A Secret Lagoon and Moonlight Kayaking

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

The Rainforest

Loquillo Beach

Yokahu Kayaking at the Fajardo Biobay

On the property of the Rainforest Inn, there is an obscure jungle trail that leads you to a private waterfall and swimming hole.  We got lost and injured (I still have a small remnant of the goose egg on my head from a jungle rock that totally took me out) and almost just gave up and turned back because it was hard to find, but we finally made it to the secret lagoon.  It was delightful!  We spent an hour or two jumping off rocks and cooling off in the perfect-temperature-water.

Careful--you might need some sunglasses while viewing these pictures.  

I am a white, white girl.

Getting there made us so hot and sweaty, that I rinsed my shirt in the river and set it on a rock to dry.  Unfortunately, we were in a jungle, not a desert and rock drying was less effective than I'm used to.  But Arthur rigged this ingenious drying system for me so it was almost dry by the time we started back.  Nice right? We could totally be on one of those survivor reality shows.

Later that day we went for a walk around the Loquillo beach area, and saw a huge iguana--it was a good 3-4 ft long including his tail.  We also ate at a fun tiny restaurant called "La Estacion" because it is an old gas station that they converted into a restaurant.  Tiny but pretty delicious.  The dish you have to try if you're ever in Puerto Rico is Mofongo.  There are all different variations on this plantain-based food and La Estacion had some really good Mofongo.

That night we did something awesome, that I have no pictures of except this huge crab we saw walking in the parking lot that night.  He was as big as a softball.  

But I digress.  That night we had booked an ocean kayaking adventure to the Bioluminescent Bay in Fajardo.   There are only 5 places in the world where you can see this natural phenomenon and 3 of them are in Puerto Rico.  In these places, the conditions are just right for a certain microorganism called dinoflagellates to flourish.  All day long, they collect sunlight, and at night, if the water is agitated, they glow a bluish color. It is AMAZING!  Arthur said it reminded him of Avatar (if you've ever seen that movie and you remember the part at night when the jungle creatures start glowing).   

To protect the luminescent micro-organisms that live in the bay, only kayaks are allowed into the bay.  There are only  2 motorized boats that are authorized to go in and it's only to bring handicapped people.  But for everyone else, if you want to see it, you've gotta kayak in.  This was my first kayaking experience.  I was really worried about kayaking in the ocean in the dark and especially about falling out of my kayak into the water.  But it turned out that nobody fell out, even though clearly, most of us were amateurs.   

We used a company called Yokahu and the tour guides were great.  Funny, knowledgable and told us the only dangerous things in the water that we'd be traversing that night were the "enemy kayakers" from the other tour companies.  They said should we encounter them, just row up next to them and whack 'em with our paddles.  

In order to get to the bay, you first have to kayak through a mangrove channel. That was a little crazy.  If you ever go--LOAD UP on insect repellant.  Oh my goodness, I was devoured.  It's dark in there because the trees block out most of the moonlight.  So you just follow the glow stick on the back of the kayak in front of you, and hope they don't crash, because you'll probably crash into them if they do.  (yes, that happened a few times.)  Occasionally, the guides would yell out to turn a certain way so you don't crash into the trees.  Or they would make creepy jungle noises to be funny.  It was pretty entertaining watching people figuring out how to steer their kayaks.  Especially the ladies who'd had a couple drinks before coming on the tour.

Arthur and I were sharing a kayak and since Arthur is good at everything he does, and not to brag, but I think I caught onto the whole kayaking thing pretty quickly, we made a pretty good team.  By the time we got out into the bay, we were ready to break away from the group and go FAST!  After they gathered us together and told us all about the bay and the dinoflagellates, they let us wander around the bay for awhile on our own.  So Arthur and I took off going as fast as we could, while the water around our kayak glowed blue.  When we got further away from the group, our paddles would frighten the fish in the water and we could see blue glowing streaks where they darted away from our kayak.  Sometimes we would stumble into a big cluster of fish and the blue streaks would scatter everywhere.  It was so. cool. and definitely a big highlight of the trip.  Pictures wouldn't do it justice and words can't really describe it either.  Just one of those once-in-a-lifetime things that you gotta do if you're ever in Puerto Rico.