Patch Blogger: The Haunted Waterfall

After spending four or five days in the pressure cooker of Port-au-Prince, it felt like time to get out of town for a day. I had met some people who lived in Thomonde, about two hours outside the capital in an area known as the Central Plateau, and they invited me to get up early and spend the day with them. The plan was that I would hang around Thomonde for the day and then give a couple of them a ride back down to the city before dark. Reconstruction money had recently built a two lane "highway" connecting the two areas, and suddenly a town which had once been relatively remote was now, at least in theory, a day trip away. My friends told me that the trip had once taken three days during the rainy season because their truck kept getting stuck, and that they (along with other travelers) spent two miserable nights in their cars sweating it out and rotating guard shifts out in the mountains. 

Soon after my first arrival in Haiti, I met a young man named Patrick in the street of Port-au-Prince, and we fell into conversation. It turned out that he had a car but no work, so I decided to hire him as my driver as I was still learning the streets and needed to see a lot of places in a short time. He had done a pretty good job driving me around town for a few days, but the idea of heading out to the provinces did not excite him. He had never been out that way before, and the unavailability of maps or street signs meant it would be a trip into what was literally uncharted territory. Clearly, Patrick did not share my spirit of optimism and adventure. In his defense, I should acknowledge that the road is narrow, slow and dangerous due to the lack of lighting, steepness of the hills, sharpness of the curves and the relatively high probability of carjacking, robbery, kidnapping or other inconvenience. 

Finally I was able to cajole him into accepting the assignment, and we were off. This being Haiti and all, the two hour trip took us more than four hours. We took many wrong turns, got stuck in some very weird traffic jams (goats, overturned truck, etc) and generally had no idea where we were going, but when we finally arrived, my hosts seemed impressed with the time we made and with the general fact of my having arrived at all. They had a lunch of rice and beans waiting for me, and I had the opportunity to meet their extended family and some neighbors.

This far from the city, people subsist mostly on agricultural production, although for some reason a good bit of the arable land seemed to be fallow. I saw some sugar cane and some bananas and what may have been tobacco growing in small plots farmed mostly by hand. Their produce was packed up into bags and then collected at the roadside by a buyer whose truck passed through on certain scheduled days.

There was also a small hotel in town which looked like it could have been nice if it had ever been completed. It was open, but not for business, as none of the rooms were completely done, and there was no water running to any bathrooms. There were no paying guests, nor do I think there ever had been. Some people who were possibly workers were hanging out in one of the rooms watching bootlegged Hollywood action movies and drinking warm beer. They saw me walk by and called me to come in. Three or four people turned to look at me blankly before turning back to the screen. I heard a beer bottle being popped open and understood that the next 15-20 minutes of my life had just been decided. I sat in the incredible heat of the tiny room for a while and ignored the flies that were hell-bent on trying to get into my mouth for some reason. Eventually, after mumbling something in bad French which they ignored I slipped out to continue exploring around the place. The grounds which had been landscaped at one time were incredibly overgrown, and there was a sense of picturesque decay about the place in general.

Our next stop was the provincial capital of Hinche, a largish, small city of about 50,000 souls. Although I could imagine little reason for anyone to travel here, there is an airport/soccer field/livestock pasture on which small planes could land. It was weirdly reminiscent of those South Pacific cargo cult airports (worth Googling.) It was explained that on the infrequent occasions of an arrival, the plane circles while the game is suspended or the livestock cleared. After a quick survey of the somewhat charming town, we headed out into the hills in search of Bassin-Zim, a waterfall which is widely known for its amazing beauty, but whose exact location is best known only to those who live around it. We slowly threaded our way out of town and up into the hills. The mood of my driver darkened as the roads got rockier and steeper until finally we reached a section of road which was impassable to our vehicle. We parked the car and started walking, having only a general sense of the direction we were supposed to go.

Luckily, our presence was soon discovered by a group of kids who took our hands and dragged us up and down the steep winding paths until we could start to hear the roar of the falls. The first place we reached was a huge cave partially obscured by vines and leaves. Out of it flowed a clear stream which collected into some very inviting, deep pools that would have been perfect for soaking in. Having already walked quite a long distance in the dirty, dusty heat, I was ready to start swimming right away, but they told me to wait. The cave itself was old and delightfully creepy and had some petroglyphs of unknowable age on the walls, probably dating back to the indigenous Taino who lived (and then were eventually exterminated) about 500 years ago. The air was cool and filled with the sound of echoing splashes and murmurings of the stream. I felt a million miles from the chaos of Port-au-Prince and was grateful for the chance to rest my spirit in this place of such incredible natural beauty, surrounded by the laughter of gentle children.

After resting in the cave for a short time, I was led out along a forest path and could hear the falls getting louder and louder. Suddenly, the vista opened and we were standing on the edge of a cliff looking down over an expanse of rock, a sandy beach and a shimmering blue lake. We had the place to ourselves and eagerly made our way down along another trail to the water. Finally, we were ready to swim, and as I plunged into the cold water I felt incredibly happy and refreshed, although I will confess that I did harbor some dark suspicions about cholera and other water-borne diseases that have been stalking the Haitian countryside. 

I guess that here in this sun-drenched moment of my account, it's as good a time as any to say a few words about Voodoo. I noticed that my companions would not swim out too far into the water, and I assumed it was because they were not strong swimmers and there was a bit of a current. It turned out that the place actually carries a bit of a bad reputation because of the evil spirits which are thought to dwell in a small grotto behind the waterfall. According to our guides, several people die here every year and their bodies are never found. I could make out the dark entrance to the cave, and it was creepy enough that I wasn't overly tempted to swim into it. Plus, I'm not sure if my life insurance will pay out if my body isn't presented as proof of death. It is said that 90% of Haiti believes in Christianity, but 100% believes in Voodoo. I don't know how true that actually is, but it gives you a sense of how widespread the folk beliefs of this mysterious religion are here. I swam across the lake to climb up the waterfall a bit, but they absolutely forbade me to approach the grotto. In a country where bad things can and do happen with depressing frequency, it should be unsurprising that a belief system has formed to help people explain these things and come to terms with life's difficulties. 

One of our party had the foresight to bring soap, and we all had a chance to bathe once we were done swimming. To cap off our luck, someone with a rugged pickup truck had managed to get close to the falls and we were able to get a ride back up into the hills where our truck and driver was waiting. I learned that our hosts had planned to have dinner waiting for our return, so our agenda was to head back to Thomonde, which was on the way to the capital, have a quick dinner and then continue back to Port-au-Prince by dark. 

Of course, by the time we got to Thomonde we found that it was dusk, and therefore too late to begin the ride back to town, as the roads were unsafe at night for the reasons I listed above. We were invited to spend the night and leave early in the morning, a prospect which was unacceptable to my driver who had by now become very antsy. Despite the protestations of my hosts, he could not be induced to stay. My choice was to make the dangerous nighttime journey or to be left in Thomonde with no way to get back. As hard as it may be for you to believe, I actually do try to minimize my risks, and so after a brief huddle with my friends I decided to stay. I paid my driver for the day, gave him a nice bonus and wished him luck. 

And just like that, as so often seems to happen, my day trip had turned into an overnight. We ate our rice and beans for dinner, went out to the little village square for some cold beer and delicious local rum, and had a wonderful night drinking and chatting under clear skies and bright stars. How I would get out of Thomonde and return to the capital was a problem to be solved another time.