(Please Note: Some visitors to this site have trouble viewing the links to other pages on our site. If you experience this problem, you can scroll down to the bottom of this page, where you can click on our Sitemap to facilitate your viewing of the other pages on our site. Please pardon the inconvenience.)
Welcome to the home page of the El Yunque Innkeepers' Consortium, dedicated to providing useful information on our rainforest hotels, bed and breakfasts, and other lodging in the El Yunque rain forest, Puerto Rico. We will also show you many of the rainforest plants, animals, and fruits which abound here in our little corner of paradise called Cubuy. There are helpful maps and directions, as well as information on rain forest hikes and other activities located nearby. How do you get to that gorgeous beach that everybody's seen pictures of, but nobody knows exactly how to get there? We'll tell you. Our rain forest accommodations range from upscale hotels and B&Bs to vacation rentals, to budget cabins and camp sites. All are in close proximity to the rivers, streams and waterfalls of El Yunque rainforest, in the Cubuy region of Naguabo, Puerto Rico.
An Important Note on Passports: Regardless of what your travel agent or your neighbor says, you do not need a passport to travel between Puerto Rico and the continental U.S. Travel between our island and the mainland United States is legally the same as travel between Washington,DC and Virginia or Maryland. You are leaving a US territory and entering a state.
A Short Description of our Surroundings:
Cubuy is located on the southern slopes of the Caribbean National Forest or El Yunque, Puerto Rico, the only tropical rain forest in the U.S. National Forest system. Our average annual rainfall is well over 200 inches, and the four rivers cascading down the mountains swell almost instantly from gentle streams to rushing torrents.
In few other places on earth can one see the entire water cycle in action as clearly as here in Cubuy. Looking east and south over the island of Vieques, one can watch clouds swelling over the warm, shallow Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, then watch these moisture-laden towers crash into Pico del Este (Peak of the East), the easternmost of the peaks that make up the rainforest. The top of Pico del Este is usually covered in clouds, and the resulting precipitation comes flowing down our rivers. At times, one can see cloud-covered mountains, with two rivers dropping, almost literally, out of the clouds. All four rivers (Cubuy, Sabana, Icaco and Prieto) merge at the base of the mountains into the Rio Blanco, or White River, named for the prominent white cascade cutting dramatically through mountains high above, visible from miles away. The Rio Blanco makes a very short trip through the low pasturelands of Naguabo before discharging into the sea on the border between Atlantic and Caribbean. A few miles out, over shallow, sun-baked, crystal-clear seas, this same water evaporates again to start the cycle all over.
The vast quantities of water flowing through our little piece of paradise provides ample moisture for the exotic rain forest flora and fauna. Orchids, bromeliads, and other epiphytes live their entire lives in the crooks of trees in the rain forest canopy, high above the ground. The warm climate -- not nearly so hot as the coast, but never below 60 -- makes it a tremendous place for exotic fruits and flowers to thrive. In Cubuy, coquis, the singing treefrogs adopted by Puerto Ricans as their official animal, have been tallied at 10,000 or more per acre. Apart from the ever-present nighttime chorus of co-kee chirps, the abundance of insect-eating coquis, bats, and small Anolis lizards makes Cubuy a refuge from mosquitos and other biting insects.
One of the most important attractions of Cubuy is its great rain forest hiking. Local guide Robin Phillips provides custom-tailored, day-long hikes to secluded waterfalls, pools, and fantastic vistas overlooking this unique piece of the tropics (bring your bathing suit!). On the hike, sample exotic, organic fruits in season that Robin brings along from his 12-acre rain forest finca, or farm. Sure, Robin grows the tropical fruits that frequent visitors to the tropics are familiar with: papaya, banana, mangos, soursop and coconut, but what about the fun stuff? Truly exotic fruits most tourists and even natives have never even heard of, let alone seen photos of -- mangosteen, yellow rambutan, jackfruit, pomelo, seeded bananas, chempodak, "miracle fruit," caimito, santol, wax jambu, canistel . . . the list goes on. Many exotic Asian fruits grow happily here in El Yunque, owing to the rain forest moisture and the gentle climate.
Unlike the more-visited north side of El Yunque, which receives more than 1 million visitors per year, Cubuy is the domain of the "off-the-beaten-track" explorer, free of the roadside t-shirt and beach-towel vendors and fast-food joints. When you go swimming in a pool below a waterfall, you'll most likely be alone, not packed in along with entire tourbuses full of people (no buses come to this side of the forest, as it's farther from San Juan). Traffic jams are unheard of here, and one could pass an entire week on this end of the island without encountering more than one or two stoplights. Off of the mountain, the traveler has easy access to snorkelling, sailing, sunbathing, surfing and windsurfing on the gorgeous, uncrowded beaches of eastern Puerto Rico, as well as a top bioluminescent bay, fascinating nature preserves, and boat and air access to the islands off our coast, plus golf, horseback riding, skydiving, hang-gliding and casino gambling. Small tour operators nearby are happy to take visitors out to the uninhabited cays (small islands) just offshore, where they can be sole inhabitants of their own Caribbean island for a few hours.
We welcome you to look around our site for a closer look at what the Cubuy region has to offer, then choose where you'd like to stay when you come to visit Cubuy, the place of many rivers, where the land meets the sky.
Visits since October 1, 2006
To find any page on our site, use our Sitemap.