The Real Garden of Eden

If a real Garden of Eden exists, it is right here in the Rio Grande valley in Portland for there is yet to be another more peaceful, scenic, lush place in the world. 

The distance from Berridale, where you start rafting, to Port Antonio is eleven miles but by river it is only eight. And it is eight miles of sheer peace, beauty and tranquility.

Pat relaxes

Where you take the raft is across from the district of Burbank which lies to the south of the river. The Parish council operates a raft free of cost for the residents of that district as during the rainy season., the river really gets deep so they cannot cross by foot.

The one time we hiked to that area to visit Scatter Falls and the Fire cave, the river was really low so we just swam across.

The captains have to be very adept to navigate through the shallow areas

This Saturday when we went rafting, the river was indeed low too and that made you realise that the captains need great skill and not just strength to navigate that eight miles down to Rafters Rest.

My cousin Sheila and I had a ball

Our captain was Dennis, was a very nice guy. He said he has been rafting from he was about eight years old and he and his friends started building their own rafts  which they fished from.

He said his father is also a raftsman but because business is not very good, with most of them not getting more than one trip per week, he does farming in the hills, growing bananas coco and dasheen.

Poor Portland, they did great business in the good old days but because cruise ships are now super liners, that port cannot accommodate them so tourism there has gotten a real beating.

Dennis at work

He says before you can become a licensed captain to take visitors down the river, you start as an apprentice bringing the rafts back from Rafters Rest back to Berridale. This means polling most of the way up but to get up the rapids they have to get off and pull up the raft up by rope.

I had always thought these rafts lasted years, but he told me they only last about four months as when the bamboo starts to split it becomes water logged.

Amrita and family

As I had seen the rafters at Martha Brae carrying back their rafts by trailer, I asked him whey they don't do that in Portland but he  said when you pack them on top of each other, they do not even last three months!

For this trip, we had been invited by Charles as his sisters Diana and Amarita  were here with their families.Nine of us took the four hour trek including my cousin Sheila who is here from Canada.

The Rio Grande valley is surrounded by part of the Blue and John Crow mountains and now I see why it is called John Crow mountains.

Lovers Lane on the Rio Grande

John Crow is the Jamaican name for our vulture  and they abound there apparently. All along the river we saw them cooling off  in the water and hunting for rotten bait left by the numerous fishermen who make their living fishing for mud fish, snooker, mullet, jack etc in the Rio Grande.

About half way down,  shortly after you pass through Lovers lane, a lady by the name of Belinda has set up the most wonderful restaurant by the river bank.

There we  had the nicest lunch I have had for many years. Yes it was rice and peas and chicken, but real country chicken which has a much better taste than  commercial chicken. She also had the most delicious cray fish cooked in coconut milk. 

Boy I could eat some more  right now!

Ready to eat again

It is back breaking work for Belinda though as she lies in Stony Hill in the hills overlooking the Rio Grande valley and has to bring down the ingredients by foot daily. She says she stores her pots on site however.

So many people depend on that river to make a living. There as a lady on the way down too who had cool drinks and coconuts on her raft.

Pat was her best customer.

It was an absolutely wonderful day of camaraderie, swimming,m ,eating and of course falling asleep because of "itis" before we reached our destination!

 

An absolutely beautiful valley

Selling drinks and coconut from a raft

Black Hill , Portland, Jamaica...the extinct volcano

The first time I ever heard of the extinct volcano at Black hill in Portland, was on a ride to the parish and we stopped to rest at the top of the hill just beyond Orange Bay. A young man mistaking us for tourists came up and offered to take us for a tour to the volcano at Black hill where he said you could see evidence of the lava and the denuded hills. When I asked  him when it erupted he said;

Basalt rocks are evidence of  volcanic eruption

"About 50 years ago." That was my laugh for the day as I told him if it had erupted 50 years ago, I would have heard about it! Poor kid, to him 50 years was a lifetime away .

Anyway I decided to research  volcanoes in  Jamaica and when I could not find anything beside when the island was formed by underwater volcanoes erupting millions of years ago, forgot about it.

