Globetrotters March Travel Writing Prompt

The Waterfalls of Jamaica

Do go chasing them

(This article is based on a writing prompt in Globetrotters)

I’ve stood at the bottom of Iguazu in Argentina on a rainy mid-week afternoon when I felt like I had the place to myself. I floated in a pool of water near the edge at the top of Victoria Falls on the Zambia side. Nearly every time I’ve driven from Vancouver to Whistler on Highway 99, I’ve stopped to stretch my legs and marvel at the falling waters of Shannon Falls, Brandywine Falls and Nairn Falls — all three of which are provincial parks on that stretch of road.

I’ve never had much desire to ever see Niagara Falls — though flights from New York City to Toronto sometimes provide a view from the air. But I do want my travels to take me to Angel Falls in Venezuela at some point. Kaieteur Falls in Guyana would also be pretty cool, maybe on the same trip now that these two put their flags away and have worked out their differences over the Essequibo region.

From here, I think there are a few different directions that this article could go, but I’m going to try something a little different this time.

Immediately upon reading this month’s prompt, my mind flashed back to a new staff icebreaker I attended when I started working at the international school in Kingston, Jamaica a few years ago. Normally, I grin and bear it through those activities, but in this particular one, a new colleague said something in her introduction that hit my ears in a flash.

Everyone had to say one thing that involved the natural world that they had done the past summer.

She answered that she had made it to every waterfall in the country. Or maybe she said that it was her goal to get to them all. My memory is fuzzy on that, or maybe I just heard what I wanted to hear.

It’s a small island country I figured, how many could there be? I approached her afterwards and asked how many that meant. She said 67.

I knew at that point that I had my work cut out for me, if I ever hoped to make a dent in the list. I knew that many of them would require some work, a bit of planning, a bit of luck, the helpfulness of locals and a determination to be ok with throwing GoogleMaps out the window.

I could immediately tick two off my list because they are the same ones that the vast majority of people who visit Jamaica ever get to.

The first time I was there was in the early 90s on a cruise. Yes, I can admit that. I joined the hordes of pasty-skinned North Americans that were disgorged from the boat in Ocho Rios on the north coast for the 10-minute drive to Dunn’s River Falls. You get your photos, you get your ziplines, you get your reggae but you certainly don’t get the place to yourself.

The next required a bit more intrepid travel, which I was happy to do during my first real stint in the country in the early 2000s when I was working there as a school teacher and swim coach. YS Falls is in what Jamaicans call “the country”, which is everything outside of Kingston, the capital. It’s out there alright, but is usually packaged as a day trip for the cruise ship punters to the Appleton Rum Estate which is located not far from there.

I can recommend both, but only if you time it right. The late afternoon is always best, as by then the tour buses are trundling back to the cruise ship pier.

It was on my second stint there, when I found myself in the (un)enviable position of trailing spouse in 2021 and 2022, with access to quality backwoods transportation and a desire to really see the place enabled me to chip away at a few of the 67.

I was a bit newer in my writing process at the time, but I was diligently compiling my experience in the country in a series called The Best Thing About Living in Jamaica, which I managed to wrap up in one neat article on my way out the door with my rum bottle in hand, here:

It’s from this series that I detailed adventures to two waterfalls in particular. The first is Reggae Falls, a human-made cascade on the southeast coast in the St. Thomas parish and the other is the natural Kwame Falls in the north in the parish of St. Mary.

They were different experiences, as the former was a 4x4 drive and the latter was a hike. But their similarities were in the way both offered a glimpse of and a moment in non-all-inclusive Jamaica. For me, that was always the best reward.

As I said earlier, I’m going to try something new here. Instead of reinventing the wheel, I’m just going to insert the two articles I wrote about them here and leave them as they were then: unedited and unvarnished, as a time capsule of a different era of life, I suppose.

One of the things that I like best about the monthly writing challenges and prompts that the editors of this great publication set, is the opportunity to read about other people’s experience in places I’ve been and also places that I still dream about getting to.

Here are some fantastic articles by fellow writers and travelers that I promise you you’ll love:

Brad Yonaka takes us to Angel Falls in Venezuela:

Michele Maize details the healing power of a hike to a falls:

Melissa Rock shows us around some fast moving water around the Great Lakes: