Backcountry Jamaica: No Problem

L I F E
NOVEMBER 1999

Steeped in history and a world away from the island's famed resorts, Jamaica's Rio Grande Valley provides a tantalizing getaway for a scandal-weary Washingtonian.

"The fairest island that eyes have beheld; mountainous and the land seems to touch the sky."
----Christopher Columbus

t was February in Washington. Cherry blossoms slumbered through an icy winter rain. Roads choked across the city as potholes multiplied like frisky rabbits. On Capitol Hill, Congress was soiling itself with a tar baby called Monica, while a hunkered-down White House weathered the season with a strategy of abject apologies and ironfisted threats.
It was time to slip away from the tawdry scandal, propagating like a noxious fog from a B-grade monster flick. It was time for Jamaica. After twenty-six years I was returning to the Caribbean island--not this time to inhale a last gasp of the sixties, but for a research project that would take me high into Jamaica's backcountry and--well, yes--a tonic of palm trees and tropical sun.
I was on a tight schedule. My driver would be waiting in Kingston to shuttle me to Port Antonio on Jamaica's north coast. From there I was to travel to Cornwall Barracks in the little-traveled John Crow range of the Blue Mountains. A great cleft carved out of the mountains, the Rio Grande Valley, climbs into these highlands, whose fastness once sheltered Arawak and African refugees in flight from Spanish slavers. Descendants of these archetypal freedom fighters, the Maroons, still dwell in remote settlements, preserving memories and traditions of a heroic struggle for liberty.

        I tried to hurry the calendar forward, repacking my shorts and sunscreen. I had been gorging on grapefruit to fortify my system against a raging flu epidemic. But a fever had begun to muddle my head, and as my departure day arrived, the flu boiled within me. Fortunately, my early morning flight was lightly booked, and I staggered aboard and sprawled across three empty seats.
        Two hours later, the barren sprawl of Baltimore-Washington yielded to the indigo waters of the Bahamas. As we continued over central Cuba, the green hills and cane fields below radiated an assurance of warmth, health, and tropical vitality.
        By midday we had arrived in Kingston, the largest English-speaking city in the Western hemisphere south of Miami. My driver, Steve, a soft-spoken young Jamaican, was a veteran navigator of the jarring seven-hour round trip between Port Antonio and Kingston. Making the circuit sometimes twice a day, Steve was prepared for the incidental interruptions, such as the informal "tolls" requested by locals who supposedly filled in a pothole or performed other road services in exchange for a gratuity from a passing motorist.
        As I drank in the moist, restoring air, I considered my options. The choice was through the city and over the mountains or the less-direct route, around the coast and then north and west to Port Antonio. Traffic congestion seemed too dear a price to pay for the more scenic mountain route, so we launched toward the coast. The road wound around the eastern extremity of the island, through a no-man's-land of distressed villages, reduced by decades of neglect and an absence of capital. Reaching the north coast, the road hugged miles of picture-perfect, albeit nearly deserted, beaches. An occasional fishing boat, dugout canoe, or roadside fruit stand added rustic charm and an inducement to dally, which Steve readily agreed to.

        Where the mountains meet the sea

        Port Antonio, the capital of Portland Parish, is a colonial-era town that still thrives as a banana port. Despite extraordinary beaches cradled among some of the Caribbean's loftiest mountains, Port Antonio appears relatively undiscovered as a tourist destination. One can poke about in leisure through quaint streets, markets, and local galleries for just the right Jamaica, No Problem T-shirt.
        Film star Errol Flynn discovered Port Antonio in 1946 and made his home on offshore Navy Island until his death in 1960. Writer Ian Fleming arrived around the same time on a mission from British Naval Intelligence and remained to live, authoring his famed James Bond novels there. In recent years, various Hollywood stars, either filming on location or simply here for a frolic in the sun, have been smitten by Port Antonio's unique charms.
        "Port Antonio is the way Ocho Rios used to be," one island tour operator told me. "The people here are warm and friendly, and the beaches are superior to any on the island."
        To be sure, the stunning beaches and dazzling ocean hues have an irresistible fascination, as though by some primal awakening one senses that the sea rather than the firmament is one's true and proper home. Accommodations range from quaint to opulent. Several hotels provide first-class comfort, spectacular vistas, and ready access to the local attractions, which in addition to beaches include picturesque waterfalls, pristine caves, and fascinating historic sites from British and Spanish colonial times.

* A deserted beach near Port Antonio on Jamaica's north coast.

