May 30, 2011... El Yunque

For the last day of the car rental we drove out of the Old City and headed to a very popular cruiser destination, West Marine! Stocked up on toilet paper among other things and drove across to Plaza Las Americas mall for the Borders bookstore where we added to our Spanish-language Garcia Marquez collection and some DVDs.

Then on to El Yunque rainforest. This is part of the US Forest Service system and has a fabulous welcome center with lots of information, and the rangers had the rare Puerto Rican parrot available to see. (Apparently they are pretty hard to see in the wild.) Driving through the forest the vegetation gets very dense. Patti's favorites, the giant ferns, make you feel like you are in a science fiction movie -- like radiation made everything super-sized. Luckily for us, there was no rain that day, so we didn't have to slosh around on the trails. Everywhere we looked was another gorgeous view or beautiful trees, flowers, waterfalls and streams. Enjoy the photos!