In the morning, we ate the cheese with a loaf of pan de agua. Alas, the recipe sounded better than it was.
The main adventure this day was a drive through El Yunque National Forest (w):
...which is the only rain forest in the National Forest system. (Yes, Olympic in Washington is a rain forest, but that's a National Park, not a National Forest.)
Most of the Forest is only accessible to hikers, but there is one road, Highway 191, that starts at the northeast corner and winds its way into the heart of the park. I stopped along the way to take a picture of some representative vegetation:
I also took a picture of this flowering tree, which I had been seeing all week:
I looked it up later and found it was an African tulip tree. It's native to Africa, and unfortunately, is considered an invasive species everywhere else.
Other attractions along the way included La Coca Falls:
...and Yokahú Tower (w):
(The Wikipedia article has better pictures.)
"Yokahú," I learned later, is a variant spelling of Yucahu, the masculine spirit of fertility in the mythology of the Taino people, early indigenous inhabitants of Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands.
Of course, I climbed to the top of the tower (94 steps!), and took a couple of pictures of the view from the top:
We continued driving, until we came to a place where the road was blocked, so we turned around and went back the way we came. We stopped for lunch at a roadside stand, which was where I had the alcapurria and sorullo that I mentioned earlier. Just outside the park, we stopped at a gift shop, and on the way back to the resort we stopped for a snack at a panaderia. Later that evening, we went to a seafood restaurant for dinner. And that was it for the day.
Here's a map of our route through the park. The locations of the falls, the tower, and the roadside stand where we had lunch are marked, and the two red dots show the start and end points of the drive:
