Tanama River Hiking and Caves

On this day we woke up early.. very early. It was still dark out when we got into our rental car. We had an almost two hour drive ahead of us, into the central mountainous region for PR to a town called Utuado. 

But first sustenance and giant cups of coffee. Trying a panaderia (bakery) was something I had wanted to do, especially to try their famous guava pastries.. So we went to Panaderia Espana.

There was so much powdered sugar on everything.. H got a croissant with custard, D got a sugar donut and M and I shared a pastelillos de guayaba (guava pastry) and then we were off. 

The road was mostly okay but the last 30 minutes or so became harrowing. We were driving on a winding uphill type road that should have been one way but was not.. way too many close calls on hairpin turns.. any residual sleep we had in our eyes was gone. Turned out we had missed a turn somewhere along the way and GPS decided to take us through some back roads.  

We reached our destination around 8:30 am. We had signed up for a tour with Batey Adventures. We had chosen the River Caving Tour. And while it mentioned hiking and kayaking and caves I only had a vague idea of what to expect and boy did I not expect what we just spent the next five hours doing. 

Our amazing guide explained a bit of what to expect and then we suited up. Head lamp and all. Once we were ready we followed him to the starting point, parked and headed into the juggle.

We walked along the Tanama River. The things we saw along the way..

The Puerto Rican tody, locally known in Spanish as San Pedrito (little Saint Peter).

Urera baccifera, a variety of stinging nettle..beware!

Breadfruit

Bananas

June Plum

We crossed a suspension bridge and headed down to the river and into our kayaks.

Our guide signaled us to turn on our headlamps as we entered Portillo, the pitch dark 1000 feet long cave. 

Inside which resided many bats.. some even flew overhead.. Edwin warned us all not to scream.. they really never came that close to us.. but if we screamed they would all fly and that would not be good. 

On the other side was a lovely stream and rocks.

Edwin showed us how to gather water from a small rivulet of water. It was so clean it sparkled. 

We reboarded our kayaks and headed out of the cave and back to our starting point. Edwin put away our kayaks and we continued our trek. Our guide confirmed we were ready as the real adventure was going to begin.. we all nodded.

I mean.. it was so freakin beautiful. We were the only ones there.. we got fully wet..there was a lot of icy cold water plunges. M and H even jumped off some rocks.. It was so out of our comfort zone.. and pretty exhilarating, the knowing that we were capable of doing this.

Then we arrived at Cueva del Arco, a large natural arch in Puerto Rico carved by the Tanama River. It is the largest of six natural bridges in the area. 

Edwin even showed H how to catch crawfish.

We took a very steep and slippery path back to our car.. along the way we spotted cacao tree and sampled some guama.

Once we got back to our car we were exhausted and ravenous.. once we changed we found a place that served these incredible burgers no one cared about taking a picture of and we headed back to Isla Verde.

The next day we spent some time relaxing on the beach and by the pool before heading to the airport..

Unfortunately due to the government shut down our non stop flight became one with a layover. Our connecting flight got cancelled and we found out we were going to be stuck in DC till the next day. We made some executive decisions and decided to cancel the second leg of our flight and rented a car instead. Thank God we were only a few hours from home. But we had not planned on a late night drive and really struggled to stay awake.. I'm just happy we got back home.

So not the relaxing end we had planned but when you have a crazy person in charge of your country what else can you expect? 

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