Fenlason - Pineda: Honeymoon - Day 2

City of San Juan bus.

Parque Forestal La Marquesa tractor and trailers.

Parque Forestal La Marquesa TRAIN!

Hiking through the rainforest on our way to zip-line!

Strangely we walked DOWN into the rainforest canopy.

Sammy, our trainer and guide. He was HILARIOUS.

Rafa on the first line!

Rafa getting ready to rappel

Way too fast to get a clear shot.

945 feet long!

Big tree lizard.

They had an automatic camera set up and told us to "look left and smile."

Looking a whole lot like my grandfather in this photo.

I think that's blood.

Bus ride back to the resort and then off for an afternoon trip to Castillo San Cristobal - which was on my bucket list.

Castillo San Cristóbal, also known as Fort San Cristóbal, is a fort built by Spain to protect against land based attacks on the city of San Juan. It is part of San Juan National Historic Site and is also a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site.

It is the largest fortification built by the Spanish in the New World. When it was finished in 1783, it covered about 27 acres of land and basically wrapped around the city of San Juan. Entry to the city was sealed by San Cristóbal's double gates.

After close to one hundred years of relative peace in the area, part of the fortification (about a third) was demolished in 1897 to help ease the flow of traffic in and out of the walled city.

This fortress was built on a hill originally known as the Cerro de la Horca or the Cerro del Quemadero, which was changed to Cerro de San Cristóbal in celebration of the Spanish victories ejecting English and Dutch interlopers from the island of this name in the Lesser Antilles, then forming part of the insular territorial glacis of Puerto Rico.

The first sign we saw.

From another sign: "The ships drawn on the wall may be the work of a Spanish captain held here to await execution for mutiny."

De otro signo: "Los dibujos en la pared pueden ser la obra de un Capitán español, detenido aquí, en espera de su ejecución por amorinamiento."

Yo No Soy Marinero!

One of the MANY tunnels.

One of many doors . . .

. . . and many stairs.

Leading to more stairs . . .

. . . and more doors.

Great colonnade shot.

Beautiful honey browns and ochers.

The U.S. flag, the flog of Puerto Rico and "La Cruz de Borgoña" or Burgundy Cross.

LOOK at that blue and that green.

Colonnade from the other direction.

A LONG wait for a clear space for this silhouette shot of Rafa.

I'm sure that it's not a wishing well, but it reminded us of one. And there WERE coins in the bottom, though not the doubloons I was expecting.

When Christopher Columbus discovered the island in 1493, he named it San Juan Bautista (St. John the Baptist). The city later became known as Puerto Rico (meaning "Rich Port"). In the 1520s the city’s name changed to San Juan and the island to Puerto Rico by a confused cartographer. The name changes never got corrected. San Juan quickly became an important Spanish colony and by 1530 San Juan had a hospital, university, and even a library!

Looking over the old city (Viejo San Juan.) Old San Juan, properly known as San Juan Antiguo, is the oldest city in the U.S. and its territories. The Spanish settled San Juan in 1521. It replaced “Caparra,” Puerto Rico’s first settlement, as the island’s capital.

That "building" in the back is actually a cruise ship. The building in the front is The Antiguo Casino de Puerto Rico, a Beaux Arts style building dating from 1917. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977. During World War II, it was used as an officers' club by the United States Army. Shortly after the end of the war, in 1946 the building was transferred to the government of Puerto Rico, who turned it into the Escuela Libre de Música Ernesto Ramos Antonini. In 2010, management of the facility was turned to the Puerto Rico Convention District Authority and the building has become a popular venue for weddings, particularly destination weddings, quinceañeras and corporate events.

Soldier sleeping quarters.

BIG green lizard!

Many famous movie scenes were filmed in Old San Juan, including some from Dirty Dancing, Havana Nights, The Rum Diaries, Amistad, Pirates of the Caribbean: Strange Tides and Fast Five.

Old San Juan is also the filming site of the pilot episode of the the 1970s TV series, The Flying Nun!

Sentry box.

How's THAT for colorful buildings?

The neighborhood is famous for it's cobblestoned streets. Adoquine, a blue stone cast from furnace slag makes up the cobblestones. They were originally brought over as ballast on Spanish ships. Time and moisture have given them their coloring.

Coconut pigs!!

Some afternoon flora.

This one reminded me of cole slaw.

A quick swing through the park.

"The beach is one of the main attractions of Puerto Rico. The plaza of the window to the sea is a passive park that gives way to this view, re-establishes the relationship between the city and the sea and returns you to this important area of san juan a great vitality.

And it's time to EAT AGAIN!

How sexy is that?

Driftwood.

Cool granite chair.

Causeway.

Our hotel as seen from the beach.

Cool rocks on the waterfront.

Waves crashing.

And back to the hotel to relax before the evening's outing.

La Cordillera Nature Reserve (Reserva Natural La Cordillera) to see the bioluminescent bay (or bio bay)! Those are kayaks on the left, not bananas.

A bio bay is a body of water that contains millions of micro-organisms, called “dinoflagellates”, that glow in the dark for a second when agitated. It is a rare, natural wonder and there are only five bio bays in the world: Luminous Lagoon in Jamaica, Halong Bay in Vietnam, and THREE in Puerto Rico - Laguna Grande, La Parguera, and Mosquito Bay.

It is best seen on a dark night and we had about 10% illumination. We kayaked in the dark, using glow sticks to see the guide and other kayaks, on a canal through the mangrove trees to get to the lagoon. It is a fragile environment, that can be destroyed (as was the La Parguera bay) by excessive abuse from motor oil, sewerage, sunscreen and insect repellent.