The Mountains

PWe ended 2013 and started 2014 at La Concha casino in Condado, San Juan, Puerto Rico.

We left San Juan at 10:30 am January 1, 2014. After Doing some site seeing We arrived at our mountain retreat later in the afternoon to what I would call paradise. The lush vegetation was amazing. 

Our wonderful hostess Marlene greated us and introduced us to the cabin and the area. We also met Marlene's family. 

I am a happy camper we have a grill.

So it was Steak, baked potatoes and grilled veggies for dinner. Of course a nice bottle of red wine to compliment this excellent meal. Being in the mountains is always so relaxing. We fell asleep at 9:00. It rained hard throughout the night. We woke up to fog covered hills which eventually gave way to bright sunshine and a crystal clear sky. We watched the horse trainer Ricardo for while.

  

Then after our morning coffee

we headed down the road for a beautiful morning walk. 

We decided after our walk to explore in the car. A beautiful drive on a narrow mountain roads brought us to the small town of Jayuya. This is one of the oldest and most indigenous towns in Puerto Rico. We parked and walked around for about 30 minutes to check out some of the sites.  We then headed a bit down the road for a typical Puerto Rican lunch of fried food. After lunch we headed down some stairs to view some Taino Indian petroglyphs. 

During our drive we came across this sign down a winding road. 

At night we relaxed on our porch with the owner Marlene and had a wonderful evening of conversation with wine and cheese.   

On Friday morning we decided to explore some of the caves in the area. The first stop was a cave called La Ventana (the window). This was actually quite amazing. Here is a view from the mouth of the cave. 

This was a short stop. We then drove to the caverns about 45 minutes down the road. The picture on the right is an upside down tree growing from a stalactite.  

Tonight we decided to have dinner at the hotel across the street and it was fresh and wonderful. Tomorrow we will be leaving the mountains and are a little sad because Marlene was such a wonderful host we will truly miss her and her dogs Bianca and Yoyo. Back to the beach.