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

Sicily, Really Mafia country?

Graffiti on a wall in Catania

Every since I have heard of the island of Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean sea, it has not been the beaches or the \fascinating and historic architecture which comes to mind, but tales of a wicked and vicious mafia.

So it was with a lot of curiosity and a little trepidation that I looked forward to a stop on the island, on a recent Disney cruise.

The stop we had was at Catania, the second largest city on the island which boasts a population of about a million people.

Catania is also famous because it sits right at the foot of Mount Etna, the biggest volcano in Europe which  the news would often have us thinking, is  always on the verge of eruption.

 Interestingly, the Sicilians have found a way to benefit from the lava spewed by that very active and threatening volcano as large amounts of their souvenirs are carved from the molten rock (lava) that it spills out.

Mt. Etna hovers threateningly over the city

I found the city to be absolutely beautiful with its profusion of carefully and lovingly restored baroque architecture dating back from the 16th century, the romantic sidewalk cafes on every block, the bustling outdoor food markets with their anxious, loud  and knowledgeable shoppers,  crowded streets and fabulous green areas.

There was an ease and pleasantness about the entire area that one would never have expected in a place associated with the mafia!
 .
Also after having visited a number of other Italian towns including Rome, the thing that struck me very quickly too was how much wider the streets were in Catania  and how much more modern and larger the cars were,  especially in comparison to those in Rome, where we had seen a profusion of some of the smallest cars every built. 

One of the beautifully landscaped green areas.

Then there was the hard to ignore, number of huge, elegant churches in close proximity to each other.

 
I was so surprised  to see so many churches that I immediately started counting as we walked around and after counting twelve in less than a two block area, gave up the task. 

The vast number of churches was not noticed by only me however as I heard a tourist loudly proclaiming that they probably have so many churches as  since the mafia probably kills someone on every block, the killers need to find a church nearby at which to confess lest they too meet a similar fate in quick retaliation!

With  the bad reputation that Sicily has earned worldwide as being mafia country however, it felt very peaceful and safe and not even the pickpockets that the guides had warned us about seemed to be active in the busy streets.

OH it is not that no one got a taste of what a mafia country is like for my daughter was robbed but not in the way you might expect.

You see, when it comes to travel, she has the discipline of sending postcards to all and sundry and here as usual she sought out as Post Office to buy stamps. We found a huge one on the long, central Via Etnea where what appeared to be a very nice man used his halting English to assist her. 

She had eleven postcards and he supplied her with the stamps and showed her how many to put on each, before stating the total cost was Euro 22. It  was only when we were in the park that she realized how easily she had been robbed as she recollected that she had put stamps with values of 60 and 30 on each postcard and with eleven postcards the total should have been Euro 9.90 but instead he had taken advantage of her inability to communicate properly (and do a small calculation too!) and bilked her twice as much as it cost to post them!

Such is life in mafia country but  despite that experience which could probably happen anywhere when one drops their guard, Catania is a warm, hospitable, historic, attractive and romantic city and certainly well worth visiting even if the graffiti gets a bit overwhelming at times. 

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