El Yunque

Yesterday we looked at another house.  Our realtor, who is a friend of the same neighbor who gave us Rico, is doing a great job showing us interesting places in the centrally-located neighborhoods in northern Guaynabo, near CG housing, Ft Buchanan with the kids' school and groceries at the commissary, and minimizing M's commute into Old San Juan.  There is one house in particular for which we are ready to sign a lease, but with the summer holidays over the past couple of weeks people aren't very available. 


After seeing this other house yesterday we went to the mall nearby, Plaza San Patricio, which will likely be our nearest shopping center.  We're not huge fans of malls but this one is nice.  And we saw first-hand that Kmart is alive and well in PR, and was much nicer than the Wal Mart we went to last weekend in Carolina.  That was a pretty crazy experience.


Anyway, we wanted to see a movie and the only kids movie playing was Ice Age, which they had already seen.  Batman was playing on half the screens.  So, we tried irresponsibly taking the kids to their first PG-13 movie, Spider Man.  It was a disaster --a lot of violence that upset our eldest-- so we bailed with everyone in good humor.


Today, we finally made it to El Yunque, the only rainforest in the US National Forest system.  We had been extolling its virtues to L since February, and it was amazing to finally be there.  It was about an hour's drive from San Juan and on the way at the toll plaza we purchased an autoexpreso, basically a prepaid EZ-Pass. 


A lot of Puerto Ricans were there on the tail end of the summer holiday. They almost all go to the waterfalls at Las Minas, so we kept going and hiked on some other trails, where we hardly saw anyone once we were 1/4 mile from the road.  It was nice and cool in the rainforest and the kids enjoyed a small stream where L sighted some small blue fish.  The lizards and snails were huge. We plan to backpack there and it will definitely be a challenge to find a flat spot for a tent.  This would be ideal for hammock camping, but the kids kind of rule that out.  We can only imagine what the rainforest will sound like at night.  It is wild, and yet safe, with the only danger being rabid mongoose.  They are the #1 carrier of rabies on the island. 


It was fantastic and a nice taste of some of the interesting weekend trips available on the island.