Hiking to Hollywell

The first rest stop just below Red Light

The $2000 hike that the Forestry department organised which we did for $500 thanks to Ayatollah, (Charles Williams) was a real a fun event and extremely well organised with  a large number of guides, ambulance and Red Cross staff and rest three rest stops where they provided nice walking canes,  fruits,and water as well as portable toilets.

While the F& Thrillers  like Sheriff, (Nicole) Yohan, Lisa, Nicole(Lawrence) etc paid their just due (although Lisa and Nicole L did not use the buses provided) , cheap stakes like Desire, Theresa, Charles, Marcus and I  were driven independently to Gordon town  by Chris and just melted in with the officially registered  hikers from there.

 The trail was well marked, scenic and quite easy and actually this short- cut to Newcastle was a first for me as the first time I hiked with an official party, we were way ahead of the rest and  mistakenly took a far more arduous and treacherous path which had us crawling on hands and knees in some areas.  This was a much more well defined route with pieces of wood set in the trail to prevent us from sliding as we went through picaresque pine plantations with coffee plants interspersed and the Forestry Department  guides had even put up a rope rail in one section where it was a bit tricky.

At the first rest stop by Red Light here there was lots of fruits, water and juice and even portable toilets and that is where Sheriff caught up with us as she had taken a bus from UTECH.

Chris bought food and drove up to Hollywell and after we had plodded uphill for about three and half hours, we found him waiting patiently for us. Though Ayatollah only ordered ackee and calaloo as usual although he knows I am allergic to ackees, he somehow managed to hijack a lovely barbecue chicken meal through one of those who were with the official party, so I never had to kill him. So we had a great brunch, hung around a bit telling jokes and  blew poor Chris'  mind with stories guaranteed to help him cut down on his womanizing! He grumbled all the way down that the would never give another girl money. lol                                                                                               

                                                                                                                             

There were probably four to five hundred hikers  (but then I am no good with estimating crowds!) and lots of buses to transport them back to Kingston, but they were not  returning until around three in the afternoon for the $200 fee had included an entertainment segment but  none of us wanted to spend the entire day up there. So since there was only the Prado for some ten of us,  Charles tried to get one of the bus drivers to take an early trip down to transport some of us, but none of those drivers could be bought!

It was therefore decided that Chris would take one set  of us to Newcastle and go back for the rest and we would try to get better transportation from there. Incidentally  while we were driving down at around noon, there were still quite a number of hikers still struggling up the hill.

I went down with the first group and while we waited,  who did we see struggling up on a bicycle all by himself but  Omar.

Although he planned to continue on to Hollywell and he said he would not allow us to break his determination to ride all the way, he hung around with us until the other group arrived. As we waited, we saw two men who appeared to be doing a tour of Newcastle and sent our model Theresa to try and get a lift down with them, but they said they were only going to Strawberry Hills. So we continued waiting.

When  the others arrived, it was decided that Chris would take one trip down with the first group and return for the others, but by the time we got to Cafe blue, Lisa got a call that they had arranged alternative transportation.

The big drama of the day was when it appears three police thought they could have made some money off Chris.

On the way down, he took a corner wide and a police pickup was traveling  up  towards Newcastle and he nearly hit the vehicle.

Although  it was a narrow escape but no harm was done, within what seemed like only a few seconds, they had managed to turn around and were behind us, indicating that we should stop.

There were three of them, one woman in uniform and two men in plain clothes. They all jumped out of the vehicle belligerently, calling out to Chris to get out of the vehicle. I looked around feverishly in the pocket for the papers but could not find them so Desiree and I  came out to see how they would behave while Theresa turned up the back glass as the vehicle was over loaded.

 After looking at Chris' license and finding that it was unfortunately in order, they seemed pleased that we had no papers and started to huff and puff.  The big belly one who was apparently the senior officer drew himself up and started to tell poor intimidated Chris how he  could take away the vehicle for that. At that point , I said "Are you sure officer? This is a Resident magistrate;" pointing to Desiree.   What an immediate transformation! He immediately turned to her very very courteously saying,  "Good afternoon maam". At that point Sheriff, having searched more diligently  than I, found the papers and showed them. I think that saved their obvious embarrassment for with Desiree there they had realised they could not carry on any hanky panky so the big belly seemed to take an extra long time  pretending to scrutinise the documents, before lecturing Chris about  the dangers of careless driving and telling him how lucky we was to have not run into one of the trucks being driven by the soldiers. Chris apologised  for his bad driving and we continued our journey but I swear had Desiree and the rest of us had not been there, he would either have had to give them some serious money, had the vehicle taken away or shot  for supposedly resisting arrest for their aggressive attitude initially could never ended up with a reasonable result like just getting a ticket otherwise. 

After a great carefree day, that incident reminded me poignantly of  the terrible realities of life that some people have to abide on a daily basis for in this beautiful county of ours, if you do not have either what we loosely refer to as "high colour" or some special status, you are a lamb to the slaughter when having encounters with some of those who are sworn to "Serve and Protect".