Cloudbusting

Five of us girls were studying the entrance trail map when a park employee named Carlos came over and in a thick Puerto Rican accent passionately explained the journey ahead. There was something about a bathtub and how we should expect it to take two hours to climb the 3,445 feet to La Roca del Yunque. Or did he just say El Yunque, in the other direction? He told us to be on the lookout for little trees, which someone translated as “bonsai.” Not quite what Carlos had in mind, we later discovered. The guide also cautioned us not to go the wrong way or we’d have to climb a steep-grade service road (something Sarah, who’d done this hike before, had warned of as well).

He pointed to another part of the map. “When you get here, you hold out your hand and touch the clouds. Nowhere else you can do that.”


Then he asked us to cross the street, back toward the visitor’s center, with him. When we resisted, he insisted. “Please! Ladies! I am trying to show you about this culture.” Then he pointed to an ancient, long abandoned brick tower, Mt. Britton, way up the mountain. “When you get there, you turn and you wave to me, OK?”

A few things to know should you decide to go hiking in a tropical rainforest. Be prepared to get wet, if not from rain than definitely from perspiration. Wear supportive shoes with excellent traction because paths are strewn with slick rocks, crumbling concrete and mud. Don’t look down if you suffer from vertigo or someone starts wondering aloud how far you’d fall before you’re impaled.


What surprised me most: the place wasn’t that fragrant. We also didn’t hear birds once we got above a certain elevation despite a still-thick canopy of dew-drenched palms, ferns and exotic looking trees. But that was okay since we had the distinct call of tiny coqui tree frogs to fill the aural void.


By the time we reached the top, just about two hours as Carlos had predicted, I was temporarily spent. So, unfortunately, were the batteries in my digital camera once we hit the dwarf forest, so named because the constant winds stunt plant growth.


It wasn’t but a few minutes before we soldiered on to the next high point, La Roca del Yunque, a unique rock formation that juts out from the mountaintop. Despite the “easy” label at the trail entrance, it was anything but thanks to brush overgrowth and sheer rock that proved difficult for my short legs. Once there, though, we sighed and then sank our teeth into turkey sandwiches and green apples we’d carried up with us. Clouds swirled all around us and every once in awhile they’d part just long enough for us to get a glimpse of the rest of the island below.



Our next stop was Mt. Britton, by way of that steep service road. Our calves and quads and, for some, hips and knees and feet, were starting to protest, but by then the hike had, as all good hikes do, begun the transference from physical to spiritual. At least for me it did. By the time we’d climbed up the winding stairwell inside Mt. Britton and waved to Carlos, I realized I’d shed a lot of undetectable baggage along those moss-riddled, mud-soaked trails.

Knowing how clumsily I’d negotiated each soggy step on the way up, I was fearful of a major misstep on the way down. And then I found myself leading the group with assurance. And then I was suddenly alone while the others stopped to talk to other hikers. I stopped too, to memorize the coqui frog’s unique melody and to take a personal inventory. I ached everywhere, yet I ached no more.

Once level with the parking lot, I was able to buy new batteries before we began another descent along a much more popular footpath to a spectacular waterfall called La Mina.

We pulled off our socks and shoes and held our feet in spa-like, cool water.


We eventually decided it was time to climb again, this time to our car, six hours after we’d first hit the trails. I was in the women’s restroom, wiping my hands and reading about a rabid mongoose warning, when I heard a couple just outside the building. By late afternoon, the place was teeming with tourists.

“Carlos! Carlos! We made it!”

They chatted elatedly about their experiences on the climb, and Carlos seemed genuinely eager to listen, even if he’d heard similar stories for many, many years.

As I walked by them, I heard him tell the couple: “This place, it is part of me and now it is part of you. You can leave the mountain, but the mountain will not leave you.”

This time, I understood him perfectly.