Puerto Rico Stop 1

I just returned from a trip to Puerto Rico with my friend from Cornell, Bret. For our first stop, we drove from San Juan to the rain forest in Eastern PR. The drive was fun along the water. We even stopped on the way to get fast food for lunch. I used my spanish to order the only vegetarian options: rice, beans, and plantains.

We stayed at Casa Cabuy in the middle of the rainforest (picture). Our room looked out onto the forest and we hiked from right outside our door. We hiked down to waterfalls, but the coolest flowers were right outside our door (picture). We also hiked in the only tropical rainforest in the USA (El Yunque). We made it up a "40 min" hike in 18 minutes. We were in a rush to get to night time kayaking. After of course meeting a fellow Cornellian on our trip, we kayaked into the night. After getting to a protected bay in the middle of the night, we jumped in! We started swimming and when we disturbed the water, the algae glowed! Sorry no pictures of this one, but it was the highlight of the first part of the trip.