Today we got up at 7 am, not because we had to, but because we went to bed too early last night. Well, for our standards. At 8:30am we packed our things in the car and got some breakfast at Subway and Starbucks before heading out. After getting our stomachs full we hit the road towards El Yunque near Luquillo, picked up some snacks at a local grocery store, including ice and well, beer. lol We arrived at a remote location in the mountains of the rainforest at around 11am. There was a whole convoy of Enid's friends following us because we were the ones with the mysterious directions to a "hidden river". Not a tourist location, let's put it that way. We unloaded the car and paid the nice people at casa de Paylas the 50 cents a person to park. :)
Then we took the narrow path through the lush rainforest down to the river. After setting up our camp everyone went exploring. We climbed the waterfall. Sliding down was so much fun! You had to be careful though to raise your arms in time so you wouldn't hurt your elbows. Which I did anyways. Nothing serious though. I went up and down the fall a couple of times (video to be uploaded soon) until I was off to different adventures. Alex and I started exploring down the river. It was a bit of a climb at times but my "water shoes" came in handy. The rocks were pretty hot on this sunny day. We took a few pictures and found a little collection of water in the middle of the river, let's call it a pond. Sorry, my English not so good. haha
We were actually able to swim in it because the water was deep enough to the point where you couldn't feel the ground anymore. The whole gang showed up a little while later and everyone started climbing the rocks and tree trunks around the little pond and making flips into the water or bombs and some even dove in head first. Well, here's where the unpleasant part of the story begins.
After about 150 jumps of random other people Alex decided he was gonna jump in too. He did a couple of bombs from a big rock and then he decided to climb that tree trunk. Well, I'm on the opposite side of the pond getting ready to take the picture. I get a shot of him on top of the tree trunk and then he jumps while I'm waiting for the camera to get ready for another shot. All of a sudden everyone around me gasps and starts yelling and pointing across the pond. I look over and all I see is my hubby covered in blood holding his head climbing out of the water.  For a second I froze then I dropped everything and made it down into the water and across the pond as safely as possible. I forgot I could swim that fast. I get to the other side and people had already put a towel around his head to apply pressure to the wound. When he saw me he said he was ok and smiled but boy I knew he was in shock. Which came in handy because we had to get him back up the river which wasn't easy from that side of the river where everyone had jumped off. Swimming across to the other side was not an option. So the guys assured me they would make sure he wasn't going to tip over. Alex got up and started climbing up himself holding the towel on his head while doing so. I got back in the water and swam across again to get our things. He actually made it up faster then I did.
We got to the first part of the river where we had made camp. Before I could get the rest of our things I made sure Alex was ok so far. I got a t-shirt on him and made sure he drank some water and sat down for a second. There was still a couple of 100 feet between us and the car plus the drive to the ER. I checked underneath the towel and OH MY GOD. Well, now I wanted to get out of there even faster. The car was blocked in so we had to wait until everyone had moved their car. We got someone who knew the area to drive ahead of us to the ER.
We finally got to the Emergencia in Rio Grande. As soon as we walked in a nurse came running and took him in the back while my friend told her what had happened. I had to fill out some forms and then we waited. I checked the camera to see how long it had taken us to get here. The picture of Alex on top of the tree trunk was taken at 2:27pm so almost an hour had gone by. Another 45 minutes later I was able to go check on Alex cause the nurse said it would be ok. When I got to him they had already cleaned the wound and given him some painkillers. He said he was starving which made me feel a lot better because being hungry is never a bad sign. :) Then the doctor came and gave him a quick lecture on how lucky he was. Which was necessary, I can't even believe I let him jump. I'm usually so cautious when it comes to things like that. Well, I walked with him to the X ray room.
Long story short, 4 X rays and 15 stitches later we were out of there. It was now almost 6:30 pm. Everyone was starving so we went to closest eatery which just happened to be Mc Donalds and it never tasted that good before. We must have been pretty hungry. Alex started getting over his state of shock and actually felt some pain. We picked up the ibuprofen and antibiotics at a farmacia and went home.
We watched some Comedy Central on TV and I was glad to see him laugh, even though it seemed to hurt when he did too much of it.
So that's day 2. The next two days we didn't have anything planned anyways so he would have some time to recover. Man, what a day. Sleeping was relative since I kept checking for breathing all night. That's what you get when you watch too many shows like House and you worry about blood clots in the head, but I did calm down eventually.

So UNLESS you see the ground of the body of water you wanna jump into and make sure it is deep enough, stick to swimming!

Even though there are no waves or hardly any at this beach it's still one of my favorites on this island. You can actually swim out far without having to fear not being able to get back. Like every other beach that I went to there was hardly anyone there. Except the life guards. haha The water is warm but not too warm. I could have spent hours here, but the rainforest made me too tired. :-)