Friday, January 23, 2009

The Dry Waterfall Hike

It all starts with an e-mail from Keith and Eileen. "We're going on a hike; anyone want to join us?" Bill and I rarely say no. A hike into the rainforests is always an adventure in shopping! Yes.. I said shopping.

Eileen is familiar with the plants of the island. And more often than not, we find a young tree that wants to come home with us, allowing us to pull up the plant, roots and all. This trip was no exception. On route, when exhaustion began to set in, I watched as Eileen picked the leaves of a tree, crushed them and smelled their delicious scent. "What is it?" I inquired.

"It's a cinnamon tree," she explained. Not like the kind of cinnamon we use in the States of course. This cinnamon is used more like a bay leaf. When crushed, the smell of cinammon is emitted. She told me I could use it in any dish that I wanted to taste like cinammon. When I turned around, Keith presented me with a good size cinnamon tree that obviously wanted to come home with me!
On route, we came across "the lemon tree" which we had seen before, but never like this. It was covered in lemons that hung from every branch. The tree was so big we could place ourselves inside of it and enjoy the scent of lemon everywhere!

Two hours later we arrived at our destination, the dry waterfall, which was actually quite wet and running. Keith and Eileen had never seen such a large pool at its base before. The water was deep enough to wade into up to our waists, which Keith actually did!

By day's end, our backpacks were full of lemons and bananas ripe for the picking!

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