 Then in September 2014, I  got an email from the Natural History Society advising of a field trip, declaring "Activities: The next NHSJ field trip is planned to the Orange Bay area in Portland.

 We will climb an extinct volcano (Black Hill) and explore a tunnel close to the coast. It was part of the abandoned railway line from Kingston/Spanish Town to Port Antonio. Finally we will visit a private property east of Orange Bay (Rodney Hall Farm), where lunch is served (pork, curried goat, vegetables). The property has easy access to a beach (cliff). The coastline of the region offers numerous opportunities for photographers (see images below), and information on the geography of the site will be provided. Dr. Simon Mitchell, Professor of Sedimentary Geology and Head of the Dept. of Geology and Geography (UWI, Mona), will be our tour guide."

 

You know who had to go!

First stop Rodney hill

So off  we headed with me getting a lift from Marcia Davis a recent returnee to Jamaica who is also an outdoor lover who had climbed the 19,300 foot Mount Kilimanjaro. 

Also travelling with her were other thrillers, Sharon, Richard and Shamira while David and his cousin Denise came by themselves.  On this trek too I ran into Martin McLeavy, someone I grew up with decades ago but with whom I had lost contact although he lives right here.

We had a little difficulty at Long Lane as the police had blocked the road as a minibus travelling from St. Mary to downtown Kingston crashed into an oil tanker killing the driver Juniour Douglas. We had to drive on the old road up by the old Stony hills hotel and exit on to Gibson road but it was not a problem as we knew our way from having ridden to Hermitage dam on so many occasions.

After that it was an uneventful drive to Rodney hill where the convoy of around six or seven vehicles carrying 24 persons got out in anticipation of a most informative talk by Professor Simon Mitchell of the department of Geography and Sedimentary geology at UWI. He is a British man who has been in Jamaica for 18 years.

We then walked up to Grange hill where we saw a bunch of kids lyming at the front of an unfinished shop while others hung out on some tombs at the back. Again mistaking us for tourists, some of the fellows offered to be our tour guides to take us to the top of the hill called Honey hill, which they said was around 2 1/2 miles away and . When we went there by ourselves however it was nothing close to 2 1/2 miles but closer to 1/2 mile!

Kids lyming on the tombs

It was a most informative trip with our introduction to things like basalt rocks formed from the rapid cooling of basaltic lava.

This is what has broken down over the years to give places like Orange Bay the black sands and Black hill actually got its name because of the color of the rocks there, black because of the high content of iron oxide. 

I personally learnt a lot about limestone too and the fact that Jamaica has the potential to earn billions from this product which is among the purest in the word. But you know us, we are full of unrealised potential!

Anyway these are things we see all the time but really do not understand the importance of. 

This extinct volcano according to Prof Mitchell, was quite "young:" having erupted abound 12 millions years ago, young because Jamaica was first formed by eruptions some 40 - 50 million years ago. We also learnt that Black Hill was 'discovered" around 1860 when the colonial masters, having lost out their cheap labour after the abolition of slavery, decided to do geological surveys in the colonies to search for precious minerals. 

Despite the wealth of information I gathered from the knowledgeable professor, my most interesting lecture on folk lore came from a young man, Adrian,  who had just graduated from Annotto Bay high school and  who plans to go to HEART to study electrical installation. His version of the extinct volcano is that it last erupted just as Columbus was approaching the island in 1492 and when he saw the smoke he did not stop in Portland but went to Discovery Bay instead. I rather like that version!

The property by the sea where T. P Lecky is said to have been born

From the top of Honey hill, we had a fabulous view of the Orange bay area and my informant Adrian pointed to property below by the sea at Orange Bay where he said the late, great T. P Lecky was born.

 For the benefit of those who do not know, Wikipedia tells us that Lecky was a great scientist  who through experiments in genetics, developed in the 1950's the Jamaica Hope, a tropical dairy breed which catapulted him to international acclaim. These cattle were a combination of the British Jersey cow (small, and light feeding) with the Holstein (heavy milk producers) and the Indian Sahiwal breed (disease resistant and adapted to the tropics). 

