Day 4: Tragedy in the tropics...

I want to cry right now. I don't know how this happened, but it looks like my memory card got corrupted, and I lost basically all of my pictures from yesterday and the day before…I only have the last 9 pictures I took. I saw all of them on my camera yesterday afternoon, but last night when I went to blog - nothing. I'm going to switch cards today, and just pray that I can find a way to recover the files or something when I get back. This sucks. A lot.

In other news… Yesterday, Fed and I had an intense expedition through a rainforest in San Cristobal Canyon, which is just outside the city of Baranquitos, which is in the North-Central region of Puerto Rico. From San Juan, we had to drive almost 100 kilometers, all of really windy roads. Starting at about 6:30 am. But the scenery was beautiful. And even though it seemed like the roads were designed by a toddler with a crayon, the drive was stunning. Everything was SO green and fresh and alive!

A beautiful drive toward through a rainforest

We met our tour guides at a Burger King to sign waivers (not sketchy at all), after which they hopped in our car to lead us into the wilderness (still not sketchy at all). But Gabriel and some other guy who didn't speak any English were great, and they took us into the rainforest to hike and rappel. I can't even describe how gorgeous everything is. I know I keep saying everything is beautiful, but it's only because I've never seen anywhere like Puerto Rico, and I don't have the words to do it justice. The scenery was beautiful, and we saw this huge spider! Here are basically the only pictures I still have…

The rainforest in San Cristobal Canyon was gorgeous!

I think this is called a yellow block spider, and it's about 3" or 4" in diameter. Fortunately, Puerto Rico doesn't have any native species of animals that are poisonous.

But let's not kid ourselves into thinking nature was the highlight of yesterday. Hardly. Fed and I rappelled down the face of a rock wall into the most fresh, crisp, cool, refreshing water on the planet - from a waterfall less than 100 feet away. In fact, we had to swim under the waterfall, and climb through the rocks that make basically a cave in the waterfall to get back to the top. SO awesome! Rappelling was sweet, the water was perfect, and climbing the waterfall was amazing. Gabriel took pictures of us rappelling; hopefully I can recover them, because we'll never really be able to recreate that...

And it doesn't end there. Yesterday, I became a man. Because I jumped 75 feet from the top of the rocky canyon walls into the fresh stream 75 feet below. Twice! Did I mention I had to fall for SEVENTY-FIVE FEET?? I had so much adrenaline before jumping, and falling takes FOREVER! But it's such a rush. (The tour guides showed me how and where to jump, and the water below is over 80 ft deep, so no need to worry, Mom.) After 75 feet of freefall, I think I probably hit terminal velocity, and I didn't quite comprehend at the time how important it is to have your feet hit the water directly below your butt to take most of the impact. Basically I did a butt-flop at like 723889 mph, and now my butt is SO sore! haha But seriously though, I mean it's really really sore. Yet still totally worth it. Fed got pictures of my jumping yesterday, but now I have nothing to prove how much of a b@d@$$ I was yesterday...These are the pictures I am most sad to have lost, because I can never redo this. =(

Fed and I built up quite an appetite after all this strenuous activity (it was very tiring), so we went to a local restaurant in Baranquitos per a recommendation from our tour guide Gabriel. La Vaca was very delicious, but ordering was a bit difficult because our waitress spoke only spanish. We told her right away that our spanish was not great, and asked her to please speak slowly. To which she responded with a furious maelstrom of spanish. Fed and I latched onto the few words we understood for dear life, and communicated solely based on about 20% of what our waitress told us. But everything worked out, because we got to eat this:

I think we ordered churasco de tejaro, but whatever it's called, it was good.

All of this was an incredible experience, and was certainly the highlight of the day. The night consisted of driving around aimlessly trying to find a place with wireless internet, but getting lost over and over, and accidentally paying for toll roads because we don't ever know where we're going or how to get there, and the drivers don't make it easy to get around. So we've explored quite a bit of Puerto Rico's freeways. We went back to Sofo in Old San Juan again last night. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go back a couple posts to find out about this fun wine and food festival. last night, there were even more booths, food carts, and live music than last time. Salsa is huge here, and people love just dancing in the streets. It's so much fun to watch, but we want to try to actually dance at some point too.

We slept in today, and we'll spend the early afternoon at the black sands beach, and the later afternoon at some outlet stores. Last night was our last night in San Juan for a while; tonight we're moving to Rincon for 4 nights. Rincon is on the West coast, and is a big surfing town. And btw, after only a few days, our spanish is improving quickly, to the point that Fed and I can communicate with each other, and with locals a bit better. It's a work in progress, but we're getting better. =)

I wish more than anything I could post more pictures. If you pray, please pray that I can somehow get these pictures back. They were once-in-a-lifetime snapshots…dang.