Today is Saturday March 16th and yesterday we took a day off from "fixing deh boat" and spent the day up in the rain forest hiking to St. Margaret's Falls, known locally as the Seven Sisters. The falls are a series of cascades with the three lower sisters being the tallest and the three upper sisters being a series of smaller cascades. The seventh sister is off on another trail and is called Honeymoon Falls because the pool at its base is heart shaped. Most people hire a guide and end up for a swim at the lower sisters with the deep pools. We decided to brave the hike on our own and climb to the upper cascades.
This was a challenging scramble up a steep, muddy, rocky and very slippery cliff side and after getting up there we were a little concerned about how we were going to get down. Gratefully there were lots of strong roots and trees to hang onto on our descent and we made if safely down without a muddy behind!?! When you pay your entry fee they you a good stiff walking stick and it is a life saver.
The locals have their own way of getting down the falls...jumping from pool to pool....not an option for us and in fact there is a sign that says no jumping; however we did see a local lad with two young fellows in tow begin their descent at our picnic site. Over the years people have been killed trying to jump from pool to pool so they certainly don't encourage it. They were the only other brave souls who challenged the upper sisters. Ann Vanderhoof in her book "Embarrassment of Mangoes" said that she thought there were at least 13 vindictive sisters at St. Margaret's Falls.
The first part of the walk is through a plantation that has nutmeg, cinnamon and cocoa trees. Shown in the picture is a whole nutmeg with the red mace covering the inner nut and the outer fleshy pulp along with some cinnamon sticks.
The fruit in my hand is a cocoa plant.
As we continued our hike we saw many stands of beautiful bamboo and at one point they had made stairs out of the bamboo.
We saw many beautiful flowers along the way as well.
Sisters one and two have deep pools and cool refreshing water to swim in. The upper cascades are cool and refreshing but unless you are prepared to jump, it is not possible to access the deeper pools.
We chose a picnic spot midstream and cooled off in the shallow pools.
As we were waiting for the bus back to St. George's we noticed this incredible fern. Things sure do grow well in a rainforest.
This was a quick shot taken from the bus of the communites nestled in the hills.
Once back in St. George's we picked up some groceries and our usual veggie roti to go and caught the bus back out to Port Egmont. We had challenged the sisters, returned tired and a little muddy but looking forward to returning another time to make the climb to Honeymoon Falls.
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