We got more than we expected on the tour bus taking us to our excursion of the Middleham Falls hike! We had a great tour guide, Cynthia, who told us all about the island as we drove to the hiking spot. She was amazing and very friendly. She takes people on these tours once, sometimes twice a day, and she is a grandma! Can you believe it? She has 4 kids, oldest 22, youngest 7, and she, like most of the islanders, live off of their land. They grow their own food and mostly use herbs for healing.
The rainforest was beautiful!
We started the hike, to find out that it was a 2 mile hike to the falls! Wow! I wasn't expecting the hike to be so long and mostly uphill all the way there! It was definitely a beautiful hike, but I sure was glad I didn't have my kids for this one! We saw some beautiful flowers and even some mountain crabs! I had no clue there were mountain crabs, but then again I had never been to a rainforest!
When we got to the falls, there was a platform to see it. There were steep rocks down to the pool at the bottom and of course we were going to get in it! We didn't hike all that way for nothing! The water was FREEZING about 60 degrees, but it felt so good after sweating all morning.
The falls are about 300 feet tall and I couldn't even get a picture of all of it! It took 2!
This was Ricky's favorite part of the whole vacation! He loves swimming and being out in the middle of the rainforest was just amazing! It was so peaceful out there.
He swam out to the falls and took a picture looking up! I love it!
When we were done swimming, we got dried off for the long hike back to the bus. It didn't seem as long on the way back, but it was still beautiful the whole way! On the bus ride back to the ship, they drove us through a botanical garden. There were some interesting trees and apparently this one continued to grow on top of the school bus that it fell on during a hurricane. At the time, this was the only bus on the island!
We asked Cynthia for a recommended place to eat lunch since we had worked up such an appetite. She showed us this little restaurant called Mange Domnik Restaurant that was really good. This was the only time we ate food from a restaurant on any of the islands. We had a chicken and rice dish and macaroni and cheese. Such a great experience! Mom and I walked around the little shops for a while and got some souvenirs.
We headed back to the ship and relaxed in the hot tub before dinner. (This seemed to be the best time for it!) After dinner, we headed over to the show and then Ricky and my dad went to the theater to watch Harry Potter, while my mom and I went to the Love & Marriage show. It was like the old game show where they had a newly married couple, a couple who had been married for 20 years, and a couple who had been married for 40 years. The couple who had been married 40 years won, surprise. What a fun night!
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