South Shore Discoveries
on George Hamilton (Jamaica), 03/Aug/2010 01:22, 34 days ago
This weekend was a long weekend celebrating Emancipation Day. Our original plan was to stay in the city and take part in the celebrations but when the only event we could find in the Gleaner invited Jamaicans to attend a reading of the Emancipation Proclamation at midnight on Sunday followed by musical entertainment til the morning, I knew that would never happen. There's no way George would go to an overnight celebration so in our typical fashion, we changed our plans, hooked up with Robert and Dominic and headed towards Treasure Beach and the Black River.We drove in the heavy rain on Friday night arriving at Treasure Beach at midnight but we had the entire next day to relax in the sun, swim in the beaches at Billy's Bay and Frenchmens Cove, and finished our day eating lobster and various other delights at Jakes under candlelight, listening to the ocean waves splashing up on shore.We stayed two nights at Ital Rest Guest House, where Lennie our host gave us this sweetsop and a whole watermelon. We on the other hand left Lennie 4 Red Stripes...we forgot them in the fridge when we checked out. Who thinks about beer in the morning?And as always at Ital Rest, we can never get the keys for the gate to work and on Saturday night no one was around to let us in. We all took turns trying to wriggle the key in the lock to open it but it just wouldn't work so eventually Dominic agreed to scale the gate and open the door from the inside. He said it was quite easy.While hanging around Frenchmen's Cove in the afternoon we met Danny the rasta man. He sold me a bracelet and gave us health tips, recommending a drink made out of aloe vera and lime. He did admit it was difficult to drink so I'm pretty sure none of us will be trying it too soon.The butterfly above was in our verandah at Ital Rest. We were noticing a lot of very pretty butterlies everywhere this weekend.Sunday took us to Black River where we found the town empty. The last time George and I were here we were driving through to Negril with Dianne and the town was bustling with people. But Sunday on a long weekend was quiet.On more than one occasion we were stopped by cows crossing in front of us. This one is on the main road in downtown Black River.Above are the lobster boats moored at the mouth of the Black River. That's the Caribbean Sea behind.The highlight of our trip to Black River was our ride on a pontoon boat to see the crocodiles. We were a bit late in the day, the best time to see crocodiles is noon, but we did see this one below and the three babies above just as we headed out. There are 300 crocodiles in the Great Morass and our captain said you can usually see between 1 and 20 on the one hour boat excursion. We saw one with 3 babies.Right next to this crocodile was a stand of trees teeming with egrets. Apparently, the egrets feed on the baby crocodiles and then the grown crocodiles eat the egrets. Tit for tat!In amongst the hundreds of egrets, we saw this one very handsome great egret.Our expedition on the Black River through the Great Morass was very peaceful and pretty passing banks of moses reeds before entering into a very large mangrove approximately 3 kms wide. Very impressive.At the turn around point in our boat ride, Devon, our captain pulled the boat ashore so that we could get out and climb on the mangrove. Only a few of us were brave enough to scamper up into the roots which were apparently very hard and surprisingly didn't budge an inch. Considering how thin the roots are, they apparently felt solid, like ground.The only problem with this boat ride was it was too short. We all felt like it was a bit of a tease and felt the need to go back and explore again, spending a day on the river, not just an hour. Lonely Planet mentions dug out canoes and kayaking as options. In all honesty, I'd be afraid kayaking with all those crocodiles, although the dug out canoes sound interesting. We saw no signs of either.Unfortunatley because it was a long weekend, both YS Falls and Appleton Rum Estate tours were closed but not being ones to give up too easily we tried to find the falls anyway. As it turns out it was impossible, the surrounging land is all blocked off but we did find this interesting man crouched in the woods all by himself on the edge of a cliff, on a dirt road with a little bonfire, sitting on a log carving this turtle. It was 6 p.m. and he had been there since 6 a.m.On our way home on Monday, we drove through the Bamboo Avenue which is a stretch of road a few kilometers long bordered by the oldest bamboo in Jamaica. This bamboo is apparently 100 years old.We saw this butterfly at Apple Valley Park where we stopped only to find directions on how to find a gorge listed in Lonely Planet. Nobody in the area had heard of a gorge there but they did given directions to find a water cascade and rapids favoured by the locals at Balaclava just past the Appleton Rum Estate, which as I mentioned before was closed for the holiday.With more help from people on the roads, we eventually found the water cascades which were beautiful and being enjoyed by as many as 100 locals, sitting in the water while others watched from the wall and bridge above. They also had camp fires and were making rice and curried chicken in the caves along the side of the road.Ah, but even in this little secluded water fall we noticed the Coke ad tacked to a tree which made us all chuckle.This lady spent quite awhile playing in the falls. At this point she filled up her t-shirt with the rushing water so that it looked like a balloon.A well worn pair of flip flops! We watched the little boy who was wearing them kick them off before diving into the pools below and swim over to the rope swing.After relaxing in and by the unmapped Noisy River, we continued on our way towards home and in search of one more likkle ting noted in Lonely Planet called Ripon - a nature park with hiking trails and butterfly and hummingbird garden. Once again it took a lot of stopping and asking for directions. Like the waterfalls above, the entrance to the park is completely unmarked. Our instructions to find it was to go 2 chains past the high school. Only the locals know where it is!We were encouraged to drive in where we'd find beautiful lawns with lovely plants and park areas. We parked and didn't see anything resembling a hiking trail but walking through the grassy park was very pleasant. We weren't disappointed. What we found was a lovely well kept park with no people other than ourselves. Both Robert and Dominic said it was zen-like.We never did find the butterfly and hummingbird garden but we did see lots of large snails which were equally interesting.We discovered a lot of lovely areas on the south shore this weekend but found even more that are calling us to return.