A Day At El Yunque National Forest

Entrance to El Yunque Nation­al Forest

Last Mon­day was sun­ny and beau­ti­ful. This isn’t to say that the rest of the year isn’t beau­ti­ful in Puer­to Rico, because it most cer­tain­ly is, but last Mon­day was spe­cial. The sun was shin­ing bright, there was­n’t a cloud above and the sky was so blue that it made your eyes hurt. Wow!

As many read­ers of Puer­to Rico By GPS already know, I live in Puer­to Rico; about 5 miles east of the Luis Muñoz Marín Inter­na­tion­al Air­port. That’s about 30 min­utes away from El Yunque Nation­al For­est. So, as you might imag­ine, I’ve vis­it­ed the for­est dozens, if not hun­dreds of times.

View of El Yunque Nation­al For­est from the neigh­bor­ing town of Car­oli­na. Click on image to see it larger.

And so should you. If you’re plan­ning your next Puer­to Rico vaca­tion, El Yunque Nation­al For­est should be high on your list of places to vis­it. It’s like a lit­tle slice of heav­en just 30 min­utes away from the hus­tle and bus­tle of the San Juan Metroplex.

Get­ting to El Yunque Nation­al For­est is easy. You can cer­tain­ly book one of the many El Yunque Nation­al For­est tours that are avail­able at hotels and at the piers in Old San Juan. That is, if you’re the kind of per­son that likes to be shown around. But, if you’re like me, and you like to explore places alone and at your own pace, you can rent a car and com­bine the for­est adven­ture with oth­er near­by attractions.

La Coca Falls. Click on image to see it larger.

Most of the major car rental com­pa­nies oper­ate in Puer­to Rico and you can get an excel­lent deal at Price­line. Just click on the blue ban­ner at the upper right cor­ner of this page.

If you opt for the lat­er alter­na­tive, el Yunque Nation­al For­est is locat­ed on Road 191 in the Munic­i­pal­i­ty of Río Grande. In fact, the exact coor­di­nates for the for­est entrance are: [18.339389,-65.760178]. Make sure to rent a car equipped with GPS, punch them in and you’ll arrive on a dime.

There are water­falls large and small every­where. Click on image to see it larger.

Imme­di­ate­ly after pass­ing the for­est sign you’ll see a side road on your right hand side lead­ing to El Por­tal Vis­i­tor Cen­ter. Here you can find gen­er­al infor­ma­tion about the for­est, par­tic­i­pate in an inter­pre­ta­tive tour and occa­sion­al­ly even catch a glimpse of the pro­tect­ed Puer­to Rican Par­rot. How­ev­er, while entrance to the for­est is free, entrance to the vis­i­tor cen­ter isn’t. Adults pay a $4 entrance fee, senior cit­i­zens over the age of 65 pay $2 and chil­dren under the age of 15 enter free. I guess this serves as a small con­tri­bu­tion to help sus­tain the for­est con­ser­va­tion efforts.

My wife and I have been at the vis­i­tor cen­ter before so we con­tin­ued up road 191. About a mile up the road the first place you arrive at is La Coca Falls. This beau­ti­ful water­fall drops 85 feet onto a mas­sive black rock for­ma­tion that sits at an ele­va­tion of 1,476 feet above sea lev­el. And it’s right by the road! You don’t even have to leave your car if you don’t want to. How­ev­er, with the right wide angle lens and the right cam­era you can take a pic­ture like mine right from the side­walk in front of La Coca. There’s an ample park­ing area about 100 feet fur­ther up the road on your left hand side.

Yokahu Obser­va­tion Tow­er. Click on image to see it larger.

Con­tin­u­ing up the road, on your left hand side, you’ll find the Yokahu Obser­va­tion Tow­er. On a clear day you can see Puer­to Rico’s north­east­ern coast­line from the munic­i­pal­i­ty of Cei­ba almost to the town of Río Grande. So if you’re the kind of per­son that enjoys climb­ing to high places and look­ing afar make sure to stop at the Yokahu Obser­va­tion Tow­er. The exact coor­di­nates are [18.312408,-65.770293].

The next attrac­tion on our list is called “Juan Diego Falls” and it’s one of those places that most peo­ple miss because there isn’t even a sign. It’s about half a mile up the road on your right hand side. To find it look for two small bridges one right after the oth­er. On the right hand side, right next to the sec­ond bridge you’ll see a k‑rail on the shoul­der of the road. In case you don’t know what a k‑rail is, it’s one of those con­crete dividers that they use on high­ways to sep­a­rate ongo­ing traf­fic from the oncom­ing variety.

