Waterfalls

It is my pleasure to share about what was, for me, the most memorable day I have had in Grenada thus far. It began with a feeling of disappointment as a GRENCODA staff member, Malcolm, called us at 8:15 to tell us that he had car trouble. We had arranged for him to pick us up at 8:00 A.M. to bring us to Grand Etang rainforest to do a little hiking. He assured us that it was still on, but he had to wait for the mechanic to pick him up at 9:30 and we should expect him around 10:00. He arrived at 10 and we hopped in, dressed in our hiking boots, pants and carrying swimwear and water in a backpack. We went first to the Grand Etang visitors centre to find out how exactly to get to the hike we wanted to take. The people there were very helpful and we found the place without difficulty. On the way down we stopped at Grand Etang Lake, which is a crater lake from one of the volcanoes that formed the island. There were still a lot of visibly damaged trees from hurricane Ivan 2 years ago.

See Picture One (for some reason blogger isn't letting me put pictures embedded into the text. I don't know why)

At the falls parking lot we were required to each pay $5 EC (or $2 U.S.) to access the trail to the falls, since it went over private property. We were reluctant to pay the fee, but forked it over. We were also approached by a young man who was certified as a guide. He really wanted to guide us to the falls, but since we were only interested in a short excursion at our own pace we declined. I informed him that we would have visitors in the future at which time we would employ his services. We started our hike down a cement road and past a few houses. We went over a bridge and then turned onto a small dirt trail past one of the houses. If we hadn’t known this was the trail we could have walked right past it without knowing. The trail led over the hill and then down into a great valley.

Picture 2

We had been told to grab hiking sticks which we all thought we wouldn’t need, but were very glad later on that we did! It had been raining a good bit the previous two days and the clay/dirt trail was VERY slippery. Although the trail has actually been maintained quite well, there is still a steep drop to one side of the trail. As we neared the waterfalls the guide, Cliffon a.k.a. Super Butterfly, caught up with us. As we were admiring the two waterfalls he told us that you could jump off the top one.

Picture 3

Since the waterfall is a good 25-30 feet high I suppose we looked a little sceptical so he promptly scaled the walls around the falls and jumped in off the top, being sure of course that we had our camera ready first!


Picture 4

He then asked if we wanted to jump off. Unsure about scaling the wall we expressed our doubt but he told us that there was a trail to the top. Not sure what we were getting into we all stripped down to our swimwear and proceeded to follow him up this narrow mud path in nothing more than our basic swim wear for protection, which in my case wasn’t much! (I was sure to tie my bikini top extra tight though!) So without all the clothing that we had worn to protect us from biting insects and poisonous plants we trekked in bare feet through some of the densest part of the rainforest! Seems a little crazy. I still have red welts from the razor grass and some sort of really itchy spots on my legs that I assume are bug bites, but have no way to be sure other than letting time do its thing! After what felt like a loooong time we arrived at the river. I promptly jumped in to wash all the mud and plant matter from my legs and drown off any insects that had their noses stuck into me! The spot on the river where we ended up didn’t seem to be the top of the big waterfall, which was were I had believed we were going. Instead we were about 5 or so waterfalls higher up than that, with only one way to get down. That’s right…jump. Cliffon was a superb guide, making sure we knew exactly where and how to jump, then demonstrating so that we knew it was safe. There were a few sketchy spots where I wasn’t sure about my ability to jump safely, but with some good advice we all made it through safely. The two places that stick out in my mind are where we had to make sure to jump and land sort of on our backsides so we didn’t go too deep (the water was about chest height and we were jumping from 7 or so feet). The other spot that had me quite nervous was a location where the water funnelled in between two huge rocks with only about 2 feet of space for the water to flow. Although the water was not higher than our knees, it was flowing very, very quickly. Again Cliffon was a great guide, showing me step by step how to get through and lending a hand and shoulder when I needed it. We made it though but I have to admit that I was somewhat worried. At least at the bottom of the chute there wasn’t an immediate waterfall so even if I fell I wouldn’t have gotten swept down anything too large. If the rocks underfoot weren’t such sharp volcanic rocks we could have slid down like a slide, but as it was that was definitely not a safe idea. Eventually we made our way to the large waterfall at the end and although I don’t have a picture of Jason jumping off (he jumped before me and went to get the camera) we do have a short video of me jumping.
Once we were all safely down we spent some time swimming around the bottom two waterfalls, jumping off to the side of the smaller one. The bottom there wasn’t super deep. Just last week a tourist dove off the rock and cracked his head open on a rock and broke his arm. For visitors who would consider this excursion, don’t be worried that this was the fault of the guide, as he warned us that the bottom was shallow and if we wanted to dive it had to be a surface dive. In the end we paid the guide for his time, as I’m sure he was hoping. It was well worth it and an experience that I will never forget.
The rest of our day was also busy as we went with Malcolm to do a little more sight seeing on the island, seeing some of the beaches on the north eastern part of the island. They have a rugged beauty not seen in Grand Anse and we enjoyed feeling like we were off of the major tourist track. It is nice in a way that the beach is not easily accessible unless you have private transportation, but it does make it problematic for us to visit using public transportation whenever we like. We had a late lunch with Malcolm and his friends, something he called ‘steam down’ since it didn’t have breadfruit and callaloo it couldn’t be called ‘oil down’, Grenada’s national dish. Their pot also contained bakanek (which they all think is terribly funny…can anyone guess what this might be??? We will look for your guesses in the comments and will let you know in our next post!), swordfish, and crab. It is flavoured with coconut milk, saffron, and other spices that I can’t at this moment recall. Needless to say, we had a great day and arrived home at 6:30 absolutely exhausted. I’ll leave you with one last photo of the beach where we had the cook up, Bathway Beach.

Picture 5 & 6