It was a warm day, but cool and very humid inside the forest. Among the plants in the forest are some that we grow as houseplants, but they are found naturally there, and grow so much larger.
There are many small animals--insects, lizards, bats, birds, tree frogs (coquis)--in the rain forest, but not large animals. There are only four species of snakes in the rainforest, but none of them are dangerous.
It was awesome to be inside the forest, to experience the sounds of nature, the greenery, the immense size of some trees.
Next we visited the beach at Luquillo. The warm Caribbean water is clear, and the bay we were in was very gentle. We could see the tops of some of the mountains of El Yunque. To think, one of the wonders of the world was right there!
While we were at the beach, three of us asked a woman to take our picture. The woman was from New York. She had been born in the states, and her accent was definitely there! She was here in Puerto Rico to help her father, who was sick, but she explained that he was of a generation that didn't want to accept help, so he'd told her to go have fun. She was having fun watching her son, who did not speak Spanish, try to communicate with a boy from Puerto Rico who spoke no English. We had learned in class that children like her son often did not learn Spanish, but have only English as a language, rather than being bilingual. The language is often not passed on to the next generation when they live on the mainland.
The four Spanish speaking teachers in our group are having a somewhat difficult time understanding some of the spoken words. The pronunciation is causing some confusion, but I'm sure they will be experts soon!
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