Juan Diego Falls beau­ti­ful and hid­den. Click on image to see it larger.

In any case, right next to the k‑rail there’s a small trail that leads into the for­est fol­low­ing the riv­er bed. The walk to Juan Diego Falls takes about ten min­utes and there are sev­er­al small­er falls along the way. And just in case you’re won­der­ing, the GPS coor­di­nates for that k‑rail (just in case they remove it in the future) are [18.311819,-65.776988].

Some peo­ple bathe under Juan Diego Falls. Oth­ers even bring bar­be­ques and spend the day dur­ing the hot sum­mer months. But what I real­ly enjoy is mak­ing pic­tures. The place is just mag­i­cal. Oh, and just in case you’re won­der­ing, there are no large car­niv­o­rous ani­mals, poi­so­nous snakes or ven­omous insects on the Island.

Once you pass Juan Diego Falls the next attrac­tion is a lit­tle more dis­tant up road 191. It’s called La Mina Falls and you reach it fol­low­ing “La Mina Trail”. Now, you can take “La Mina Trail” in two direc­tions and from two dif­fer­ent points. The first (and hard­est) is about 10 min­utes up road 191 on your left hand side. You’ll need to walk about 30–40 min­utes (depend­ing on your state of health) along a wind­ing for­est trail before you actu­al­ly reach the waterfall.

There are dozens of pic­ture oppor­tu­ni­ties on the way to La Mina. Click on image to see it larger.

How­ev­er, if you go a lit­tle fur­ther up the road until you reach a small vis­i­tor cen­ter on your left, you’ll find a sec­ond trail that’s short­er. How much short­er? About 10 min­utes short­er. This trail fol­lows along­side the riv­er bed so there are a lot more pho­to­graph­ic oppor­tu­ni­ties. It’s also main­ly down­hill. But keep in mind that all that down­hill walk­ing means you’ll be going main­ly uphill on your way back. In any case, the trail is short­er and the way is beau­ti­ful. The coor­di­nates to take this sec­ond trail are [18.30101,-65.785581].

My wife and I went down this trail last Mon­day and the whole trek took about two hours. But that was­n’t because of the dis­tance, but because we stopped along the way to make lots of pictures.

Make sure to dress for the occa­sion. Click on image to see it larger.

Now here are a cou­ple of things to keep in mind. First, wear com­fort­able shoes. This is cer­tain­ly not the place to break in that brand new pair of hik­ing boots. Bring a bro­ken-in pair that’s com­fort­able and already mold­ed to your feet. Wear light and loose cloth­ing. Although the tem­per­a­ture in the for­est is cool­er than in the San Juan area the humid­i­ty is way high­er. More humid­i­ty means more sweat­ing, so bring sev­er­al bot­tles of water. Final­ly, some­times mos­qui­toes can be a prob­lem. Remem­ber, they breed in water. So when it rains a lot… well, you get the pic­ture. So drop a small can of mos­qui­to repel­lent in your back­pack as well.

Oh, and if you are a dia­bet­ic like me, bring along some fruit. Grapes, apples and bananas are great choic­es. Remem­ber, your med­ica­tion will con­stant­ly try to keep your blood sug­ar lev­els at bay. But if you don’t load up on car­bo­hy­drates you’ll run out of gas on your way back up. How do I know? Because it hap­pened to me and it’s no fun!

La Mina Falls. Click on image to see it larger.

And, by all means, bring a cam­era. Even if you’re not a pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­ph­er there are few places in the world like El Yunque Nation­al For­est. So why not cap­ture the expe­ri­ence and make your friends jealous?

Final­ly, if you decide to explore Puer­to Rico on your own there are dozens of arti­cles in Puer­to Rico By GPS that will point you in the right direc­tion about dri­ving in Puer­to Rico, when to vis­it Puer­to Rico and why and the right kind of GPS unit to bring (or not to bring).

And if you would like to make your vis­it to El Yunque Nation­al For­est a day-long trip check out our posts and pages about near­by Luquil­lo Beach, Sev­en Seas Beach and even the Cabezas de San Juan Nature Reserve in the neigh­bor­ing town of Fajar­do. Any one of these places can be the per­fect com­pli­ment to make your day-long trip to the north­east­ern tip of Puer­to Rico an expe­ri­ence that you’ll cher­ish for a lifetime.

Enjoy Puer­to Rico,

©2014,Orlando Mer­gal, MA
____________________

Bilin­gual Con­tent Cre­ator, Blog­ger, Pod­cast­er,
Author, Pho­tog­ra­ph­er and New Media Expert
Tel. 787–750-0000, Mobile 787–306-1590

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