Our first stop was a mineral spring called the Blue Hole. It is tucked away off the highway, and took some finding, but thankfully we got GPS with our car, and (even then with a wrong turn), we got there.
The Blue Hole is so called, because, well, it is a hole of blue water, apparently 35 feet deep:
The cool way down is to jump, but neither Melanie and I were quite up for that, so we used the ladder.
Of course the ladder also allows for some jumping opportunities:
The water is refreshing, and once you are down in the hole, it opens up quite a bit and you can swim around or clamber onto some of the limestone rocks. There are lots of little fish in the water too, which surprised me. I suppose they might have been introduced, but otherwise it makes you wonder how they got there.
The spot is such that you could easily stay half a day, but we kept our visit to an hour, because we had lots more of Jamaica to travel.
We continued east, along the southern coast of Westmoreland and then inland to the parish of St. Elizabeth.
There is a river here called "Y.S."--I have not been able to get an answer as to why it is called Y.S.--and it is home to a famous tourist spot called the Y.S. Falls. We did not have time to stop there, but we drove by it (and the rows and rows of tourist buses).
We stopped further up the road by a quaint bridge over the river, where we relaxed and ate some fruit Melanie had bought along the highway.
Perhaps this spot is not as remarkable as the YS Falls, but it felt like a piece of paradise!
From YS River we continued along the B6 "highway" in a roughly northeastern direction. The road is narrow and windy, but lightly trafficked and the countryside is gorgeous and interesting.
We passed through a town called Maggotty, which is a small place, but was absolutely teeming with school children in their uniforms. We stopped here for lunch, and bought jerk chicken from a street side hut. We paid 400 Jamaican dollars each (~$4 Canadian), which was the cheapest lunch we have had here by far.
We took our chicken down the road and ate it at the Appleton Rum estate a little ways from Maggotty. Unfortunately we did not have time to tour the factory, but it looks like a good tour. I did buy a bottle in the gift shop, and we certainly got to see sugar cane growing and being harvested.
From Appleton we continued on to the B10, heading more northerly, and definitely upwards as the elevation continued climbing. We passed another river and stopped again to enjoy some fruit and the scenery.
After this stop things got hairy. We were close to Albert Town when the GPS directed me to turn off the highway and down a hill. The direction seemed somewhat odd, but I had second guessed the GPS a few times already and the GPS had proved right every time. The new road was badly potted, but none of the roads were in good condition, so we went on for a little bit, maybe two hundred metres or so.
At that point, I had bottomed the little car out twice or three times, and the road was looking only worse further ahead, not better. I pulled over at a spot I could, and mulled our options. I walked, rather than drove, further down the road, and eventually it was obvious that this little car was not going to make it. A farmer, in a rather beat up pick-up, coming up the road, confirmed this: "You'll never make it in that car!" He did tell us that the road does go to Albert Town, so the GPS was not necessarily wrong.
But now the problem was that we had come down a hill, and coming back up was not going to be easy, either. In fact, at one point, Melanie had to get out and push! We took it slow, and more or less followed friendly farmer as he navigated around the pot holes and rocks, and so got back to the highway. Friendly farmer gave us directions that did not involve back country farm roads, and just a few minutes later we were in Albert Town.
In Albert Town we met up with a man named Hugh Dixon, who runs an organization called Southern Trelawny Environmental Agency (http://stea.net/). Hugh's organization is focused on protecting the region known as Cockpit Country, and organizing tours/hikes is one of the ways STEA raises money.
We followed Hugh to a place that seems to go by both Rock Spring and Spring Garden (or maybe they are just very close communities) where we met Miss Vanny, whose home we are staying at tonight.
It had been a long day, although only 150 kilometres of driving or so!
Miss Vanny fed us a dinner of curried chicken, rice, and the famous yams that apparently Usain Bolt credits as the secret to his speed (see: https://tamersoliman.ca/the-usain-bolt-yam/). She was particularly insistent that I eat a lot, so I ended up absolutely stuffed.
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