Meridian Writers' Group
Winter sliding pursuits now possible in tropical forests
ST. ANN'S BAY, Jamaica-When the endless days of beach and sun get stale, it's time to go sledding.
Both bobsledding and dogsledding are serious, if not widely popular, pursuits here. The Jamaican bobsled team, in fact, became internationally known after competing in the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. (It came 29th.) Disney made a movie about it, Cool Runnings . Unlikely though such a team was, it also competed at Albertville in 1992 (coming 14 th - ahead of the United States, Russia, France and Italy) and will be in Whistler for the 2010 Games.
Dogsledding is a more recent (2005) addition to Jamaica's sports pantheon. The team also serves to promote the soft-adventure company that backs it, but its four mushers are in earnest. They regularly enter a series of races in wintery Canada and the United States, including the 1,600-kilometre Yukon Quest.
Both bobsled and dogsled have now been converted into tourist activities, about a 20-minute drive apart on the north coast road.
The bobsled run is part of a new attraction, Mystic Mountain, that opened in July 2008. After taking a chairlift to the top of the mountain you board a one-person sled and rocket down a twisting, 1,000-metre course. You're on a track, not ice, but you'll still get up to 45 kilometres an hour on a dry day. If you want to go a lot faster, come right after it rains. Top speed then is about 80 km/h, should you want it: unlike a roller coaster, the bobsled has a brake.
At Chukka Caribbean Adventures, a musher will take you for a 90-minute ride through the forest and alongside the sea in a two-person sled on wheels, drawn by a team of 14 dogs. These aren't huskies, but a diverse group of breeds, strays rescued from the pound at the Jamaican Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
If the idea of any sort of sledding in Jamaica leaves you cold, both Mystic Mountain and Chukka also offer a more expected tropical adventure: ziplining, high above the ground from tree to tree through the lush forest. Mystic Mountain has five lines, the longest of which is 52 metres, plus one "surprise" - a 10-metre vertical drop. Chukka has nine, plus two "surprises." Its longest sails you over the jungle canopy 220 metres.
Mystic Mountain's ziplines are fewer and shorter, but more convenient. They're a two-minute walk from the top of the chairlift and when you finish you're at the lift's midstation. Chukka's situation is different: you begin with a 20-minute van ride up a crooked, potholed road, then walk - downhill! - 15 minutes along a series of forest stairs to the start of the ziplines. The lines aren't as zippy as at Mystic Mountain, so you don't get up the same head of steam, and the guides, although polite, have perhaps been doing it too long to retain much enthusiasm. There's also a 15-minute hike out, but it's a flat walk alongside the lovely, rushing Laughlands (pronounced "lawlands") River, then a five-minute bus ride back to Chukka HQ.
ACCESS
For more information on Mystic Mountain visit its website at www.rainforestbobsledjamaica.com .
For more information on Chukka Caribbean Adventures visit its website at www.chukkacaribbean.com .
The White Witch wants you to leave now
ROSE HALL, Jamaica-As the guide who tours you around Rose Hall Great House tells it, at a séance Annie Palmer, who died in 1831, said that she would be the last mistress of Rose Hall, and woe betide anyone who dared try claim that mantle.
"Because of that," says Latoya Lewis, "we all try to be out of here at 6 p.m." The last people intending staying overnight, in 1989, were moved to depart before they even went to bed.
Rose Hall, a Georgian-style, two-storey stone mansion built between 1750 and 1780, is on a hillside near Montego Bay in what was once a 2,430-hectare sugar plantation operated by more than 2,000 slaves.
Its first mistress, Rose, is called "the good wife" because she had four husbands and all of them died of natural causes. There's a portrait of her in the library.
There are no portraits of Annie Palmer, the second and last mistress of Rose Hall, because, says Lewis, "the night she died the slaves burned all her pictures."
Annie Palmer (née Patterson) was an Irish-English woman who had come with her parents to live in Haiti when she was 10. There she learned the dark arts of voodoo. She arrived in Jamaica, probably when she was 17, in search of a rich husband. She found John Palmer, the owner of Rose Hall.
They married in 1820, but it wasn't a blessed union. About seven years into it Annie took a young slave as her lover. John found out and had him whipped. Annie took her revenge by putting arsenic in her husband's tea, then smothering him. On his death she became the richest woman in Jamaica.
Husband number one died in what's now called the Gentleman's Room. Husband number two she stabbed to death in the Toile Room (named for its wallpaper). "You could see the blood on the wall until 1965," says Lewis. Annie also poured hot oil in his ears. Husband number three was strangled in the Crewel Room (also named for its wallpaper), Annie being aided in this case by a slave, Takoo.
Takoo was one in a series of lovers drawn from black slaves and white bookkeepers, several of whom also wound up dead. In the end, the "white witch of Rose Hall" became too much for everyone and was, in turn, strangled, possibly by Takoo. She was 29.
The next owners didn't stay long: they vacated the premises after a maid fell to her death, allegedly pushed by Annie's ghost. The house then stood empty for 130 years until it was bought in 1965 by an American couple who spent US$7 million opulently, if not entirely accurately, restoring it.
In 1989, a couple, friends of the owners (who'd never lived there), was having a cup of coffee in the Guest Room before retiring when they heard a baby scream across the landing in the Crewel Room. Investigating, they found nothing, but when they returned their coffee cups were gone. They located them in Annie's bedroom, smashed to bits. They decamped at once.
ACCESS
Admission is US$20 and includes a tour. For more information visit www.rosehall.com .
For information on travel in Jamaica go to the Jamaica Tourist Board website at www.visitjamaica.com .
