Day 2- San Juan

On Sunday we opted for a change of scenery, rented a car and drove out to the rainforest. It was amazing how much the landscape could change over quite short distances. It was so lush and so green! Beautiful!

This is the view out of a look out tower in the middle of the rainforest. There was so much moisture in the air~ and here you can see the clouds coming down on the mountain top.

From that same look out tower you can see an isolated house built up off the ground on the bottom right of the picture and San Juan on the shore in the upper left corner. Like I said~ not much distance between the two, but a dramatic change in landscape.
We went on a hike down to a waterfall. At the start of the hike was this drinking fountain. I just like how they tried to make it look more natural.
All along the way there were small open air buildings. It took us a while to figure out what they were for~ there are very sudden down pours and they are meant to provide shelter during the rain. (We didn't experience it on this hike, but later in the week we got a taste of it!)
There was such a large variety of foliage! These trees were one of my favorites! The branches were soooo... thin and LONG. They were one of the tallest trees and their branches wove themselves all over the place~ it reminded me of an octopus! At some points you could see one of the branches but you couldn't see the tree anywhere because the branch had grown so far away from the trunk of the tree. It was bizarre! Here's one of the leaves from the tree above~ CRAZY!!!! They were the largest leaves I have ever seen! The stems were about 10-12 inches long. I carried one all the way out to bring it home to Shayden (she has been learning about leaves in her class right now and this would have been an AWESOME show and tell). After leaving the rainforest and driving for 10 minutes we got back out of the car and it was completely shrivelled up! It had so much moisture in it when we left the rainforest, and the air changed so much in that 10 minutes that it was dry as a bone and crumbled in your hands. At least I got a picture of it.

I was very thankful that this was the extent of "wildlife" that I encountered during the hike. I am not very keen of bugs/insects. So I was happy that this little lizard (about 4 inches from nose to tail) was all I saw!
The hike to the waterfall was beautiful. The water was FREEZING!!!! I don't know how these boys got in, I dipped my toes in and that was enough. Besides, who else would have taken the pictures of them in the water?!
Instead, I spent my time playing with the new filter I got for my camera and admiring the pedicure I got before leaving on vacation!

There were some gorgeous flowers! They ranged from very exotic and fragrant to inpatients! It was funny to see such a variety!

This was awesome! This guy was doing karaoke/ preaching from his car on the side of the road. He would sing a song (it's hard to see, but he's got a microphone in his hand) and then talk for a minute or so and then start singing again. I didn't understand one word of it, but it certainly was entertaining!
This was one of the buildings you could see from our hotel swimming pool. It caught my eye and it took me a while to figure out what it was that seemed off to me~ can you see it?! Almost every window in the building is different!
We spent most of the day in the rainforest. We did a little bit of shopping and had dinner, along with another gelato, before leaving to get on the boat. We took a taxi to the dock and as we were unloading our bags, paying the driver, getting the tags on our luggage, getting our passports and cruise documents out, we didn't notice that Korby's backpack didn't get taken out of the van! It only took us a second to realize, but the cab had already pulled out. The guy helping us with our luggage took off sprinting down the road and actually caught up with the cab! There wasn't anything irreplaceable in his bag, but needless to say that guy got a pretty good tip.

So begins our cruise.... We sailed on Royal Caribbean's Adventure of the Seas. There were about 3,100 passengers along with 1,500 staff! It was huge!!! We spent most of the night just walking around the boat, trying to get a bearings of where everything was, sitting in one of the 7 hot tubs and unpacking! It was a very full and very long day!