J.P. Slavin
SÉGUIN, Haiti -- Napping in the sun, floating in turquoise water, and
sipping
rum cocktails are the usual rewards most tourists seek on a Caribbean vacation.
But for many year-rounders in the West Indies, even for the tiny expatriate
community on this island, a well-kept secret for a weekend escape is the great
beauty of a Caribbean mountain range.
When talking about vacationing in Haiti, an adventure atmosphere could be the
underestimation of the millennium. Once one of the Caribbean's most popular
destinations -- in the 1960s and 1970s hotel guest books in Port-au-Prince were
signed by the likes of Mick Jagger, Marlon Brando, and a bon vivant Secretary
of State, Dr. Henry Kissinger -- but after 15 years of political chaos, a
public health scare over the HIV virus, and poverty levels that have descended
from terrible to shocking, Haitian hotels are now filled with international aid
workers from CARE and Médecins Sans Frontières, not celebrity sun worshippers.
When I lived in Haiti earlier in this decade, I would occasionally spend
Sundays at a friend's country house in Furcy, a mountainside hamlet about an
hour's drive from downtown Port-au-Prince. I often heard about a trail that
went from Furcy across the Massif de la Selle and south to the beaches near
Jacmel, a colonial port on the Caribbean Sea -- but my work as a foreign
correspondent kept me from taking the overnight hike. In February I vacationed
in Haiti with a photographer friend, Steven Irving, and I finally set out to
complete a longtime goal: to walk the Furcy-Jacmel trail.
It took us another hour to walk through La Visite's lush, almost rain
forest-like woods to reach Séguin. Because of the mist, the visibility was only
about 200 yards but the cool temperatures and soft trail, layered with fallen
pine needles and moss, was a welcome contrast to the rock-covered path where we
had spent the last three hours. As was the fact that we now walking
horizontally across the Massif's plateau, which rises in most parts to about
7,000 feet above sea level. The uphill climbing was behind us.
We got up at five the next morning. The walk down to Pérédo, a village just
north of Marigot, the first sizable town east of Jacmel along the coast, would
take us six hours; and since we were heading back into the tropical heat, we
needed to be off the 16-mile trail before scorching afternoon temperatures
would take their toll on us.
This article first appeared in Food and Home, November 1999.
Photo: Steven Irving/Irving Photography/1998
Rather than bougainvillea and Royal palms, island mountainsides
offer lush pine forests, alpine wild flowers, and with elevations in Haiti
approaching 9,000 feet, breathtaking views. By late afternoon, the cool
temperatures require sweaters and even during the long and hot summer months of
July and August, most folks go to bed with fires burning nearby.
One of the most imposing mountain ranges in the West Indies is found here
along Haiti's southern coast, Massif de la Selle, a nearly 30-mile long plateau
dominated by the Caribbean's second highest peak, Morne La Selle (elevation
8,767 feet), which ungracefully translates to Saddle Mountain. French explorers
chose the name during Haiti's colonial past because the entire ridge -- nearly
1,500 feet higher than Cuba's Sierra Maestra and the coffee-laden Blue
Mountains of Jamaica -- looks like a saddle, with Morne Cabaio (7,481 feet) on
its western edge resembling a saddle horn.
"I love the difference," explained Enrico Marucchi, an Italian expatriate and
owner of a small inn here near Massif de la Selle's third landmark mountain,
Morne La Visite ( 7,114 feet). "I usually ride up on horseback from the sea,
and in a few hours you change the situation dramatically. I mean, it's like
being in Austria in these mountains. And it has an adventure atmosphere."
Only the Heartiest of Adventure Travelers Need Apply
But for the heartiest of adventure travelers, Haiti is an endlessly
fascinating journey. Since winning independence from France in 1804, in
history's lone successful slave uprising, Haiti has gone its own way and today
the country remains rich in traditions from its African and French roots.
Though its capital, Port-au-Prince, is utterly charmless, Haiti's mountains
remain a place that time has forgotten. Wrapped in mist and the mysteries of
Haitian Vodou, it is land where people live as they have for hundreds of years:
rising well before the sun, farming the mountainsides by hand, and walking
miles along steep trails to sell vegetables and livestock at country markets.
It is place that not only missed the information age, but also the industrial
revolution. Electricity and telephones are non-existent, and at one shack near
Marucchi's L'Auberge de Séguin, the doors are hinged -- ingeniously -- with
worn out sneakers.
Massif de la Selle
Because of the pea-soup fog and rains that float up the southern side of
Massif de la Selle by the early afternoons, it's best to start the hike at
daybreak; and we left our Port-au-Prince hotel in a four-wheel drive truck at 6
AM. It's a 15-mile drive from the affluent suburb of Petion-Ville to Furcy, but
the ride is entirely uphill and after passing the market town of Kenscoff, the
route turns into a dirt road. It took us 45-minutes to reach Furcy and our
pre-arranged rendezvous point with our guide to Séguin, a local farmer named
Syphal Leclerc.
