We arrived in San Juan a little before 10am. We took the shuttle to the car rental agency and began our adventure to El Yunque.  It takes about 30 minutes to drive there from the airport without traffic.  I was excited to finally see a place that I used to teach in my Spanish classes. 

You would never know that you are headed to a National Forest from the roads that we drove to get there. They were two way roads, but very narrow.  We were going to stop at the visitor center, but there was a fee of $8 a person just to go there.  I found that very strange.  We didn’t really need any information so we just continued on into the park. 

You know you have entered the National Forest because there is a gate.  Apparently, when there are too many people in the park, they close the gate!  I thought there were too many people in the park when we drove around since there was really no parking at any of the stopping points.  

The first viewing area is of La Coca Falls.  You can clearly see the falls from the road and if it is not filled with people on the sidewalk, you could take a picture of it.  There is a small parking lot on the left above the falls and some parking on the road, but no open spaces when we drove through.  I did not take a picture because there were too many people on the sidewalk and I was not terribly impressed with the falls, to be honest. 

The next parking area is at Yokahu Tower.  At this parking lot, the woman waved us by and said lot full before we even slowed down. We drove a little further and saw parking on the side of the road.  We walked down to the tower.  

We climbed the tower (it had a few less than 100 steps). The views from the windows on the way up were lovely and the view from the top was amazing.  You could see all the way to the ocean.  If it had not have been so hot, I would have stayed staring at the views for much longer.  

We walked up the hill back to the car and discovered we had a ticket for $150! There was no sign saying no parking where we were parked.  It was at the end of the gravel area (which indicated parking spots).  We saw a A LOT of cars getting tickets. There were at least two police cars stopping and giving tickets during our drive around the forest. The website said the police are working to help control traffic and parking and I guess the way to do it is to give super high parking tickets. 

We continued our drive and stopped at the Baño Grande and Baño de Oro.  It was also the spot to hike the Mina Trail to Mina Falls, but the trail was closed.  My husband had been to those falls years ago and was hoping to go again.  Instead we hiked up to the Baño and took some nice pictures.  There is also a picnic area and bathrooms at this stop. We sat and waited in the parking lot for someone to leave so we didn’t worry about a parking ticket when we were there. 

The drive up to the trails to El Yunque Peak and Mt. Britton.  The loop road to Mt. Britton was packed with cars.  I couldn’t believe how many people were stopped there to climb.  There were MANY people illegally parked. We actually stopped to tell one man about our ticket so he would not get one too because the police car was right behind us.  I felt a little better that we could help someone out. We looked online after and found a lot of people get parking tickets there.  

The views in El Yunque reminded me a lot of our drives in Maui, Hawaii.  The road was under construction in quite a few areas and there were at least two points in which we had to stop for a one way road and one in which we had to stop because it was too narrow for two cars to fit.  If you easily get car sick, I would not suggest being a passenger on this drive.  I had to close my eyes on the way back to quell my nausea.