The Jamaica Hope could produce up to an average of 12 litres of milk a day, ­ 3 times that produced by other cattle on the island.  Lecky's work revolutionized the Jamaican dairy industry and scentists from many different countries flocked to Jamaica to see what he had done. 

At the entrance of the old railway tunnel

Not satisfied with stopping at the Jamaica Hope  which was mainly a producer of milk, Lecky turned his attention to creating a Jamaican breed able to produce meat. He worked with cattle farmers and looked carefully at Indian cattle. 

He selected from amongst a few breeds of Indian cattle that had been brought into the island and created a new breed known as the Jamaica Brahman, which has since become popular also in Latin America. Farmers had noted that the imported English Red cattle, which had not proved resistant to ticks and tropical disease, when bred with the Jamaica Brahman, produced cattle of top quality beef. 

This breed became known as the Jamaica Red ­ the main meat-producing cattle on the island.

So not only did I learn a bit of geology, geography and folk lore on the trip but saw where the great man had allegedly grown up. 

After the field trip, we drove down to the beach to look at an old railway tunnel which had been used up to the early 90's when we had a rail system joining Kingston toPort Antonio and Kingston to Montego Bay. 

We did not go inside however as rain water had leaked into the tunnel and it was full of (chick-v?) vectors!

So we just enjoyed a walk by the beach till it was time to go to Rodney Hill farm for lunch.

View of Savanna point from David's front yard

When we got to the lovely house by the beach  near Savanna Point with peacocks and all, I discovered it was owned by a long time friend David Vernon who years ago had been a sports reporter at Radio Jamaica. There we had the best lunch I have ever had on a field trip ; Among the tasties were, of ackee and pork, barbecue spare ribs, chicken salad , escoviched fish etc all for $500. ...the absolute best bargain I have had in Jamaica for years!

After sampling the food and the ambiance, those of us who ride, decided that a ride there has to be on the agenda soon, a ride to Rodney Hill Farm and I spoke to David about providing some delicious food for us and he said any time. Looking forward to it.

It was an absolutely wonderful  day  spent with with the members of the Natural History Society.

                                                                                                           

JOAN WILLIAMS, moderator of  JOAN WILLIAMS ON LINE broadcast on POWER 106, describes herself as an unapologetic addict to the Jamaican outdoors. A foundation member of FUN AND THRILLS ADVENTURE CLUB, she explores the island at any given opportunity cycling, hiking or swimming with that group, family, Jah 3 and anyone else who will have her. In 1995, she published the popular TOUR JAMAICA and the 4^th edition is now an ebook available at;

http://www.amazon.com/Tour-Jamaica-Joan-Williams-ebook/dp/B00EJWCSHS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1389464644&sr=8-1&keywords=tour+jamaica+by+joan+williams

Contact; gratestj@gmail.com

A Really Great Day

Yesterday was another wonderful day lyming with the Fun and Thrills family as we finally went on the frequently postponed ride to Robins bay which Charles 1st had been proposing for months. (as a good St. Mary man).

I rode out of my home at 5.30 am, assuming I would meet up with other riders at Stony hill, but by the time I reached the intersection of Allerdyce road and Shortwood roads, I saw Pat and Charles 1st. 

Unfortunately in an attempt to hail me up, Pat lost balance and had a slight spill, but only got a small elbow cut  although her bicycle suffered some trauma, but compliments of the experienced "mechanics" who ride with the group, she was soon sorted out.

All went well with me continuing my recent trend of riding non-stop to Stony Hill square but I was unable to catch up Charles 1st and Sheriff flew past me on Long lane, making me the third rider to arrive at the square. Poor Barry who has suffered an elbow damage and has been unable to ride, had wanted to swap that leg with me as he was reduced to driving a support vehicle but badly wanted a little ride,  but I had to inform him  "no way" as keeping my record intact on that stretch was very important.

 Incidentally  Jamie is now in my bad books as I  had asked Chully to load my mountain bike and bring it along to Stony hill where he lives with his grandma Elaine, as he had said he wanted to ride with us.  But would the boy wake up? So we ended up having to transport an unnecessary bicycle. 