        I had made arrangements for a stayover at Dragon Bay before venturing into the mountains. The Dragon Bay Beach Resort, by any definition, is a premiere vacation spot. "More beautiful than any woman," Flynn reportedly claimed of the bay, although I personally don't think he would talk such nonsense. Now ornamented by thirty magnificent, British-colonial style villas, Dragon Bay boasts a private, sugar-white beach protected by an unspoiled coral reef and dramatic cliffs climbing out of the sea.
        I sat on the veranda of the dining room sipping the local coffee that's Jamaican Blue Mountain, relief setting in as I contemplated my escape from virus-infected Washington. Hopping about the sand were large black birds, called kling kling. The birds seemed unusually observant, tilting their heads and staring about intensely, as if a scientist were locked inside making calculations. Lighting boldly on the rail, one bird studied me with clinical interest, perhaps classifying the pale life-form according to an arcane science known only to the kling kling.
        As the setting sun painted warm pastel tones across the horizon, I began to make a reckoning of my prospects for the following days. As welcome as the Dragon Bay Resort was while I regained my health, I was anxious to leave behind such manicured enclaves of idleness. Beyond the fringe of beach and fashionable resorts lay another Jamaica, as inscrutable to the casual visitor as the high mountain passes enshrouded in mists and heroic legends.

        The Rio Grande Valley

        A single road climbs out of Port Antonio into a dense tropical mÄlange of forest, small farms, pasture, and homesteads. We wound our way up the rutted and overworked road, a hint of elation arising in me from every bone-jarring shudder of the car. As we climbed higher, the deteriorating road simply occasioned more chances to contemplate the vitality of life about me. Small tin-roof houses and shacks haphazardly clung to the hillside and lined the roadway. Young men gathered to pass the time. Schoolchildren dressed in crisp uniforms laughed gaily in the morning sunshine. Chickens and goats roamed idly about, careless of such obligations as laying eggs or giving milk. Giant fig and banyan trees on the roadside presided like honored patriarchs from ancient days.

* The Blue Mountains rise above the Rio Grande.

        My driver (not Steve this time) suddenly spied a young woman and laid on the horn. She turned. "I'm going to kiss your lips!" he cried. Unflustered, she turned away while the driver laughed with exuberant good nature, celebrating the creation of woman and his own spirited appreciation of life's good things.
        Climbing higher, we could see the blue band of the Rio Grande below, winding serenely toward the sea. Across the valley, giant African tulip trees with brilliant red flowers ornamented a lush tropical tableau. Dwarfing even these, the stately cotton tree rose above the canopy like a conquering Goliath. This majestic hardwood, measuring up to forty feet in diameter, was carved by the Arawak and Taino into enormous canoes capable of holding up to seventy men.

        A valley hike

        We had to cross the Rio Grande to pick up the trail to Scatter Falls. This was a guided tour by Valley Hikes, an association of local guides now working with the Rhode Island--based promotional firm Unique Destinations. MaryLou Callahan, the founder, was a veteran in the emerging business of ecotourism when she came to the Rio Grande Valley. Her enthusiasm for the valley is matched only by her admiration of its people and energy in promoting the area as a travel destination.
        "This has become my baby," she said. "Here you can experience the true essence of Jamaican community. It is still intact.
        "I prefer to call this 'ecocultural' tourism," she added. "Tourism has to be linked not only with the environment but also with the community. Here, things are much simpler. You walk down the road, and you always meet someone to talk to. That's natural. This is what I miss so much when I'm away."
        The hike to Scatter Falls is a good example of Callahan's vision of sensitive, sustainable ecocultural tourism. We turned off the road heading up the valley and parked. I climbed the bank and scampered down to the water, where a long, elegant bamboo canoe awaited to shuttle me across the river. I stepped lightly onto the precarious raft, one of several that plied the waters of the Rio Grande. The vessel, constructed of bamboo poles picturesquely bound together with twine, suggested an indigenous ingenuity going back hundreds of years, perhaps derived, I imagined, from some imprinted recollection of trafficking on the Niger or Congo. In former days, the canoes were the mode of transport for farmers bringing produce to market. Flynn discovered them in his romantic rambles and elevated the Rio Grande rafting trip to a sought-out experience for an elite segment of travelers.
        The trek to the falls with an experienced guide is an education not only in the traditional uses of many indigenous plants but in Jamaican life behind the facade of all-inclusive beach resorts. Our casual hike took us through bottomlands of banana groves, past homes where barefoot toddlers ran out to greet the strangers, and past a charming rustic school where small children could be heard reciting their lessons.

* Crossing the Rio Grande.

