As sophisticated as Puerto Rico’s indoor facilities are for groups, natural surroundings are even more seductive.
“Puerto Rico is a sun-and-fun destination,” says Paul Ferguson, president and owner of Travel Services Inc., a family-owned destination management company that first set up shop in the 1950s.
In the early days, according to Ferguson, nature outings consisted mostly of a visit to a waterfall, Luquillo Beach on the North Coast, and views from an observation tower of the Caribbean National Forest, better known as El Yunque rainforest for its 3,500-foot peak of the same name. El Yunque is one of the Western Hemisphere’s oldest reserves, but according to Ferguson, its 28,000 acres were not fully appreciated from the observation tower.
“You would only see 50 percent of what is there,” Ferguson says.
Travel Services helped train guides to offer more in-depth rainforest hikes, including easy 25-minute walks, or longer, more strenuous hikes to La Mina Falls. The El Portal Rain Forest Center can be rented by groups.
For more adventure, Travel Services arranges ATV rides or horseback rides at the foothills of El Yunque. Guests sit atop small Paso Fino horses, famed for their smooth rides.
For team-building exercises, Revealing Rainforest is a program that lets groups choose an activity, such as the Taino Treasure Trail, where members search the rainforest for treasures left by the Taino Indians. Other team-building opportunities include Beach Olympics at Luquillo Beach. Groups can organize competitions such as a kayak relay, raft building, a coconut toss, beach volleyball, and a sand sculpting contest, among others.
About an hour from San Juan, Las Cabezas de San Juan, a 316-acre reserve with 124 acres of lagoons, is home to coral reefs, a dry forest and a 19th century lighthouse converted into a museum that is available for special events.
Travel Services organizes one of the island’s most popular activities, sea kayaking in the bioluminescent water by night. The two-hour adventure commences at sunset from the small fishing village of Las Croabas, heads through a mangrove-filled channel in the Las Cabezas reserve, and into the luminescent Laguna Grande.
Puerto Rico is also home to some of the region’s most important caves, including Rio Camuy Cave Park. After an hour-and-a-half drive from San Juan, it’s a trolley ride to the 200-foot-high, half-mile-long cave. The cave trip can be combined with a stop at the Arecibo Observatory, site of the world’s largest electronic radio telescope—a 1,000-foot-in-diameter dish suspended above a karst sinkhole that has been used in movies such as Contact and Goldeneye.
