Feb. 14 - Jayuya, PR

“Those who follow the crowd usually get lost in it.”  —Rick Watson

We traveled east out of Jayuya today to explore some popular tourist places and to find some pretty waterfalls. Our first stop was at La Piedra Escrita (the written stone). This beautiful park offers wonderful views of the mountains and a great place to swim in the tranquil water. But it's best known for the large granite boulder that is covered in pictographs. The site was added to the United States National Register of Historic Places in 2003 due to its importance as a prime example of prehistoric rock art in Puerto Rico. 

La Piedra Escrita

Taino Symbols and means.

Some of the symbols on the rock at La Piedra Escrita.

We have found that the first of the week isn't a good time to travel in this area. Most of the restaurants are closed and so are a lot of the popular places to visit. We knew that the Hacienda San Pedro coffee plantation wouldn't be giving tours but we thought we'd be able to visit the café and gift shop, but no, they were closed. So our next stop was the El Cemi Museum. 

The museum is small, but nice. It has pieces of pottery, some tools and other artifacts from daily Taino life. The museum's cemi shape was chosen to represent the Tres Picachos Mountain range. A cemi is a deity, ancestor or spirit.  

After our bit of education in the history of the Taino people we went in search of waterfalls. The first one we found was the Doña Juana Waterfall. It's located right by the road, so we didn't have to do any hiking to find it. The falls consist of three falls and were very impressive for a roadside falls. Our next stop was the highlight of the day. Cascada Las Delicias (Delights Waterfall). We could see it from the road and it was a series of three falls also. Climbing up the trail to the top fall treated us to a tropical paradise. The water was beautiful and the lush vegetation made us feel like we had left the busy world behind and were lost in the jungle. Our third waterfall was Charco El Morón. The surrounding area was pretty, but the waterfall was a bust...at least for us, because we couldn't even get to it. We enjoyed a morning of exploring and returned to Patria Mia for a late lunch. We got back to the house just as the rain began to fall. We spent the afternoon relaxing, napping, reading and working on the blog. 

Doña Juana Waterfall

Walking up to Cascada Las Delicias from the road.

This is the middle falls.

The upper falls.

Looking down from the middle falls.

The scenery here was a bit different. It was in a nice valley, the water was pretty but we couldn't get much further than this towards the falls.

Since nothing was open for dinner we decided to cook in again this evening at the house. The kitchen was very basic, only two burners, so the first night we had seasoned rice and meatballs and the second night we had spaghetti. We'll have a nice Valentine's dinner once we get to Old San Juan.