Casa Grande Puerto RIco

For the second stage of our vacation in Puerto Rico we headed up to the mountains for a respite from the heat and we thought the sun.  In fact apart from the torrential downpour when we arrived the rest of our time in the rain forest was remarkably dry.

Rain forest living up to it's name

We were staying at Casa Grande which is an old coffee plantation up in the mountains close to Utuado. They call themselves a retreat and it certainly is.  There are no radios, televisions or phones, but there is internet in the main building.  As soon as we arrived I signed up for a reflexology foot message. Jennifer took me to hut away from the main buildings.  Often when you go to a spa they pipe in the soothing noises like waves crashing on a beach or a rain forest, well here the noise of the rain forest noises came free, it was uterley peaceful and relaxing.

Hammock on deck of cabin

The cabins were scattered around the property and each one had a deck with a couple of chairs and a hammock.  I spent a very peaceful couple of hours reading in this one.  There was also a swimming pool set in the grounds.

It was beautiful to go for a swim surrounded by all this natural beauty, and even though we were up in the mountains it stayed quite warm and certainly swimmable weather even for me.

The following morning dawned with a clear sky and mist hanging on the mountains it was quite breathtaking.

An early morning bird

We had breakfast on the deck of the old coffee plantation house, again very peaceful the only thing that would have been better was a cup of coffee on our deck before that, but there was no coffee maker in the room.

Breakfast on the deck

There were little lizards running around all over, early in the morning when I guess they had not really warmed up yet you could get quite close.  They were very cute.

But remarkably there were no bugs at all we were prepared with deep woods off, but we brought it neadlessly.  The evenings were magical with all the stars and the myriad frogs which made quite a chorus to fall a sleep to.

If I have uploaded this video properly you should be able to hear all those frogs.

I am really glad we took the time to go up in to the mountains, we managed to see a very different part of Puerto Rico and gave my pale northern skin a bit of a rest.