Royal Mt. Carmel Waterfalls (Day 2 with Rissa)

Tuesday, December 24th 2013

Merry Christmas Eve. I can't believe that it is already Christmas Eve. And guess what... Rissa is still here! And she is still having fun... I think. I'm still having fun having her here at least! :D

Tuesday our tentative plan was go along the south side of the island to Laura's Spice Garden, Royal Mt. Carmel Waterfalls, and then La Sagesse. All I can say is, good thing it was tentative. Because it didn't exactly play out like that. TIG.

The drive down the south side is very beautiful. The road is for the most part, a decent size with less cliffs you could potentially drop off of if, heaven forbid, something bigger than two golf carts need to drive in opposite directions (I'm look at you Grand Etang Road).

Rissa took these pics during the drive.

Lots and lots of green, which I am sure is different from the lots and lots of snow that Rissa is used to seeing this time of year.

Although we navigated there well, Laura's Spice Garden was closed. I had a feeling it might be, because public holidays are more like Public Halt-days in Grenada. Don't get me wrong, I think it is way cool that the country respects holidays in that way.

So we moved on to Royal Mt. Carmel Waterfalls. I guess the Christmas Spirit is all around because usually I am greeted by at least a couple very enthusiastic entrepreneurs when I roll up to Mt. Carmel "trailhead." This time we got off scott-free. No gate use fees, no car watching fees, no water spigot fees. Which of course, just made me want to give him more of my money, funny how that works.



I've been to Mt. Carmel numerous times, once of which I blogged about here, almost exactly a year ago. The hike consists of two different waterfall spots. I don't know if they are all Mt. Carmel waterfalls or what.



It's a fun, short hike, but pretty muddy. And of course, even the most inexperienced nature scout can see some wildlife.

Aaand, sometimes it does take a keener eye.

 The first waterfall you come to is pretty large.

 We did some climbing around and Rissa went swimming in the crystal clear pool at the bottom of the waterfall.

 Then we hiked down and across the river to get to the bottom falls.

No matter how many times I slide down the lower falls, it is still pretty fun. The first time I was a little apprehensive, but the pool is deep enough, the rock is smooth, it's not very tall, and the water isn't very fast.

It's pretty fun! So we all went down a few times. We had a picnic lunch in the beautiful scenery before we started the hike back.

Taking a few pics along the way of course.


















You have to cross this sketch little bridge. Ali, I'm sure you don't approve of the structural soundness of this.

As we were cleaning off our sandals at that convenient little spigot I asked the Spigot Master if there were any cocoa fruits in season. He grabbed a cutlass and headed back into the jungle to grab us some. He showed Rissa how to smash it on the curb to get it open and eat the delicious fruit from the inside. It still blows my mind every time how that is where chocolate comes from!