        All waterfalls, I suppose, excite pleasing emotions. Scatter Falls, while not large by Jamaican standards, is a wonderfully scenic falls, not so much carved into the land by force as joined in a union of mutual consent. This kind of natural synergy seems peculiar to Jamaica's north coast, where a number of falls descend through luxuriant hillsides with a youthful indifference to established boundaries.
        The best known, Dunn's Falls outside Ocho Rios, is a phenomenon--justly renowned but unjustly overrun with hordes of tourists and vendors. The probable site of the decisive battle between the Spanish and British for possession of the island, the massive falls tumble some eight hundred vertical feet through the forest before washing into the Caribbean.
        Scatter Falls and the undisturbed cave system above the falls, like the rest of the Rio Grande Valley, are set in an unperturbed natural and cultural setting. Hung like a luxurious diamond necklace on the verdant hillside, the falls seemed to me a sign of grace, a reminder, like Noah's rainbow, that the plentiful earth is given, not earned through our striving.

        The upper valley

        Unique Destinations had arranged for me to continue into the Upper Valley for a stayover with a Maroon herbalist in the highlands above Mooretown, the largest of seven Maroon communities in the Blue Mountains. As we penetrated into this private world, I could readily understand English frustration in trying to locate and put down a resistance based in these wild and remote valleys.
        The "road" increasingly took on the aspect of a goat path. No surprise in that: There are more goats than cars up here in the fast lane. Occasional patches of concrete still punched above the surface, stubbornly resisting assimilation by the rioting vegetation like the stalwart artifacts of a lost civilization.
        Ivelyn Harris, or Sister Ivy as she is known in the valley, rents out a small cottage in Cornwall Barracks. There's no cable--and nightlife mostly amounts to the serenades of the coro coro (a jabbering crow whose faintly mocking call sounds like a human voice played backwards). But Ivy's Cottage and Traditional Herbal Bathhouse did have its amenities. Lying in bed with the doors flung open, the fragrant air fresh as the ripening fruit about the cabin, one could look past the ridges of mountains to the summit of Blue Mountain, Jamaica's highest peak at 7,400 feet.

* Scatter Falls in the Rio Brande Valley.

        Ivy's property is an herbal wonderland, with every humble plant the agent of some wondrous nutritional or curative power. She also offers an herbal bath, a potent, labor-intensive affair that is guaranteed to bring Lazarus back from the dead. And Ivy's selections of teas and traditional Maroon foods round out an experience that has brought pilgrims from every continent and whose accounts have found their way into the pages of the New Age Journal.
        I spent a casual afternoon conversing with Ivy and her English-born husband, Simon, the director of the Portland Parish Environmental Association. A master shipwright (he once constructed a boat from scratch for Queen Elizabeth), Simon was turning his practical ingenuity to the construction of a geodesic dome, their future home and a projected center for Maroon workshops. As evening descended, I relaxed at my cabin with a cup of herbal tea. The air seemed rich with sensation, from the fragrances of almond, pimento (allspice), lemongrass, or the exotic ylang-ylang tree to an orchestra of sounds filtering through the valley.
        Somewhere down below, a church lofted patois-infused spirituals into the retreating evening. Jaybirds and mockingbirds murmured into a rattle of palm fronds, which melded into the percussive background of chirping and twittering insects.
        I settled down for the night in an herbal zone. Sometime past midnight, roosters throughout the valley began a kind of ritualized call and response. What was the meaning? Either a rooster far down the valley would erupt with a cry, which would be answered in sequence, ending with a local rooster that sounded like he was practically under my bed; or, my rooster would begin it all, and the crowing would roll away into the night.
        Restless, I trudged out to the porch. A full moon. Blue Mountain, swept free of clouds, commanded half the night sky. All around me the restive tropics throbbed with life. Sheltered in this secluded valley, I reflected on the generations of Maroons whose retreat to these highlands was far more consequential than my own. Taino and Arawak lived and died here over the centuries, leaving few reminders of their sojourn save a handful of words that have secured a place in the eclectic brew that is the English language.
        This world beyond the fringe of Jamaica's beach resorts is not a vacation destination according to any usual reckoning. Montego Bay, Negril, and Ocho Rios are Jamaica's principal tourist sites and for good reasons. But the intrepid traveler seeking experience and community more than pleasure and a good tan may find that the road less traveled, from offbeat Port Antonio into Jamaica's backcountry, might make all the difference.

Additional Reading

For travel to Port Antonio and the Rio Grande Valley, contact UniqueDestinations at 401-934-3398 or on the World Wide Web at www.portantoniojamaica.com. Air Jamaica is Jamaica's national carrier, with service to Montego Bay, Kingston, Ocho Rios, and Port Antonio. For reservations, call 1-800-523-5585 or visit the airline's Web site at www.airjamaica.com.

Eric P. Olsen is associate executive editor of The World & I.