We drove from Fajardo to El Yunque and got there mid morning.  We stopped at the main visitor center and watched the educational movie.  We watched half of it in English and half in Spanish.

we had decided that we would walk to the waterfall, Cascada La Mina,  and walk no further up the trail unless we had a change of heart.  We drove to the nearest starting point and then started the .8 of a mile uphill one way walk.  The walk, while not being a stroll in the park, was not that hard.  There were many steep trails and steep steps along the way.  There were also birds, frogs chirping ko kee, many interesting plants and trees, informational signs, friendly people passing us and going the other way, and who knows what else.  Oh, at one stage there was a 'lizard' about 8" long who climbed about three steps right along with me.  One thing there was not, was rain.  It was a nice dry sunny day and even cool in the forest.

After a while we came to La Mina.  It is a nice, probably 30 or so feet high.  As you will see in the pictures below, many people went into the pool at the base of the falls climbing over the slippery rocks to get there.  I am not sure what the temperature of the water was, but it was cool and refreshing.  Kay and Marlene talked to several people at the waterfall, including one woman who worked at Temple University.  Richard was unusually quiet.  We must have spent well over an hour at the falls.

We debated maybe, 30 seconds or so, if we should walk the .9 of a mile up the trail to the road then walk the 1.7 miles back to the car.  It is not too surprising that we walked back along the trail to our waiting car.

Our map was unclear if the road continued all the way through the park and then continued south into the center of the island.  Since it was unclear, we had to find out.  We drove to the mountain top, then started down the other side.  Suddenly there were cars parked along both sides of the road.  We came around a curve and the road stopped.  We did find out that the road did not go through the park!!  What to do, backup 1/4 mile between closely parked cars or try to turn around.  There was a little gap between a couple cars, so after maybe 15 minutes I managed to turn the car around and head back down the hill to the park entrance.

Richard sitting on a rock in the pool.	Marlene and Kay sitting by the La Mina pool.
He only went in waist deep, he likes warmer water for submersion.	Yes, both did go into the pool and enjoyed the cool water.
Kathleen on the trail.	Richard at the visitor center information desk.
If you look closely, you can see Marlene walking on ahead.

We then headed back to the Fajardo Inn well satisfied with the visit.  If we were going to spend another day here we would have enjoyed even more trails.  We feel that if we were only going to walk one trail, we picked the best one.
 

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Last revised: 17 July 2002