding onto my new camera as well as watching after my daughter. So this picture is one I borrowed off the internet. All I can write is that when I dived into those dark waters the explosion of light was utterly remarkable. Even if I could have taken pictures none of them would have done justice. The closest way for me to describe what I saw is to compare it to the pixie dust Tinker Bell sprinkled on the kids in a Peter Pan animated movie. Those brilliant displays of light were created by a group of single-cell marine creatures called dinoflagellates.       

Now that we're caught up this picture was taken after we had left the village of La Parguera and were well on our way back across the island to visit the El Yunque National Forest. If you enlarge the picture you should be able to see the ocean off into the distance.

The El Yunque National Rain Forest was created in 1903 and is home to over 200 species of plants and animals, 23 which are found no where else in the world.

Just a photo of a stream flowing downhill at the El Yunque visitor center.

After a short drive we arrived at an uphill trail that would take us to a waterfall and natural pool underneath it. This picture does not show how steep the trail actually which and caused some concern with a few adult members of our group. Even worse, there were no real steps, only wet, muddy, and oddly shaped rocks all just waiting for someone to slip. A fall would have resulted in a quick trip to a nearby ICU.

A bad picture of the waterfall and pool.

A slightly better downhill view of the trail. While I didn't have much of a problem going up or down I was quite happy when the group left this place.

Lunch was at a roadside restaurant up in the mountains again serving some fantastic food.

The afternoon was spent a popular beach outside San Juan.

A nice picture of the ocean and the mountains EXCEPT for the damn air bubble in my swimming trunks.

It turned out that my new camera, which claimed to be waterproof up to twenty-feet deep, can in fact be submerged. This concludes this segment of the epic trip. All the other pictures after this are unimportant, especially the place we stayed that night. The resort was clean and well kept but didn't have the atmosphere or charm of the first two. Also, the next segment will be the last which will take us into Old San Juan.