Into El Yunque

A stop in Old San Juan is often the highlight of any cruise to the Eastern Caribbean. Founded in 1521, the capital city of Puerto Rica is the second oldest European-established capital in the Americas. Well-preserved Spanish colonial buildings and streets crowd an easily-walkable area, making for a colorful and history-filled visit.

While I've been to San Juan several times, I've never ventured any further away from the city than the international airport. As a result, I never witnessed any of the tropical island's countryside until my latest cruise, when I booked a tour to El Yunque National Forest in the east.

About an hour-long drive from the Old San Juan cruise port, the protected area is the only tropical rainforest in the national forest system. While it's one of the smallest in size - not even 29,000 acres - it's one of the most biologically diverse. My tour, called an El Yunque Rain Forest Drive, promised me a brief look at the landscape from a small tour bus that made five short stops along highway 191 that cuts through the heart of the tropical woodland.

In fact the first stop was so brief, we passengers didn't even exit the bus due to time and very limited space for parking. The site was one of the most photographed in the area, Coca Falls, very close to the official entrance to the largest protected area in Puerto Rico. We had traveled pretty high in the Sierra de Luquillo mountains, nearing 1500 feet in elevation. Dense foliage, cascading water, and an abundance of ferns made it clear we weren't in any normal national forest, but in a rain forest.

Our first official stop was a bit higher in the forest a mile or so away and at over 2,000 feet, at Baño Grande, a damned-up swimming pool built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930's. Now a water retention pond, the pool is no longer used for recreation. However, the easy-to-walk path around it afforded a chance to witness the local flora and fauna up-close, like the bananaquit I photographed.

Nearby was the Palo Colorado Information Center where rangers answered questions and offered insightful information. One ranger pointed out where a hummingbird frequently roosted, but I only noticed a butterfly, possibly a Julia. Two lizards turned out to be a pair of crested anoles, the male much larger and more golden than the brown female. The species is native to Puerto Rico and the nearby Virgin Islands. Attracted by the tweets of a bird, I identified a pearly-eyed thrasher in the parking area before we passengers reboarded the bus to make our way back down the road.

Our group was able to take a longer hike along a looping trail at the next stop, Palma de Sierra. The slippery pathway meandered among several open-sided picnic shelters, another Civilian Conservation Corp project. We had the palm-fringed trail to ourselves and an opportunity to observe a female hummingbird, most likely an emerald and an endemic to the island commonwealth. I also photographed a bright-green lizard, possibly a Puerto Rican emerald anole. From the lush forest surrounding us, we could hear the loud calls of coquis, a native species of frog.

The third stop at Yokahu Tower offered panoramic views extending from the surrounding forest all the way to the distant coastline in the northeast. I imagined the vacationers who had flocked to its azure water and sunny skies, not giving any thought to us nature-lovers hidden in the cloud forests miles away. Unfortunately the 1960's-era tower was closed so we couldn't enjoy better views from the sixty-foot tall observatory. However, I did succeed in photographing a Puerto Rican plain pigeon in a nearby tree.

La Muralla was our final stop a short distance outside the park's entrance. While the location comprised mostly a restaurant and gift shop - a kind of rest stop for our tour group - there were some pathways into the forest downslope of the facility to observe some of the flora and fauna.

Puerto Rican tree snails were easy to locate hugging a tree. In fact, I had spied a similar snail clinging to the the leaf of a bush while I peered through the tour bus's window at the last stop. I photographed two scaly-naped pigeons in a distant tree. And, finally, I captured some last shots of a bananaquit, possibly the most common bird in the Caribbean.

Back on the ship, my mind was mostly on the birds I didn't encounter in El Yunque, like the Puerto Rican tody, an endemic, small, kingfisher-shaped, emerald-green member of a bird family that I've never seen. And of course, I thought about the Puerto Rican amazon, the critically endangered endemic parrot that has struggled to recover from centuries of habitat loss. Before Hurricane Maria decimated the population and much of the island in 2021, less than thirty individuals survived in the wild. In fact, they had mostly lived in the forest protected by El Yunque.

The beaches are probably the biggest attraction to any Caribbean cruise, often a tourist's most precious memory. But maybe it's the forests we should actually be cherishing: whether we're traveling by ship or even just staying home.