The leg to Marucchi's inn in Séguin would take us across a 12-mile trail. We
drove the first two and half miles, and after Leclerc gave us a signal to stop,
we unloaded our supplies and sent the car and driver, which we had rented for
the morning, back to Port-au-Prince. Our initial stretch on the trail lasted
for only 200 yards when we turned a corner and saw for the first time the
spectacular canyon valley we would circle across to reach the ascent to Massif
de la Selle.
As we set up a quick breakfast camp, we took in the strong mountain air and
gazed at the canyon's "boutilyes," the Creole word Haitians use to describe the
island's mountains. To the northwest stood the pine forests of Furcy and then
circling to the southeast for as far as the eye could see, we took in an
unfolding series of terraced-farmed mountainsides. Some of the slopes slanted
as much as 70 degrees and descended straight down to the valley floor. Then,
directly to the south, Leclerc pointed across the valley and said, "La Selle."
The hulking mountainside was the north side of Morne La Visite, and in the
morning light we could clearly make out its summit -- which lurched more than a
1,000 feet above a nearby rounded mountaintop.
Furcy to Séguin
The Furcy to Séguin trail is much more than an elevated path that cuts across
a mountain canyon. For the Haitians living in these mountains, it is a lifeline
-- the only route from their fields to the big open-air markets in Kenscoff and
Port-au-Prince. And it is well traversed. We were first joined on the trail by
a group of children wearing neatly ironed school uniforms and heading to a
one-room schoolhouse in the base of the valley.
It was also a market day in Kenscoff and throughout our five hour hike, a
steady stream of market women wearing brightly colored dresses and headscarves
walked towards us. In full African style, all of the "machanns" carried
enormous bundles on their heads: 30-pound bags of carrots, stacks of wicker
chairs, even baskets of live chickens. Some of the women had faces of wet
perspiration, traces of heavy breathing, others walked like gazelles -- but all
strode with a determined dignity and stood ram rod straight to balance their
cargo. It was a remarkable athletic performance.
The first two hours of the hike is a fairly easy walk across a series of up
and down foothills. I often asked Leclerc to show me the route, and he would
point out signs of it crawling up the side of La Visite. Other times the trail
-- and La Visite -- would disappear behind a hill. Even in the heart of the
valley, the trail is elevated and during one water break we looked down toward
the east side of the valley and saw the headwaters of Rivière Grise-- and to
the west, a stream, almost a waterfall, rolling straight down a mountainside.
It was clear that at one stage we would need to do some serious hiking, and
when we turned another corner I saw the toughest stretch of the trail: a
daunting two and half mile steady climb to Cayes Jacques, the mountain top
where we would reach the Massif de la Selle's plateau. While I put my head down
and just walked up the bright red clay trail, I passed a teenager and did a
double take when I noticed he was reading a paperback book while walking in
pair of brown leather cordovan wing-tips. As I passed him, he said to me in
broken English, "To be. Or not to be." By this stage of the walk I was doing my
best to conserve my energy and had long ago given up greeting passersby with a
hearty "bonjour." But I had to respond, and I countered with the only other
line of Shakespeare that I know by heart, "We few, we happy few, we band of
brothers."
We took a 25-minute lunch break after finally reaching the summit of Cayes
Jacques. The cloud cover that had been creeping up the south side of the range
in the morning had finally reached the Massif de la Selle's plateau, and the
weather changed from bright sunshine to a cool mist.
Near the top of Haiti's long list of national emergencies is an environmental
catastrophe and our lunch spot was a prime example of what happens to a
mountainous island that only has 1.5 percent of its original tree cover left.
We were sitting in a field covered with limestone rock formations that have
emerged here over the years because rains had washed away literally yards of
the ridge's topsoil. For centuries Haiti's forests have been cut down to be
turned into charcoal, still the primary cooking fuel for millions of Haitians.
With nearly no tree cover left to hold soil onto the mountainous terrain, the
United Nations now estimates erosion is claiming 36 million tons of topsoil
every year.
Haiti, however, is a never ending contrast. While having lunch on a
mountaintop that epitomizes the country's environmental nightmare, we were
about to walk into one of the island's last forests, La
Visite National Park,
founded in 1983 by a presidential decree signed by none other than former
dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, now exiled on the Côte
d'Azur. Before
heading into the park, Steven found a one gourde note (worth about five cents)
on the trail. He tried several times to give the money to one of the "machanns"
who were also taking breaks after climbing Cayes Jacques. No one would touch
it. Even a young girl who was heading to Kenscoff with a basket of parsley on
her head dodged away when Steven offered it to her.
In a country where most people earn a lot less than a dollar day, a nickel
means something. But no one wanted the note because of the island's Vodou
religion, which is largely karma based. Perhaps it was viewed as an evil
temptation from a Vodou spirit; but regardless, the gourde would stay on the
trail until it was found by its rightful owner.
