All the rivers in the national forest are cascades down the steep slopes
Everyone thinks that Puerto Rico, devastated by hurricane and earthquake, is not a place to go. Wrong. Come on down!
The ship offers a Rainforest Drive tour that I took. Lots of rainforest. No birds. Nada. I heard a dove of some sort coo in shrubbery too thick to see into. Also, there was a Rhode Island Red chicken in a park, apparently standing in for the pigeons. In fact there aren’t even any seagulls to speak of in the harbor. What is a bay without seagulls?!
The rainforest is spectacular. Those of you who know Hurricane Ridge in our own Olympic National Park know how rugged and steep mountains can be. These are steeper, I think, but not much. The Olympics were formed by land scraped off the Pacific and Juan de Fuca plates as they slid down beneath the North American plate. Puerto Rico’s mountains are volcanic. Everything in Puerto Rico is basically basalt. They built a wonderful, huge, marble federal building and had to import every pound of it. I did see a light tan sandstone hunk buried in the black; an ancient sand beach built up on top of basalt and then overlaid by another basalt flow.
Dense Rainforest in Puerto Rico: Hurricane Maria stripped off every leaf. This all grew since then
But Olympic and Puerto Rico’s El Yunque share an important feature. Both are rainforests. El Yunque is tropical, Olympic is temperate. Both get more than 100 inches of rain a year. And both are federally protected by, not to put too fine a point on it, the same government.
Falls Inel Yunque in Puerto Rico
The tour takes you past a spectacular waterfall that would be a record-breaker if the mountains were higher. Because of the terrain there are cascades everywhere.
And they built a tower on top of a peak. It offers a 360° panoramic view of cloud forest, which means “obscured by clouds.”
Despite what you see in the news, the thing in Puerto Rico to really look out for is landslides. Apparently the land is prone to simply slip right out from under the road you’re traveling, or slide down in top of you and/or your house from above. So they plant bamboo on the downhill side, dense groves of bamboo so closely spaced all the trunks touch. The roots are downright aggressive and hold the thin soil in place.
“Cloud Forest” - El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico
This rainforest contains a lot of introduced trees and other plants. At this time of year, the first thing to catch your eye is a tree with glossy green leaves and gorgeous orange flower clusters. African tulip tree.
To prevent road washout they plant dens-rooted bamboo on the downhill side
But I suppose it figures. Puerto Rico has been the crossroads of Spanish, English, American, Carib, pirates of uncertain descent, and farmers and merchants from all over. For five hundred years the pot has been melting and melding.
And that imbues Puerto Rico with an excitement all its own.