Blue Mountains Jamaica

The Blue Mountains – designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in July 2015, the Blue and John Crow Mountains National Park is one of only 32 ‘mixed’ WHS and the first in the Caribbean.  “The rugged landscape, lush forests, and cascading streams with rich biodiversity provided all the Windward Maroons needed to establish their culture and wage a successful guerrilla campaign to secure their freedom and sovereignty.”

We made an 0800hrs departure on Saturday 25 January, with warnings about the quality of the road from Buff Bay into the Blue Mountains ringing in our ears from all the people we had spoken to about our trip.  Karl and Conner had driven the first part, past the coffee plantation and on to Holywell, previously so we were pretty certain that the drive to the plantation would take a couple of hours.  But they hadn’t found the driveway to the plantation itself so we wondered how long that would take, even having spoken to the owner, David, in advance.  The drive alone made the trip worthwhile.  The views across the mountains were spectacular – definitely worthy of UNESCO World Heritage Site status.

The Old Tavern Coffee Plantation (red arrow marks the house)

We arrived spot on 1000hrs but couldn’t find the driveway to the plantation so instead parked in an open area, marked as belonging to the plantation.  David had talked about a couple of old Land Rovers acting as a reference point.  We’d passed these a short distance back but hadn’t spotted the driveway.  A moment on the phone explained why.  The Land Rovers marked the position of the house, which is almost directly below the road – there is no driveway.  We backtracked on foot and were welcomed at the gate by 5-year-old Ava, who led us down to her home where we met David, her 2 younger brothers and her mother, Heidi.

It was a fabulous tour of the plantation, which started with a cup of excellent coffee in their living room whilst David talked a bit about the history of the plantation and about coffee and growing coffee in Jamaica.

Left to right:  Karl, Conner (partly hidden), Nicky and Jared at the Old Tavern Coffee Plantation

Spectacular views across the estate from the living room balcony

David’s parents moved to the house about 60 years previously, looking to escape the heat and crowds of Kingston.  They bought the house and about 3 acres of land with no intention of becoming coffee growers.  However, that’s what they became and over time they purchased more and more of the land they could see from the house, to try to make the plantation big enough to be viable as a single plantation coffee producer.

David talking about coffee beans.  Right:  beans with varying amounts of layers removed.  The yellowish beans are fully skinned and ready to roast

That in itself was difficult as, at the time, all coffee growers were expected to sell their produce to the Jamaican Coffee Board.  David’s parents, like others wanted to maintain the ‘value added’ of having grown, dried, roasted and packaged their own produce rather than have to sell at a reduced rate to an organisation which would blend their delicious raw product with someone-else’s.  It was only in the mid 1990s that they obtained the permissions they needed to produce and market independently.  Even so, David and other independent growers/producers still spend significant time and energy discussing the best ways forward for Jamaican coffee production with the Jamaican Coffee Board.

Refreshed after our coffee, it was time to walk down to where the coffee beans are grown on the terraces below us.  David has a team of about 20 who plant, tend, prune and pick, with the vast majority of the labour being done by hand.  It seems that the only things that are no longer done by hand is moving ‘stuff’ – fertiliser out and coffee beans back etc.  These move from the road to stockpiling areas (or vice versa) in 4-wheel drive vehicles and do the final (or first) stretch of the journey between the plants and the stockpiling area on someone’s back.

We thoroughly enjoyed our walk around part of the estate with David, a chatty and energetic Ava and group of half a dozen Croatians who arrived unexpectedly just as we were walking out of the house.  We tasted raw coffee beans, picked fresh oranges and ate them with the juice running sweet and sticky over our hands and chins.  We cleaned up under the irrigation water taps that David’s team has installed; no longer is the entry job on the estate that of ‘water boy’, carrying 5 gallon jerry cans to the coffee plants from the watercourses above and below the working area of the plantation.

Coffee beans at various stages of ripeness all on one plant.  The red beans are ready to be picked

The coffee harvest generally seems to go on through the whole year with the bushes holding beans at all stages of development on them.  Keeping up with the bean production over what seems a fairly large estate for 20 workers must be quite some job…..and then add in all the other tasks – spraying, fertilising, maintaining the tracks, etc – it’s an impressive workload.

David’s house high up above us

There was no charge for the tour but of course
we couldn’t go away without buying some of
Old Tavern Coffee Estate’s excellent coffee, which
we’re looking forward to drinking in a beautiful
anchorage somewhere, perhaps in the Bay Islands

Once picked, Old Tavern Coffee Estate beans are trucked to the Estate’s premisies in Kingston for peeling and drying before returning to the mountains for roasting and packaging.  We had hoped to see the processing area but we ended up walking much further across the plantation than we had expected and with time ticking on we needed to move on too.  When Nicky had spoken to David whilst she was planning the trip she had asked how long the tour would take.  “About and hour” had been the reply.  Not a bit of it.  We were therenearly 3 hours and could easily have stayed longer.  David has plans for a small visitors’ centre, probably run by one of his long-term employees, as he says that more and more people are wanting to visit to see the estate and try the coffee.  It’ll be a lot of work to put in the appropriate infrastructure but will doubtless prove hugely beneficial, if only by keeping interested parties (like us) out of their home, where, quite soon, 3 children will be being home-schooled.