Never again.

At Stony hill square we were joined by most of the other riders from both group one and two, and it was an uneventful ride to Castleton, our regular lyming stop, where most people can't wait guzzle down the delicious janga soup and boiled corn.

There Pat presented us with a huge batch of delicious energy cookies which she had made by herself  and I think she needs to patent it as it is not only very delicious but indeed really energy giving too, for when I  got to Robins's Bay I felt like I could have ridden another 40 miles!

At Castleton when we were ready to depart, the Ayatollah declared that we had to wait for Desiree who woke up late and was driving to meet us there. Some rebellious souls rode away but a number of us stayed behind to wait for her. However, when she arrived and we attempted to charge her for having overslept, she disabused us, revealing that she told the Ayatollah that she was not coming as she was late, but he insisted that we had all agreed to wait for her! 

Poor Howie had the shock of his life after Desiree arrived and we prepared to leave, for he was confronted with a puncture which caused  him  to arrive dead last at Robin's Bay.

On the other hand, Grace had been so energized by Pat's biscuits and maybe because she was abandoned by David who had been riding with her, she passed the turn off to Robin's bay and attempted to ride to Port Maria.  Fortunately a rasta man saw her going astray, jumped into his car, chased her down and brought her back to the fold.

Would you believe that shortly after we arrived we were joined by extraordinary riders Johann and Marcus who had ridden together, leaving Kingston at 9 am and proudly telling us they only made one stop and that was a pee stop for Marcus who declared that  he had a small bladder from he was a child! (He volunteered the info publicly). Incidentally, Lisa, who Howie just taught to ride, made a small go of it also on this trip too.

We were also joined by a number of other persons who drove down, among them Stefan and daughters and our visitors from Canada Aunt Gladys, David, Donnie and Diana.

While there, Chris (driver) found some dominoes and summoned me as his great partner to play against Chuck and Neville. We did not disappoint and dropped a six love on them.  Unfortunately, I was so into the domino game that I missed the best part of the breakfast, the mackrel run dung as horror of horrors,  when I went to get some food, only a little gravy was left. Fortunately, Chuck is turning out to be the Robinson Crusoe of the group in terms of showing us how he can live off the land, for not only is he our resident bird shooter/fried bird supplier, but yesterday Karen brought a huge container full of delicious fried fish, enough for everyone. 

When I asked her for one specifically caught by Chuck, his son Marlon informed me indignantly that his father had been the great fisherman who had caught all the fish! So delicious was the fish that I had to apologize to the entire Chuck family for having given the head of the household a 6 love. lol.

After breakfast, Howie, Maurice, (ride back) Michael, Kim , Bernadette, Johann, Marcus, Conrad, all members of the A team, for some inexplicable reason, wanted to do an off road ride into the bushes  to do God knows what, while we the civilized ones went to the beach.

Kim with her beautiful baby Riley, Donovan and his family and a few others headed for Strawberry fields which is really nice and structured, but I don't like the beach there as it has a terrible current and when you float there,  you end  up in all sorts of rocks and strange places. So we rode east to where they once had a nice beach with some bamboo huts and a bamboo fence. We had some difficultly finding it as the last hurricane had blown away everything, but after asking around, the Ayatollah found the right place and in fact they were in  the processes of rebuilding while we were there.

The beach was absolutely wonderful, the water so cool, clear and full of energy. We spent about an  hour there just interacting , swimming and sharing jokes, before I had to beg a lift with the first car going  back to town as I had to make connection with friends at 4 pm. Thanks to the competent driver Carol (Betty White's cousin) I arrived home is good time and boy that  jerk/barbecue pork we had for dinner made it  one of the greatest days of my life.

The only thing that spoiled the wonderful day, was the absence of our dear friend Jordan Hanlan who had not only been a reliable support driver for the group but also such a pleasant and always smiling friend to all of us. She lost her life in an auto accident earlier this month and was buried on the 14th. R.I.P Jordan, we missed you but we know you were with us in spirit.