One of my first trips to the Jungle was to the set of waterfalls called, ” the seven sisters”. This was a great introduction to the jungles in Grenada. A group of us rented a Taxi guy for 6 hours, which only cost us $20 USD per person. That included the round trip driving , the tour guide, a walking stick, all the bumps and bruises you want and the eye opening experience of the ice cold water from the jungle. We started our trek in the parish of Grand Anse, it is on the south-west end of the island, and drove to the middle of the island. The ride was very interesting. Try imagining 14 people in a stereo-typical van you see in foreign films. The vans are meant to seat 12 people including the driver, and we had 14 plus the driver. We are all friendly people and don’t mind the cramped space yet. Oh, yeah, I get car sick……not fun. I do get lucky on the ride up. I get “Shotgun” which turns out does not make a difference in Grenada. The roads are so skinny and they serpentine so much that it made no difference where I was in the van. the only thing that kept me from re-visiting my breakfast was the fact that I could stick my head out the window to catch some fresh air.

We reach the Banana Plantation where the hike begins. It took us 1 hour and 15 minutes to get to this point. We have traveled a total of 4.2 miles…..yes 4.2 miles. I approach the hut where the tour guide is sitting. Before I know it a huge two foot baby that looks like that kid from the the Peter Pan movie with Robin Williams. You know the one that ended up with the sword.  The baby screams to his dad, “Their here”. He comes out in baggy shorts, a plaid shirt and no shoes and says, ” Grab a stick and let’s go if you all are ready”. We start to head into the Plantation and all you see is jungle and banana trees. We pass by the owner of the plantation and he gives us the evil eye. The guide stops every couple of minutes to show us some cool plant stuff like; the Cinnamon tree, and the plant called Sorrel in-which is used for soft drinks as a flavoring. When we come to the end of the plantation we hike a small hill, about 60′, and then booom….in the jungle. It had rained quite a bit in the day prior to our visit and the ground is a muddy and slippery mess. The ground is this clay that looks like pressed brick dust and is so soft you could use it for fine sandpaper. Luckily the trail is a well traveled route and the 5 “hills” as they call them, had cut outs in the side of the mountain creating steps, but with all the rain fall it might have been easier to just go for the Michael Douglas slip-n-slide move from “Romancing the Stone”.

After the long trek to base camp we emerge from the jungle and it opens as the roar from the 33′ waterfall fills the air. We stop to take some pictures and a quick dip in the cold water. The guide shows us his ability to scale the 90 degree slope of the cliff and does a double back-flip from 33′ into the water. We eat some lunch and the guide tells us that we will begin to climb the backside of the cliff and jump the seven waterfalls. We are to leave everything at base camp including our shoes and bags. It took a little convincing and one person to stay behind that wasn’t sure of her abilities as a cliff jumper. So we took everything off and entered the jungle again with just our swimsuits. The climb up thew side of this cliff was crazy. It was almost straight up and completely wet from the water in the jungle. Every step was as if you were fighting against quicksand. We had to pull ourselves up with vines and broken and rotting trees that had fallen from the the hurricane in 2005. We came to a plateau and into a small rocky clearing on the rivers edge where the first jump was. The first jump was a 18′ jump through a tree bridge and into a pool of about 15′ of water. I was the third person to go and that was my first jump. We then swam down the river to the next four smaller but difficult jumps all with their own obstacles. Until we reached the the fifth jump we had an easy time. In-order for us to get to the fifth jump we had to walk through a cut in the rock that the water was using as a express lane. The water must have been going about 40 mph. We had to create a human train to help each person down the slope. All the girls had either given everyone a free show or temporarily lost their bottoms. We all reached the jump with all clothing’s on and accounted for. It was a very small jump, only 7′ into the large pool that fueled the 33′ waterfall where we started. When we arrived at the point of return a few of the girls got highly scared and unwilling to jump. The only thing that was on the guides side was that we were not able to climb back up the previous 5 waterfalls, so they had to jump.

His instructions while jumping off this tall waterfall was to, jump straight out hands out for balance and legs together like a pencil. A few questions arose to why and he explained that if you didn’t do it like the way he had told us, we might die. So that made those girls that had just expressed their unwillingness to this event even more reluctant to the jump. He made a decision and with no warning just jumped. He then again showed us how easy it was to scale the side of the cliff and re-joined us all for support. We began to jump one at a time. Until the last person, she took about another 10 minutes to jump into the freezing cold water. And the seventh jump was a little 12′ jump into a 30′ deep pool and was full of King fish. We hung out for a few minutes and then started our trek back to the bus.

 Total trip time: 7.5 hours

Waterfalls jumped: 7

Injuries: None