South · Guánica · 5 min read

Guánica Dry Forest

El Yunque gets the rain. This side of the island got everything else.

The Read

Everyone flies to Puerto Rico for a rainforest. The island's other great forest sits diagonally opposite, draped over limestone hills above the south coast, and it is the drier, stranger, quieter masterpiece. Bosque Estatal de Guánica is roughly 9,900 acres of subtropical dry forest, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve since 1981, and by UNESCO's own assessment the best-preserved subtropical forest and best example of dry forest in the world. Not the Caribbean. The world. On the ground, that superlative looks like nothing else on the island: squat, wind-bent trees, columns of cactus growing beside gumbo limbo, chalk-white limestone underfoot, and light everywhere, because the canopy never closes. The star resident is the guabairo, the endangered Puerto Rican nightjar, a bird once written off as extinct; Guánica shelters its largest surviving population, which is why serious birders treat these hills as a pilgrimage. The elder statesman is the guayacán centenario off the Ballena trail, a lignum vitae so old that published estimates run anywhere from 700 to 1,000 years. And where El Yunque hands you waterfalls and crowds, Guánica hands you silence: dry heat, birdsong, lizards rattling through leaf litter, and the Caribbean flashing turquoise at the bottom of the trails.

Going Like a Local

The forest has two doors, and the trick is using both in the right order. Door one is PR-334, which switchbacks out of Guánica town up to the ranger station, where the DRNA keeps the trail maps and the main trailheads begin. The gate runs Tuesday through Sunday plus holidays, 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., closed Mondays. Be there when it opens, because by mid-morning the sun owns this forest. Start on the Ballena trail and take the signed side path to the guayacán centenario while the air is still soft; the old tree is better company at 8 a.m. than at noon. Door two is PR-333, the coastal road that traces the shore past the Caña Gorda balneario to a dead end at the Tamarindo gate. That is where the Meseta trail begins: a flat, exposed walk along raised sea terraces with the water beside you the whole way and a breeze the inland trails never get. The local rhythm goes inland trails first thing, lunch and a swim off Playa Tamarindo, then a stretch of Meseta in the late afternoon when the light turns gold. If you only earn one view, make it Fuerte Caprón's, the small hilltop fortification looking straight down the length of Guánica Bay.

Worth Knowing

Entrance is free and nothing here takes a reservation; you just show up. There is no water on any trail, no shade to speak of on most of them, and no kiosk at the trailheads, so carry more water than feels reasonable; the nearest food is back in Guánica town or along the malecón. Wear real shoes, because the footing is loose, sharp limestone, not garden path. A brimmed hat and light long sleeves beat sunscreen alone out here. Cell coverage fades in the interior valleys, so photograph the trail map at the ranger station before you walk. And if the plan includes the boat to Gilligan's Island, call ahead: the little ferry from the Caña Gorda side runs on weather and thin staffing, and it disappoints people who assume it works like a bus.

Nearby

• Playa Sucia, Cabo Rojo: white sand, limestone cliffs, and the lighthouse headland at the island's southwest corner.
• Ponce historic center: the south's grand old city of fountains and firehouse red, an easy pairing on the drive back east.