Toro Negro Hiking Trails: The Best Hiking Alternative To El Yunque
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If you're planning on visiting Puerto Rico, it wouldn't be a surprise if El Yunque is on the top of the list of places you're planning to visit. El Yunque is full of scenic hiking trails, breathtaking views from lookout towers, and has nearby rivers that you can dip into and relax. However, now that the Park Service has implemented a reservation system through recreation.gov which limits the amount of people that can visit El Yunque on a given day, many might not have the chance to visit the rainforest. If you find yourself in this situation, or if you simply want to visit other forests and hiking trails in Puerto Rico, you’re in luck, because the Toro Negro State Forest offers all the things you might like to experience at El Yunque, and even more!
Main Entrance to the Toro Negro Hiking Trails
You might be surprised to learn that the Toro Negro State Forest is similar to El Yunque in many ways because they used to be part of one big forest back in the early 1900s, but later they were divided and administered by different entities, resulting in the forests that we see today. Even though these two forests were divided, Toro Negro is still a large forest that spans many municipalities in the center of Puerto Rico. If you want to visit the most popular area of Toro Negro, where you will find everything that you’ll see in this travel guide, you’ll need to head over to the Doña Juana Recreational Area.
Getting to Toro Negro Hiking Trails
Northern Route
There are two routes you can take to get to the recreational area. If you’re leaving from San Juan, the quickest way of getting to Toro Negro is taking the northern route where you’ll drive on the highway all the way to the municipality of Manatí and then take route 149 into Ciales. This route is called the Ruta Panorámica because it offers many breathtaking views form lookout points and is surrounded by nature. The cons of this route is that most of the time you’ll be driving on narrow streets that have many twist and turns, so if you get carsick easily, you might want to consider taking the southern route. However, because this panoramic route is so frequented, there are many local restaurants all along the way that sell delicious traditional puertorrican food.
Views from the Panoramic Route through Ciales
Southern Route
If you’re looking for a more straightforward route to Toro Negro, you might want to take the southern route where you’ll drive on the highway past Caguas, Cayey, all the way down to Salians until you get to the municipality of Juana Diaz where you’ll take the exit to Route 149 that’ll take you into the municipality of Villalba and eventually to the recreational area. Even though this route is approximately 1 hour and 50 minutes long from San Juan, it’s a great alternative to the northern route since it’s only about 10 minutes longer. If you want directions on how to get to Toro Negro, make sure to check out the description of this travel guides video on YouTube linked above where I’ve placed all the coordinates to help you get to the forest and all of its amazing attractions.
We begin our adventure at Toro Negro by arriving to the Doña Juana Recreational Area, where visitors can park their car in the designated parking and ask for more information in the rangers office which is open on weekdays. During our visit to Toro Negro we decided to start our hike up to the observation tower by going up the El Bolo trail. This trail is steep and wide in the beginning, but eventually levels off for an easier hike. About halfway during our hike on the El Bolo trail, we noticed that the trail was overgrown and it was progressively getting harder to follow, but we continued hiking and cleared the path until we eventually connected with La Piscina trail. We later found out that the El Bolo trail was actually supposed to be closed for maintenance, so I suggest that you contact the ranger office during their working hours before visiting to verify which areas of the park are open to the public.
Ranger’s Office in the Toro Negro State Park
After connecting with La Piscina trail, we continued hiking up until we found a paved street. There we continued walking for a few minutes until we found the beginning of the trail that leads up to the observation tower. This trail can be more challenging since it is narrower and has steeper sections, but after about a 20 minute hike, you’ll finally arrive at the observation tower. This tower sits on top of the Cerro Doña Juana and at about 3,537 feet above sea level, it is considered to be the highest man made structure on the island. From here you will have breathtaking views of almost all of the island, including the northern and southern shores of Puerto Rico, the municipality of Ponce, impressive lakes, and you will also be surrounded by some of Puerto Rico’s highest mountains including Cerro Punta, Cerro Maravilla, and los Tres Picachos.
Observation Tower at the Cerro Doña Juana
After taking in this amazing view and making some new friends, we decided to start hiking back down through La Piscina trail where we walked past some gazebos that can be used for recreational activities and also what used to be one of the main attractions of the forest, the river-feed pool of Toro Negro. This pool used to be open to the public, but it seems that it is currently closed for maintenance, but we hope that at some point this area can re-open for everyone’s enjoyment.
Natural Pools at the Toro Negro State Forest
If you keep walking down the trail you will find small swimming holes and waterfalls that you can get into for a refreshing dip. However, I want to give an extremely important disclaimer. The most important thing you must do before heading out to visit any river in Puerto Rico is to check the weather. If by any chance it is raining, please avoid visiting or getting into the river. Rain can provoke a powerful flash flood which can lead to serious injury and even death.
Flash Flood in one of the River Spots of the Toro Negro State Park
When you visit a forest such as Toro Negro or El Yunque it is almost certain that at some point there is going to be rain, so you need to be aware of your surroundings and make sure to step out of the river if it starts raining. When we planned our first visit to Toro Negro we were very exited to relax at the different river spots after our hikes, but because it started raining heavily we decided against it and headed back to the parking area.
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After leaving the Toro Negro Hiking Trails
As I mentioned before, the route that leads to the Toro Negro State Forest is part of the Ruta Panorámica, a scenic route that goes through the center of the island and is frequented during the weekends by locals looking to do internal tourism and bar hopping, which we call chinchorreo. For this reason, on this route there are many amazing traditional food stops all along the way. Our first stop driving to Toro Negro was the amazing FinCafe in Ciales, a small but charming coffee shop nestled in between beautiful trees right next to the road. There we enjoyed their deliciously aromatic and 100% locally grown coffee which they also package and sell in a variety of flavors such as nutmeg and cinnamon.
FinCafe Coffee Shop
After you leave Toro Negro, I highly recommend you control your huger by visit Casa Vieja in Ciales, a cozy restaurant located on the hillside that is decorated with antiques to resemble the traditional wooden puertorrican homes form the early 1900s. Here, it is almost required to taste their delicious pastel al caldero which is a twist on the traditional plantain based puertorrican dish called pastel, which is normally served during Christmas. Apart from the other traditional dishes that Casa Vieja serves, they also have delicious cocktails such as mojitos that they make with natural juices. Because of Casa Vieja’s amazing reputation for excellent food and service, they get extremely busy during the weekends from around lunch time till their closing time at 6PM so be aware that you might have difficulty finding a nearby parking spot and you might also have to wait more than 30 minutes to get a table. However, if you don’t mind potentially having to wait, Casa Vieja is one of those places that you need to visit during your trip to Toro Negro.
Casa Vieja in Ciales
And finally, if you decide to take the northern route to and from Toro Negro, you will inevitably pass by the impressively beautiful Chorro de Doña Juana. This spot is composed of several imposing waterfalls that come down through the side of the mountain and almost cascades onto the main road. Visitors to the area are able to park their car on the side of the road to take photos and even jump into the refreshing pond. But, like I mentioned earlier, you need to be careful if it starts raining, because when it does, the Doña Juana waterfall puts on a show of strength with its powerful rushing waters. And before you leave, make sure to check out the small business right next to the waterfall where you will find delicious local food such as empanadillas and alcapurrias.
Chorro de Doña Juana
And that’s it! I hope you found this travel guide helpful. Make sure to check out my YouTube channel, Brik’s Travel Guides, to see the full video of this and other Puerto Rico travel guides.
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