More Blue Mountain views, this time taken from a very poor road!

Both David and John, the owner of Whitfield Hall Refuge where we were staying for the night, had warned us that from Section, close to Old Tavern Coffee Estate, the B1 road becomes very, very poor and that we should budget at least 2 hours to cover the 21km (approx 13miles) to Mavis Bank where we would meet one of John’s staff.  And they weren’t wrong.  Very shortly after leaving Section, we found the road unpaved and hugely potholed and at almost every turn we gave thanks that we had turned down the lower-slung saloon hire car we had been offered and had paid a fraction more for the SUV.  There wasn’t that much traffic on the road but that which there was was clearly far more used to the conditions than us and hurtled around the bends and twists, swerving furiously to avoid the potholes.  In one particularly memorable moment we came head to head with a 5T truck which was doing about 30 mph around a blind bend.  Thankfully we weren’t doing a similar speed and the brakes on both vehicles were working well.  Disaster averted – at the loss of a few heartbeats! Finding the route was generally fairly straightforward, though less so than we had been made to believe.  We took a couple of wrong turns, despite in one case having asked some locals who were sitting by the side of the road.  It became apparent fairly quickly that we were on the wrong route when the road became even worse than dreadful – one wonders what vehicle they would drive up that particular track.  Perhaps they just do it on foot or on donkey.

Mavis Bank is not much of a town.  We wanted to buy something to eat as we had missed lunch but the only place where we could get food at 1430 was a small ‘convenience’ store.  That in itself was quite eye-opening, with all the stock and the people working in the store well hidden behind large Perspex screens overlaid with thick wire mesh.  It put a slightly different perspective on the comment on the Whitfield Hall website that “private vehicles can be left safely at the Mavis Bank Police Station”.  Happily, the police appear to be used to this arrangement and our vehicle was, indeed, still there and in one piece when we returned the next morning.

View from the back seat of Whitfield Hall’s Toyota 4WD truck

We had originally expected to walk up to Whitfield Hall from Mavis Bank, a walk that the Blue Mountain Peak websites all advertise as being about 6km.  However, John had told Nicky that the walking track was badly cut up and difficult to follow, so we had elected to be driven to and from Mavis Bank in one of the refuge’s 4WD vehicles along the long route.  Wow!  What a journey.  I am so glad that we didn’t try to drive that road ourselves, not without a decent Land Rover anyway!  The picture painted by the film above doesn’t tell half the story – more unmade roads, even more huge potholes, incredible inclines (up and down), hairpin bends (with incredible inclines), and road junctions with no markings which weren’t shown on our electronic maps.  Worth every penny of the 6000JMD (US$40) each way [Ed: particularly when split between 5 of us!].  Jared and Karl had the fun of sitting (or standing) in the pick-up’s load bed whilst Conner had the front passenger seat and the only seatbelt.  Nicky and I sat in the back and braced ourselves against the front seats.  Great fun!

Whitfield Hall – perhaps the name overstates the place a fraction

It took an hour to cover the 12km (approx 7.5 miles) from Mavis Bank to Whitfield Hall which, at 4000ft AMSL, is at about the same elevation as Old Tavern Coffee Estate but several valleys over.  We arrived, a little before 1600hrs with the cloud coming down on the cloudforest and the hostel somewhat empty of guests – clearly, we were the first to arrive.

Conner, Nicky and Karl in our room in the lodge.  There’s
no electricity or hot running water. Note the solar powered Luci lights, which we brought from BV, providing light in the room

We were shown our room (2 bunk beds and something that looked like an old hospital bed) and the ablutions (no hot water and not that much cold running water in one).  It seemed sensible to take advantage of what little light there was to prep rucksacks for the morning and to dig out our solar powered Luci lights for when it got really dark as there’s no electricity at Whitfield Hall.  It was still full light outside but inside it was surprisingly dark, a very definite reminder of how things used to be.  Nicky and I explored briefly and then wished we’d brought books with us…..

Gathered around the fire in the gloaming.  Left to right: Karl, Nicky, Jared, Conner, Birgid, another guest and Gale (the latter 2 guests of Birgid)

…..but as the afternoon drew on Karl and Conner requested a fire in the living area.  Several large sacks of eucalyptus logs were produced and suddenly there was warmth and cheery light and a focal point for our group and other arriving guests around which to gather and talk.

