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Published: December 18th 2012
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THE BLUE MOUNTAINS OF JAMAICA AND MORE….. IRIE
From afar and atop, the Blue Mountains present as a cluster of rolling mounds inhabiting the eastern corner of Jamaica. And now, I was about to visit them, see them live, some sixty years after they were first described to me in high school lessons on West Indian geography.
We set out, Penny, Charmaine, Ron and I, 6:30am, from Rose Hall in Saint James along the coastal road on the north shore of the island; and, always, to the south of us, there was the persistent presence of an elevated range, rising contour, intent on turning our eyes east toward the Blues themselves.
Sky white, clouds mapping the way like pencils from above, we proceeded, tutored in the history, current affairs and geography of Jamaica by our knowing guide at the wheel, until, at Ocho Rios, where there are only tres rios, we shifted south eastward, onto a winding, climbing dilly of a narrow road, up onto Bread Nut Hill. Then, as our ascent continued further up and beyond, the continuous stream of oncoming traffic was adorned on either side with lush grasses and bushes in cool green, graced by
tall and arching bamboo limbs. All of this was alive with “fires-of-the-forest”: trees that blazed in reds and yellows. Taken as a piece, this bounty of vegetal beauty rendered a passing scene that danced before a wall of foliage shimmering in the doze of morning mist.
As we surged on up, at an elevation of about a thousand feet, our first thrilling glimpse of the Blues appeared, some fifty miles away. There they were, as seen from Mount Diablo: this, the site where Maroons, escapees from captivity, had fought off search parties sent by the plantocracy of the day, who had had them captured in Africa, in the seventeen hundreds, and had held them in Jamaica, against their will.
From Diablo, the Blues seemed like dozing doves, resting on and between peaks of the ever protective lower range, billowing into the yellowish tinge of a shy sun reluctantly coming awake, suffused in glistening mist, shielding lazy clouds in light grey. And slowly, out of this radiant mix, an aura of benign blue emerged against the skyline, presenting a soothing picture, a collection of soft puffballs, drifting across the horizon in the distant east. And we forged down Diablo,
southwards.
Breathless from our early morn wake-up, from the far-off Blue Mountain visuals, from our quick decent, it was time to stop for a breakfast of corn porridge in a charming local nook, at a junction where the still functioning railway crossed and doubled back on our road.
With a sumptuous, scrumptious breakfast sustaining us, we would drive past exits for Spanish Town and Port Antonio, and it would be two hours motoring in our town car, smooth, cool and comfortable, before we entered the parish of St. Andrews, cleared the outskirts of Kingston and were into the foothills of the Blues and their giddying impact on the senses.
The winding, slanting, steep road seemed to float, aloft on air, suspended within a delightful dome of mountains as forested figurines charting some ancient mariner’s imaginary map, against a clear sky concave in attitude above and all around us; a beguiling bubble of beauty, which burst gently on our right, and revealed the tidy harbour of Kingston, at rest in the Caribbean Sea, way down below.
We took relief from this feast of nature on high, just over half way up the seventy-four hundred foot mountain range; and rummaged on foot through a plantation of Arabica and Robusta coffee plants, beautiful butterflies fluttering by, before receiving a lecture on the origins and migration of coffee to the Blue Mountains: from Ethiopia to Arabia to Turkey to France to Haiti in its Hispaniola days, and thence to Jamaica, arriving just after the first fifth of the seventeen hundreds. Whereupon, we sampled flavourful Blue Mountain coffee; as good as the beverage gets.
Satiated with the sights at about four thousand feet up, we took our descent, slowly revisiting the highlights of our earlier climb, the perils of steep embankments and wrap around curves now impressing us, a petite church and pretty little houses dotting our view; and kitchen gardens revealing a wide range of food, fruit and medicinal plants, including alovera, cho cho, pawpaw, jelly coconut, plantain, sour sop, traveller’s palm, orange; and akee, whose pod must first open and allow a poison to escape, thus removing the threat of dying by eating, before its white segments can be used to make “akee and salt fish”, a wholesome breakfast dish.
A dizzying array of flowering plants also graced the down slopes in a riot of colour, sporting birds of paradise in orange hues, agapanthuses in blues, red lobster claws, white frangipani with pink fringes, pink periwinkles, red and white hibiscus, red ginger lilies, pink cactus, yellow, lavender and pink orchids, burgundy sorrel, pink and white amaryllis, until the surroundings of Kingston were again upon us, past Mona, beneath Cherry Gardens; and into mid-town for a lunch of tasty patties, fresh fruit juices and neighbourhood ambience.
Headed home after lunch, we thought we had had a most pleasant and sufficient helping of rugged beauty for one day, but, alas, there was more to explore on our returning path. First, Fern Gully, cool and quiet, flanked by a multitude of fan shaped ferns resembling tall banana tree leaves, deep green and detailed in herring bone forms, swaying to a slight breeze, embracing and sheltering us, as we cascaded down, north, through this soothing environment.
Then, still descending north once we had exited the Gully, we ventured upon a string of roadside homes sporting delightful crotons and bougainvillea, in mixed tones of peach, pink, bronze, orange, maroon, green and sparkling white. As we turned west, past the tres rios at Ocho Rios, heading back home to Rose Hall, the sun was beginning its set before us, in all of its light and bright tropical delight.
A quiet twilight was upon us as we re-entered the parish of Saint James at day’s end.
V. Ernest Ainsley
02.07.12
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