Two Flanes Man gets lost in El Yuncue....

...And I was on the verge of not making my flight when Nick, who awoke from his mid-day nap in the forest to the sound of my yelling, tracked me down and rescued me from certain death to lead me back to the research post. Let me just say that for as beautiful as El Yunque is, IF you manage to lose the trail and wander off the grid, that forest is a bitch! And the spider webs, gack. There are no doubt a lot of seriously pissed off spiders in the Caribbean National Forest right now that want to kick the ass of the humongous, white, sweat-drenched curse hurler that dragged their lairs off on his shirt/pants/face/hands/camera.

That aside, Puerto Rico was a hoot. Old San Juan one day to see El Morro. It's an impressive fort, with an equally impressive view. I managed to find what I thought was a reasonable prospect to take my photo. He had a nice camera, but I'm willing to bet that if you could look at his character sheet, you'd find that he rolled a 3 for his photography skill. As they make me look like a fat, toothless, wild haired derelict I won't be posting them. I also went to the beach that morning near Luquillo. Pics:







That night, we cooked dinner for the the girls (it was Valentine's day). After dinner we put our drinking shoes on and wandered down to a bar called "the lighthouse" where I drank one of these:

You mix the coconut water with the Whiskey of your choice, Cutty Sark in this case. It's pretty good, and it hydrates you as you drink, so that's nice. We played a game of stick so that I could know what it was like to lose on an island. Until then I had only lost on the mainland. Here's Nick beating me:


Then we danced. Two of the girls that Nick work's with came along and both of them were great dancers. Those of you that have either seen me or have had the misfortune of to find yourself dancing with me know that I'm not a great dancer. For Christ's sake, I sent Kathryn head long into a brick wall. In this case though, I did pretty well. By the second song I was starting to get it. By the 10th song I was starting to lose it. Salsa can be really fast, and that's cool, but I'm not in good enough shape to keep that pace up for too long. Thankfully I wasn't the only one sweating:




Day three: mufungo, mufungo, mufungo. It's basically like plantain mash mixed up with garlic and some other stuff. Soo Divine. Nick got me hooked on them at a place called Brisas el Berde which is located at the base of the hill that you climb to get to the outpost. I probably had 8 of those things in my short time on the island. I had a really good one near Fajardo in a restaurant that looks out over Playa de Seven Seas. A silly name, but a spectacular beach. It's not the sort of place that many tourists get to so you more or less have the place to yourself. A few pics:






I spent all day here, for obvious reasons. I swam out to a sort of coral/ sand bar sort of thing (which was a lot farther than I thought it was..) and got some Conch shells. The underside of the shell is a collage of pink's and yellow's and orange's that is really beautiful. So I grabbed up six of 'em, gave them to the kayakers I met out there to get them back to land and then shagged ass back to shore. After that I was ready for a beer, mmmm Medalla.

That night, my last, we climbed a tower near the outpost to watch the sun set and then went into Old San Juan to see what sort of trouble we could get into. I was told that there was a hotel that has a 10 piece band that plays Salsa nightly, but we couldn't find it. We found this guy sitting outside of a bar and decided this was the place. They had an 8 piece band that played for hours. We danced until they kicked us out. It was awesome. We got back around 3 and crashed so that we could be out in the field at 8:0o am the next morning, I got to see what this group was doing in the forest, a sort of census of all the trees to try and monitor their life patterns. It's pretty cool. I helped a little. A little while later, around noon, I set off for camp and promptly got lost in the tractless jungle wilds of El Yunque. Typical.

Pictures:

The ramshackle scaffolding that gets you to the view.

A killer trip. Thank you Nick for being such a gracious host. It was great to see you again. Hopefully there won't be a year and a half between our next meeting.

Tenga un viaje seguro, Cabron. Gracias otra vez.