Left:  Cooling recently roasted coffee beans.  Right:  Roasting those beans.  Birgid says that this is a very dark roast, not for drinking but for making into coffee essence or similar for baking

Amazingly, the other guests at Whitfield Hall included the Belgian crew of one of the other yachts in the marina and Richard and Birgid, who run a B&B and with whom Karl and Conner had stayed a couple of weeks before, along with their current guests.  We all talked long and hard around the fire, over a hearty Jamaican dinner and later whilst we watched locally grown coffee beans being roasted.  But we had a very early start to make so we made the most of the lack of electric light and hit the sack early.

The following morning [Ed: only just!] our alarms went off at 0230hrs and half an hour later, after a cup of coffee and a breakfast of ginger cake, we hit the trail in order to be on the summit in time for dawn.  Our guide, Charlie, set a very brisk pace, too brisk as it turned out, but our group matched him and we made fast progress through the darkness, our headtorches lighting the way – and Charlie’s falling to pieces at each stop.

One of several great views down over Kingston

In places the track wound steeply upwards, in other places we had great views down across Kingston.  Presumably, there were other great views too, but it was very early in the morning and the sun wasn’t up and there were few lights on view.

Nicky, Karl and Conner and Charlie, our guide

We arrived at the summit shortly before dawn and, of course, took obligatory summit pictures.  The sky was clear and we were hopeful of a spectacular sunrise and, perhaps, views as far north as Cuba.

Charlie showed us to a small ledge from where we would be able to see the sun appear above the horizon…….

Summit photo

……..but as the actual moment of sunrise approached, the cloud rolled in.  We waited until 0641 (the time of sunrise that day) and beyond and were rewarded by a few, ever so brief, glimpses of sun through orange cloud but not the spectacular sunrise for which we had been hoping.  So maybe we’ll just have to do it again in the future.

Meanwhile, the wind was rising, we were getting chilly, Charlie was positively frozen and breakfast was calling, so we started off back down the mountain and were rewarded with more great views as we went down.

And now we could actually see the track we could appreciate how well maintained and litter-free it is as well.

Blue Mountain Peak is the highest point in Jamaica (7,402 feet, 2,256m) and the trail we walked was, apparently, first established by the Maroons travelling from the south coast to their capital in Portland, the parish in which Port Antonio is located.

The Maroons abandoned the trail during their war with the British who eventually used it to gain access to Nanny Town, where the Maroons had their primary stronghold.

Of the tropical forests in the Americas only about 1% are cloud forests and the Blue Mountain cloud forest is unique in the Caribbean in terms of the number and type of plants and the sheer size of the forest – over 26,000 hectares (64,247acres).

5.5km (3.5miles) from the peak, we arrived once again at the Portland Gap Ranger station where we paid our park fees (JMD2500, approx US$20 pp), before continuing downwards towards Whitfield Hall.

Going down was harder going than the ascent and it was with some relief that we recognised the final landmarks on our run-in to the hostel.  Charlie had set a blistering pace down as well as up and we were the first party back to the hostel that morning.  In fact we got back so fast that we were asked if we had actually made the summit at all!  The hardier members of our party (Karl and Conner) took advantage of the slight pause before breakfast to enjoy cold showers whilst the rest of us elected to smell.  And when everyone was back there was a huge Jamaican breakfast – akee, boiled green banana, scrambled egg and peas, fried yams, bread and butter.  Lots of carbohydrate to replen after a 13km hike and it didn’t last long as the picture above attests!

After which it was time to say our goodbyes to Everton (the hostel manager) and to the other members of staff and to take the Toyota 4WD back to Mavis Bank where, happily, our SUV awaited us exactly where, and how, we had left it.

The drive back to Port Antonio took a further 3 hours even though we elected to take the ‘fast’ road (the A3), which routed us around the outskirts of Kingston before heading back across the Blue Mountains.  Unlike the B1, the A3 is a fully paved road, except in one place where there has been a recent land-slide [Ed: with more to follow by the looks of things!] and it’s also significantly straighter than the B1, with far fewer hairpin bends.  But the disadvantage of using the road more travelled is that it is also the road more policed and we were stopped by the traffic cops about half way back to Port Antonio.  Happily, all my documentation was in order (hire car papers, driving licence, passport) and the policeman was so confused by being told that we live in Guernsey and by being shown a Guernsey driving licence that we were soon waved on our way [Ed: despite Karl providing a Google map of the UK, France and the English Channel, including the Channel Islands].

The A3 ends at Annotto Bay where we hit the north coast and turned right towards Port Antonio.  About 20miles out of Port Antonio we stopped off at a group of fruit and veg stalls that Karl and Conner had found on a previous trip out.  Here Nicky bought a roasted breadfruit, a jackfruit and a couple of star-apples for the princely sum of about US$4.  And the seller threw in a free starfruit so we clearly overpaid!

After which it was back to the marina where we collapsed in a small heap to recover from a fabulous couple of days away and in preparation for a further day of exploration in the Blue Mountains, this time to one of the Maroon villages, Moore Town.

Blue Mountains, Jamaica