Séguin
The Séguin auberge is a Kenya-style ranch house, with two porches, two master
bedrooms with 12 foot ceilings, modern bathrooms (including hot water), and a
spacious dining room. It is decorated eclectically with brightly colored
"atizana" handicrafts from Jacmel and a Haiti-inspired painting by Franceska
Schrifrin, a Los Angeles-based artist. Marucchi is an avid rider and the inn
offers guests a stable of nine horses, complete with English saddles.
We would spend two nights in Séguin, a tiny village that didn't even rank a
listing on a detailed national map that the United Nations prepared in 1990 for
Haiti's first legitimate national election.
Our first morning we headed off for a six-hour hike through the national park,
which has a series of excellent trails, most old logging roads. To reach La
Visite's summit, we first walked through meadows and a tropical fern gully,
where we cut across a waterfall and inspected two caves, both with ceiling
heights of about 45 feet. We walked gradually up La Visite and less than 50
yards before reaching its peak, a pair of Killdeer flew past us, part of the
flock of North American birds that winter on the Massif de la Selle. In a land
that is the birthplace of naturalist John James Audubon, La Visite National
Park is home to some 80 bird species.
When we reached the summit's ledge and just before peeking over to take in the
view, a steady gust of cold air hit us right on our chests. It was like
standing on top of an open ventilator shaft. The winds in the lower valley,
trapped by the surrounding mountains, were racing up the mountainsides, which
on La Visite vary from 70 to 85 degrees. The drop is a minimum of 800 feet.
From the summit, we also looked across at the Furcy mountains and the canyon
valley we had walked through the day before, including the punishing ascent to
Cayes Jacques.
About 45 minutes before we had reached the peak of La Visite, Steven tapped me
on the shoulder and pointed at a pine tree. There were two black plastic bags
hanging from its limbs. Our guides from the inn looked towards their feet when
we asked about it. One of them said in a restrained voice, "Vodou."
"What had been left in the two bags might only have been the remains of
sacrifices offered to the 'Lwa,'" answered Max Beauvoir, a Haitian Vodou priest
now living in Washington, DC, referring to the Creole word for the gods of
Haitian Vodou. I had contacted Beauvoir by e-mail after returning home to New
York City. "Is there a particular significance for those gifts to be placed in
such a high and remote area?
"Certainly. Suppose a farmer wants to protect his coffee field from thieves
and natural predators. He may have held a ceremony on this site to call on the
spirits for protection. Furthermore, in the Haitian language, all of these
mountains are referred to as 'boutilyes,' which is the land of the first
ancestors. It is not unusual to see people who go there to come down from their
horses, remove their shoes, and kneel down to pray to their fore-fathers."
The Final Descent
It was brilliantly clear, star-lit morning. We took breakfast in the pre-dawn
darkness, and when we headed off at 6:15 we walked directly east into a long
sunrise. It was another market day in Kenscoff, and the trail was already busy
with "machanns" as we walked across acres of rich farmland.
Like the route to Séguin, the beginning of the hike was painless and we
stopped from time-to-time to take in the enormous mountain wall we were walking
down. After two hours, we hit the cloud cover that was softly floating up the
mountainsides and the extra moisture made the trail slippery as ice.
It took us three hours to get down the next narrow leg of the trail, which
wraps around a mountainside and slowly descends to Pérédo. Every second of it
we had to concentrate and calculate which rock to step on to avoid slick mud
patches. We gripped onto our walking sticks tightly. But after 45 minutes, the
mist slowly lifted and we began to make out the royal blue of the Caribbean
Sea. It was the first time that we had seen the ocean since leaving
Port-au-Prince. The mist that hangs below Séguin for much of the day, never
quite reaching sea level nor pouring over to the south side of the Massif de la
Selle, had blocked us from seeing the ocean for nearly three days.
Soon we were walking past signs of the tropics -- orange, banana, and coconut
trees -- and the transition from the cool mountain climate to heat and sun
meant our final destination, Jacmel, was in our sights. As we inched down the
mountain, the view of the sea became richer. Every time I looked up from the
trail, the water was a darker shade of blue.
When you reach the south coast of the Haiti, you are instantly reminded that
the country is indeed a Caribbean island. On this trip, Port-au-Prince was
never worse, rivaling Lagos as the world's least attractive city. The high
country we were leaving behind is a part of a Haiti that few -- beyond the
families who have farmed the mountainsides for centuries -- have ever laid eyes
on. Séguin remains the land of Haiti's ancestors, yet it is far from the
Caribbean of rum punches and soothing ocean breezes. But that's exactly what
Jacmel was about to offer us.
After walking on a cobblestone road for an hour, we arrived in Pérédo where we
immediately negotiated with a bus driver for a ride to Jacmel. We were soon on
a bumpy coastal highway passing miles of beaches and soft ocean surf. Nearly
two hours later, we pulled into Jacmel for a long weekend of leisurely strolls
through the 300-year-old city, soaking up its New Orleans style architecture,
beach front restaurants, and enjoying lazy afternoon naps, poolside.