Adventures in Puerto Rico: The Rainforest Part II

Our Puerto Rico Adventure ends here. You may be blowing a big sigh of relief, tired of hearing about Puerto Rico (remember, I'm not necissarily writing this for you and you don't have to read it. It's your choice) but for me it's sad because it means that Puerto Rico (something I've been dreaming about and talking about for the last six months) is gone and done, a chapter closed. I'll just have to come up with something else to look forward to during the frozen months ahead.

The morning after the wedding of all weddings, we loaded up early and made the two hour drive back across Puerto Rico to drop Alec off at the airport with my parents. They were flying home that day, taking Alec with them! Woohoo! I hear he did pretty well on all the flights and enjoyed being passed back and forth from one family member to the next. We got to stay for an extra day to do whatever our hearts desired. We decided that though we loved the beach, the Rainforest was our magical place, so we spent most of the day there! Erin and Ryan came along, taking lots of pictures for us. The happily married couple...

Look at that beautiful waterfall! We climbed up on the slick rocks so we were able to get really close. The water flow was much heavier this time since it had been raining all morning.
We were mesmerized.... until Lyssa kicked Nick in the groin. Poor guy! Lyssa is just the right length now that Nick can't really use the Baby Bjorn anymore. Sigh...
We climbed up this big look out tower and saw some of the many beauties that the Rainforest has to offer. It looked like something out of a movie, and so did Erin and Ryan!

As much as we love our little Alec, we were also kind of excited to only be toting around one child for the day. She was excited to be held and treated like an only child all day. :-)

Beautiful soul-fulfilling views...

With our Jeep we really felt like we were doing the Rainforest bit. Too bad it got dented in a hit and run (note the front bumper) and now we're dealing with insurance claims... blahhhh.

We decided to do the long hike to the really big waterfall (where Ryan fell and sliced up his face), and took time to enjoy all the amazing things growing everywhere...

Ryan wanted to be Tarzan...

Look at those roots shooting out of the tree! They constantly shoot out trying to anchor themselves for the storms that undoubtedly will come.

I'm sure I could get really metaphorical here, but I'll spare you... this time.

And here is the big beautiful waterfall! The rocks were really slick, making it a little scary climbing down while carrying Lyssa, but it was worth it.

This is one of the little offshoot waterfalls we passed on our way to the big waterfall.

It's it beautiful?

Erin was a dear and held Lyssa for us so we could get a cute couple shot.

Looking around it felt like paradise.

We left Erin and Ryan at this point, wanting to hike further on.

It started raining on us as it was a rainforest an all.

Lyssa really enjoyed all the different beautiful leaves, grasses and flowers, not to mention the one on one attention.

When Lyssa got bored she would play peek a boo with other hikers.

Funny, charming little girl.

I love this picture for many reasons. I love it because you can see some of Lyssa's fabulous humidity curls. I love it because I'm wearing my mom's awesome dollar store sunglasses since the babies broke my favorite Target pair the first day we were there. I love it because my mom has a similar picture to this of me when I was younger. I don't love my big knee caps, but that's an entirely different post in and of itself.

At a certain point we realized that with Erin and Ryan gone we no longer had the GPS to tell us where to go on the crazy streets of San Juan so we wanted to get to our hotel in daylight. Then we stopped at an outlet mall and got caught up at the Gap Outlet: Great Deals, Bad on Time. We did not make it to our hotel in daylight, and therefore never saw it in daylight. What we did see of the Coral Princess Inn was BEAUTIFUL though! We went out searching for authentic beans and rice for dinner, and stumbled upon this Christmas tree and said "That looks out of place. Oh yeah. It is Christmas, isn't it?" Had to take a picture.

We went to a shady looking corner convenience store for dinner, based off our hotel managers recommendations. We felt brave buying the food, but not brave enough to eat it inside, so we took out food to go and headed back to the hotel.

Lyssa was totally pumped for dinner, and happy to be free from the Baby Bjorn and the carseat. I also thought the original artwork hanging up around the hotel was cool. Sadly, moments after this picture was taken Lyssa made a mad crawling dash off the bed, landing smack face first on the marble tiled floor. Ouch! Nick got a nasty bruise on his need in his efforts to catch her. Needless to say, she screamed hard for about twenty minutes, ate beans and rice with us and passed out in her bed.

The next morning Lyssa woke us up around 5:30 and we were very grateful. The alarm clock didn't go off! We rushed out the door, rushed to the rental car return, rushed to airport, rush rush rushed everywhere. In reality we should have missed our flight, but we kept running into one kind Puerto Rican after another. Everyone was so helpful and hospitable. We appreciated making our flight, but did not appreciate the five hour layover in Miami. Yuck. Lyssa enjoyed listening to Nick's Ipod while I took a nap. :-)

From Miami we flew to Dallas, and then from Dallas to Salt Lake City. It was quite the climate change. When we left San Juan at 5:30 AM it was already a steamy 80 degrees outside. When we arrived in Salt Lake it was a balmy 15 degrees. I was freezing in my flip flops and light cotton t-shirt. As soon as we got our luggage from baggage claim I busted that bag open and put on a couple shirts and sweaters, dirty sock and my running shoes. We had been traveling for something like 15 or 16 hours on very little sleep. We crashed on my parents bed and slept soundly until Alec woke up the next morning, so happy to have his family back again, ready for Christmas!