Deep in the heart of the rainforest, we came to a series of jade-coloured pools. Compared with the bright verdure around us – sprays of hummingbird-attracting heliconia; chataniers, their buttressed trunks bound by strangler figs; towering mahogany; spidery tree ferns, whose woody stems sprout parasitical bromeliads – they were a dull green. But they looked irresistibly inviting all the same. We’d been walking for more than an hour through the Edmund Forest Reserve in the depths of St Lucia’s mountainous interior, a steep descent in the shadow of this small island’s tallest mountains towards the waterfall of Enbas Saut, a force of white water perhaps 15m high that feeds these pools. The climb up the valley threatened to be steeper still, and it was hot. There was nothing for it but to jump in.
It was, quite simply, the best massage I have ever had; the pressure of who knows how much water pounding on my shoulders was utterly invigorating, and when it finally knocked me over, I lay back and floated on the otherwise calm surface, gazing up at the dappled tree canopy. It was exhilarating, utterly relaxing and so energising that the subsequent ascent felt like nothing at all, even the stage when we were required to swing like Tarzan on lianas, the resilient vines that festoon and befringe the jungle.
It’s as well to have a guide when hiking in St Lucia, so dense is its rainforest and so disquieting the noises it makes if you pause to listen: clanking bamboo, whispering foliage, whistling birdsong (potentially spooky, too, once you’ve heard the legend of Papa Bois, the malign spirit who preys on hapless hunters, and probably tourists as well). And I was fortunate to have been put in touch with Rhikkie Alexander, a former forester turned senator in the St Lucian government, who, in addition to working as a programme development specialist at the Ministry of Labour, Information and Broadcasting, organises rainforest tours. He is consequently a fount of knowledge and philosophical opinion when it comes to history and politics, the national obsession in St Lucia. And of course the forest itself.
There, he would point, was a blue mahoe, imported from Jamaica centuries ago; there a mahogany; there an incense tree, whose chalky sap is collected and burned in the island’s many Catholic churches; and there a gommier, whose highly inflammable sap smells of the fire lighters it goes into making. This, he told us, had been used in conjunction with great hollow shafts of bamboo to make imitation cannon, which the Brigands – as the escaped slaves who led an uprising during the 1790s were known – used to frighten their French rulers, whose own country was in the throes of revolution. It led to a temporary abolition of slavery here in 1794, though it was later reintroduced when Britain regained control of the island, for St Lucia was fought over throughout the 18th and early 19th centuries, and changed hands between the French and British 14 times.
Independent since 1979, St Lucia still fuses elements of French and British culture. English may be the official language and the Queen may grace the banknotes, but the place names – Soufrière, Jalousie, Gros Islet – are mostly French, as is the creole, or kwéyòl, language you hear spoken everywhere. A knowledge of French might help you understand the odd noun, but it won’t help you read it. When the first creole dictionary was published in St Lucia in 2001, debate on spelling raged for weeks in the local paper: should, for instance, the word for water be spelt dlo or de l’eau? Was rain lapli or la pluie? Not that any of this was comfort to our other companion, Rayon, Rhikkie’s Guyanese fiancée, who was struggling to learn the language.
