A student Journey: Tourist for a day

Many people have been talking about the Forest Park La Marquesa located in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico. Most comments that I got to hear about different people were based on the extensive area with exotic birds in which you can enter and interact with them. I wasn’t really interested about visiting the park but because I was supposed to act as a tourist for a day for my English class, I thought that visiting this park was a good idea since I really was going to be a tourist because I’ve never been there. Because of the literature on the internet that I previously read, the park was mostly design to entertain children, so I decided to take my little cousins with me. They are 5 and 8 years old and this definitely was a great opportunity to spend some time with them.

I planned on getting there at about 10:00am but because I was with two little kids being punctual is almost impossible so we got there at about 11:30am. I found it was not so far from home, about 15 minutes and the road were asphalted and covered on the sides with a lot of gigantic and beautiful trees. What really surprised me was that since you got out of the main road to go to the Park you can see big signs announcing the park on every light and that’s pretty uncommon in Puerto Rico. Here for what I have seen the government doesn’t really worried about identifying streets or main attractions, but I guess that La Marquesa Forest park had it signs because it was inaugurated just a few months ago.

When I finally got there you have to identify first in what seems like a main gate, then you straight for about two minutes when you finally got to see the parking lot for the visitors. The parking was really packed and I think it was really small for the capacity of the park so I had to park in the very last spot and for me it was not a problem but I was with two small kids that started complaining because they were tires of walking and we haven’t arrived yet.

Like a few steps ahead from the parking lot you get to see what seems like a small office in which you get information about the park and other main attractions of Guaynabo. Then is a window in which a very nice girl to which I got to pay for the entrance. The prices were really affordable I only spend about $16 including taxes for me and my two cousins. They day wasn’t the greatest one because it was really rainy so the girl on the entrance recommended us to take the cable railway in the first place because if it starts raining the closed it, so we decided to take the tour the way she recommended it. The view was really impressive you can see the mountains of Guaynabo and even the beach on the coast of the island. At first I was really amazed with the beautiful view but then I got to see how high we were and I started panicking for a second but then I realized that they cables were really strong and it seems pretty secure. My cousins were really enjoying the ride on the cable railway and I felt really happy and excited for them, and I transported myself instantly to when I was about their age that I had no obligations or preoccupations. The ride to get to the other side of the park took about 8 minutes and then you arrived to a wood platform that leads you to the aviary and other side were they kept the monarch butterflies.

They have only one species of butterflies and it was the monarch and I get to see the lab where they had different specimens showing the different stages of them and it really surprises me, because I haven’t seen it that close. The most impressive part was too see all the exotic birds flying on top of you, it was scary at first because I am not used to be in contact with a lot of animals but I must admit that it was one of the greatest experience I’ve ever had. The bird that most capture my attention was the African gray, he was so intelligent that can speak just like humans and his grey and orange tones in the feathers were beautiful. After the aviary we took a trolly to get to small mountain that has on the top a wood deck in which you can see the same view that you get to see in the cable railway but the difference was that you had to take about 500 stair steps. When you finish looking on top of the wood deck you get to go to about 3 different playgrounds for kids, so there was not much left for me but cousins had a really good time and I actually enjoyed watching at them having fun.

There’s not really much that I really have an opportunity to see my surroundings but in there I really got to see everything that was around me, including people, animals, and things that most of the time I never notice like the different shapes of the clouds. I am glad that I decided to gave me an opportunity to visit the park because it was definitely not what I expected but in a good way. If you ask me I would recommend it for people with small kids, because I think that the most attractive thing of the park its watching the kids playing in their playgrounds.