San Juan
San Juan is the capital of Puerto Rico. Christopher Columbus landed on the island in 1493, named it San Juan Batita. In 1508, Juan Ponce de León became the first governor of the island and named it City Of Puerto Rico however sometime in the 1520's, it became San Juan. There are several historical buildings including Fort San Felipe del Morro and Fort San Cristóbal.
San Juan is the largest processing center of the island, it has facilities for petroleum, sugar refining, brewing and distilling and produces cement, pharmaceuticals, metal products clothing and tobacco.
Rainforest El Yunque is a forest located in the Northeastern of Puerto Rico. It's the only tropical rain forest in the United States National Forest System. It is 28,000 acres. The forest contains rare wildlife including the Puerto Rican Parrot. The rainforest gets up to 240 inches of water a year. It has great foilage, waterfalls and rivers within the rainforest. Inside the rainforest, there hundreds of species of trees, orchids, plants and animals. Coqui frogs are very popular.
Our cruise arrived in the port and we headed to our tour which is at 7:30am. We head to the tour bus. My tour guide was amazing, he was quite old but he knew what he was talking about, he was funny, made everyone laugh and knew lots of information about the island and the rainforest. It took about 40 minutes to arrive at the rainforest and not once did the tour guide stop talking - it was lovely to hear all about the island and the history of it. Once in the rainforest, we headed through the hills, up to look at a waterfall. It was beautiful. After a few pictures, we stopped at a river/stream where there were big rocks and I climbed all over them trying to get some great photos. We then headed to the visitor centre, where there was information about the rainforest, flowers to look at and trails to hike.
We were on the tour from 7:30am - 12:30. We had to be back on the boat for 1:00pm so unfortunately we didn't have time to visit anything else. I would love to have visited the shopping but also the forts but we just ran out of time. If I ever have the opportunity to head back to San Juan, I will have to visit the other tourist places.
I would definitely recommend going on a rainforest tour in San Juan. It was an amazing forest to see.
Have you ever visited San Juan? What did you see? Are there any other places you would recommend I visit? I would love to hear all about them.
xxx
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