While Don was introducing himself, a goat suddenly appeared at the top of the steps and came down to our group. Don joked about how no pets were allowed. The goat proceeded to stand in the middle of everyone and relieve itself. It followed us for most of the hike. Don jokingly called in 26 people and 1 goat.
The hike was quite excellent. It was about 2.5 miles long. We saw many cool things and Don was good about explaining the history and nature of things we saw. Some of the highlights were the Bayrum leaf, which has a distinctive smell; the autograph plant with its waxy leaves that you could write messages on; the very large kaypoc tree that grew silky cotton and whose trunk was used to carve canoes out of; termite nests, Jumbies -- the "faces" in the kaypoc tree; hermit crabs; the Monkey-No-Climb tree (covered with sharp thorns); and millipedes that can blind you for 3 days with their inky venom.
In addition to things in nature, we also saw ruins of sugar mills and of slave houses. One slave house we stopped at had lots of copper and terracotta pot fragments as well as porcelain pieces. Fairly recently (as in the last century) a woman lived there and was brutally murdered by a man who was later caught. The bricks used to build the structures were either red or yellow and were combined with shells and pieces of coral (taken live, so many coral reefs must have been destroyed). They ahd a certain attractiveness to them that has been imitated in modern times (but without the coral). Don explained that the loveliness of these walls weren't appreciated and had had white stucco put over them.
Ruins of sugars mills and slave quarters.
Around 12:30, we arrived at the petroglyphs. We all breaked for lunch. There was a natural pool in this area of large stones. On one side of the pool someone had carved symbols in the rock face right above the water line. Don explained that the water line pretty much remained constant. The cool thing was that if you looked at it sideways and saw the carvings and their reflection in the water, it made a totem pole effect. Don explained that the origin of these carvings is in dispute. Some believe that the Taeno Native Americans (the ones around when Columbus came) made them. Other believe that the carvings look like African symbols and that the slaves had made them. We had a leisurely lunch examining the petroglyphs and watching the antics of curious mongooses.
The petroglyphs and a mongoose.
Eventually we got down to the beach where there were the ruins of a large sugar mill structure. We got to walk around in it. There were some bats hanging from the rafters. The place where they extracted the sugar was still fairly intact. Some of the big copper dishes were even still there. We walked around there for a while and then hiked over to the next beach where the boat was waiting for us. Everyone else went for a swim except for me and Dave because we hadn't brought our swimsuits with us. Captain Bear's wife power boated us over to the big boat and it took about half an hour to get us back to Cruz Bay.
Down at the Sugar Mill at Reef Bay.
When we got back we got an ice cream cone each (a bit stale it turned out) and took a taxi back to Serendip. We were too tired to go back to town or anything so we went over to the Westin again for a swim in the pool. On the way back, we stopped at Tropicale and got some fixings for our veggie burger and snacks for lunch tomorrow. Then we went back and showered and Dave grilled the burgers. Another yummy dinner for us. Then another pina colada a la Dave.
