Thursday, February 4, 2016

Morne Vert River Hiking


Hi everyone! The last 10 days in Martinique were a whirlwind, so I didn't get a chance to post on the blog. Even though I'm back in Delaware, I still wanted to share about the rest of the trip!
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Saturday the 23rd was our last all-day excursion. Our guide extraordinaire René planned a whole day for us in the rainforest near his home, Morne Vert (green hill) in the northern part of Martinique. Our hike was up the small river, not on the banks of the river, but actually in the water.


It never got deeper than about knee height, and René had gone out the day before and placed ropes in strategic locations so we could get up the small waterfalls that were found along the way.




There was one straight waterfall that wasn’t climbable, so we went around it, after standing under it and taking pictures of course! It was pretty cool! The weather was just about perfect, not too hot, but not raining either.


We hiked for about 3 and a half to 4 hours before coming upon a shelter that René and his friends had built in the forest. It seemed like it was in the middle of nowhere, but we found out later it was about 5 minutes from a road. It was equipped with tables and chairs as well as a kitchen where his family and friends had been working for our arrival. A 5-course meal was waiting for us at the end of our hike. We started with Accras, then had salad, the main course, fruit and dessert! All of it locally sourced from René’s garden or from those around his home.

They had even made a special effort to have dishes that our vegan and vegetarian students could eat! The students were surprised that the dishes just kept on coming, but at a good pace so that we never felt like we were stuffing ourselves. They thought that the fruit was the dessert, but then they pulled out an old-fashioned ice-cream maker and we churned our own coconut sorbet! In the end, we had eaten over the course of about 4 hours, a true Martiniquais/French meal.
Anna working the ice cream maker!
Everyone has said that this day of hiking was one of the highlights of the trip and I have to agree, it was pretty incredible. One thing that made it even sweeter was that we all knew there was a huge snowstorm (named Jonas) hitting the East Coast at the same moment. So now, when people ask any of us about Jonas we get to say that while the snow was falling we were hiking in the rainforest, climbing waterfalls and enjoying the beauty of Martinique!