El Yunque and Las Croabas Lagoon

I am so excited to actually have a visitor here to help me explore the island. There are many things I found myself wanting to do however I quickly discovered that for these things, like hiking in the rain forest or kayaking to the bioluminescent bay, I really needed to have a partner.

Jeremy and I set off this morning to El Yunque. It's the only US National Rain Forest. We found our way to the entrance and made a quick stop at the Las Cabezas Look Out to see down the valley to the sea. It was very beautiful and peaceful, but we were really excited to be in the rain forest so we didn't stay long. We made our way up to the next stop, Coco Falls and as we approached we were greeted with signs saying the rain forest was closed due to poor weather. Earl struck again! There was tons of debris still on the road from the storm Monday and I have a feeling that is why the area was closed off. We didn't let that get us down. We decided to climb up around the rocks at Coco Falls and then made a back up plan.

We had reservations to kayak to the bio bay in Fajardo so we found our way to a local beach. We spent a quiet afternoon relaxing at Seven Seas Beach. Seven Seas got its name because at various times of the day the water might look seven different colors. When we were there the color of the water looked perfect to us and it was nice and warm. A couple hours of sun bathing and we were ready to hit our next and final destination of the day.

There are five bioluminescent bays in the world. Three are located within Puerto Rico. Two of them you can get to from the main island and then one is located on Vieques Island. We booked ours excursion with Kayak Puerto Rico and had a wonderful time with them. Our guide Alvin gave us a brief tutorial on how to kayak and then we launched just after the sun went down. I wasn't sure how it would go since neither of us had ever kayaked. I do have to say we totally rocked it!

We kayaked two miles through mangroves to Las Croabas Lagoon,which is apart of the Las Cabezas De San Juan Nature Reserve. The lagoon is home to billions of bioluminescent dinoflagellates (microscopic plankton). When you wave your hand through the water in the lagoon at night you trigger the plankton to light up in the water. It looked like a million fireflies were dancing around my hand. The only word I could use to describe it is spectacular. I wanted to stay there for hours and play to see them light up and the disappear. Just like fairy dust, it was magical. The experience was one of a kind and the only thing I wish I could change was capturing it on camera but it's impossible. Our guide told us that even National Geographic could not capture these fascinating creatures with their cameras. It truly is an amazing phenomenon that mother nature has blessed us with.