Voyage of Discovery 5

"You can't be unhappy in the middle of a big, beautiful river"
Jim Harrison

Early arrival at Ocho Rios on the North of Jamaica. 

On day one of the cruise we met a Jamaican couple who'd retired back to the island of their birth, having spent most of their lives in London.  They emigrated in 1955, in response to the call for people to help rebuild post war England.  Overcoming prejudice and discrimination they persevered in finding a place to live and raised a family before returning to Jamaica over forty years later.  We explained that we were planning to go ashore independently and do our own thing, and were surprised when we were cautioned to "be careful" in quite a concerned tone of voice.  A couple of days later we heard a State of Emergency had been declared in Montego Bay area and the Parish of St James.  Ah, that explained things.  My geography isn't that great where Jamaica is concerned - so I didn't know how far away we'd be from the problem area - and the official pronouncements were that the Foreign Office was advising escorted travel only - so we opted for a ship excursion to Dunns River Falls, 

We were moored close to the park, so it was only a short transfer from the ship and we were soon donning our water shoes and stripping off for our morning stroll up the falls.  As we were so close we were also in quite early, probably the third group in - so it was still fairly quiet.  It was quite exhilarating scrambling up over the large boulders, water cascading down and over us as we teetered precariously in places - there was a surprisingly strong force behind the water.  We held hands to keep our  balance, and also have a helping hand up some of the steeper sections of the climb.  Plenty of fun along the way of course, with a dunk in the deeper pools and under the natural falls.  Although the sun was hot, the falls are bordered by lush vegetation that shaded and kept us cool.  The climb took about an hour and a half overall, it's slow going in places to allow everyone to make it safely to the top.  By the time we got out of the river the park had seriously filled with visitors, the lower part of the falls was really busy and there was a continuous chain of people making their way up, all seemed to be having a whale of a time.  And of course there's the video to buy afterwards, yeah man, before we head back for an afternoon doze after our exertions.