Blue Mountain Country by Maureen Barry

The tropics can play tricks with the senses ... Mandeville country in Middlesex, Jamaica, looks at first sight the quintessence of Englishness - ancient oak, elm and ash stand in stately isolation in upland pastures, and northern cattle munch contentedly from shade to dappled shade. Open your eyes a little wider and your other senses will soon confirm that this isn’t the Home Counties after all, but the Caribbean, and the lush woodlands reminiscent of home, rustle and sigh in an un-English vanilla scented breeze 2,000 metres high in wild Blue Mountain country.

This was a jaunt I was on, to be sure, to track down my Irish connection in Jamaica. The Irish have connections everywhere of course, and jaunt compulsively round the globe as if it were their own back yard, but Donagh O’Connell, my great-granddad, a legend back in Oranmore and a founder-member of Irishtown Jamaica, was the cause of my conviction that I was descended from a long line of red-haired buccaneer wenches and an early addiction to the films of Errol Flynn and Maureen O’Hara.

To get here you leave behind the seduction of the turquoise shore, the assault on the senses that holds the whole island in a lover’s embrace and climb up to where the air is keener and the perception sharper. It’s a sad thing, I thought, that visitors rarely leave their boltholes on the palm-fringed beaches and venture out and meet the Jamaicans where they live.

Oscar was my driver and Jamaica expert - a torrent of wisdom on every subject - with an eye for a pretty girl and an apparently insatiable appetite - gravalishus - greedy, to use the vernacular; he could barely survive an hour without a snack from the land or at a roadside stall. As our jeep left Gordon Town the road twisted and turned steeply out of a succession of valleys; villages constantly appeared and receded from view, clinging precariously to the hillside like lost Inca cities. Tiny houses were strung out along our route, framed in their verdant patch of coffee, banana and vegetables. These smallholdings provide most of Kingston’s fruit and vegetable needs and at the weekends the roads are packed with mammy wagons, taking Jamaican matrons - "higglers" - to market alongside their groaning baskets.

A young girl stopped on the road ahead of us and hoisted a basket of bananas onto her head. She swung her hips provocatively and grinned as we passed. Oscar slapped his thigh appreciatively and swivelled his eyeballs. Jamaican women are certainly headturningly handsome and independent with it, a blend of African, European, Arabic, Chinese and East Indian stock which accounts for the National Motto: "Out of Many, One People". Beauty contests are a part of Jamaican life, and great lamenting breaks out if Miss Jamaica is unplaced in the Miss World contest. Oscar told me his mother had just married his father at the age of 50 after raising their nine children - a procedure quite common in Jamaica. An enlightened government has just passed legislation that all babies are legitimate, whether born in or out of wedlock. Naturally this spawned the very popular reggae song "No more bastard no-deh!"

After a short detour to Charlottenburg House, a well preserved Great House furnished with antique Jamaican furniture, Oscar suggested engagingly that we stop for a little jerk. The smell coming from the roadside stall was boonoonoonoos! - fantastic! A Jamaican speciality, jerk pork is rubbed in hot spices and cooked over pimento wood to impart a memorable flavour. This way of preparation originated with the Maroons and - how could I ever forget after Oscar’s anecdotes - we were deep in the heart of Maroon country. Maroons, I was told, are the proud descendants of slaves who escaped the Spaniards over 300 years ago and fled to the mountain country, earning the name ‘cimarron’, the Spanish for wild or untamed. They plagued the very life out of the English settlers and it took a couple of Maroon Wars before a truce was signed.

A few roadside stalls later, replete with bammy (deep-fried cassava bread), staAs our jeep climbed higher in this lush, perfumed Eden the temperature was a perfect 70°F with the 'Doctor Breeze', the cooling tradewinds, blowing from the sea.

"She never went into battle armed like the rest, but received the bullets of the enemy that were aimed at her and returned them with fatal effect in a manner which decency forbids a nearer description". The only recorded instance of a Maroon turning his back on the foe.

As our jeep climbed higher in this lush, perfumed Eden the temperature was a perfect 70°F with the 'Doctor Breeze', the cooling tradewinds, blowing from the sea.

"Gets real frigid, down to 50°F at night," Oscar assured me.

Jamaica is a botanist’s paradise with nearly 3,000 species of flowering plants, some 800 found nowhere else. Wild orchids and the gorgeous purple national flower, lignum vitae, twine among the tangle of vines and the aerial 'Old Man’s Beard' drips from telephone and power lines. Negotiating breathtaking hairpin bends we took in Cinchona Botanical Gardens and 'World’s End' home of some of Jamaica’s famous rums and liqueurs under the 'Old Jamaica' label. At the Central Coffee Factory we were numbed by the aroma of roasting Blue Mountain Coffee beans, the best coffee in the world, Yeh-mon! Oscar introduced me to 'rat-bite' coffee - the rats chew the juiciest beans off the trees and the gathered fallen beans are ground down into the choicest blend.

Soon we came to The Cooperage where imported Irish coopers (hence great-grandad) made the wooden casks for shipping coffee and then further up the Mammee River Road - an emotional moment - we arrived at lrishtown where the men were quartered. The end of my pilgrimage. There was no blue plaque to the journeying O’Connell. Nothing much of anything in fact. To dispel my disappointment and any Irish duppies - ghosts - that might be hovering about we attacked the three hours scramble to the summit of Blue Mountain Peak. I sucked in my breath at the view - as far as Cuba on a clear day - and pondered how great-grandad could have endured to drag himself away from all this and end up watching the sun go down on Galway Bay.

From this god-like vantage point the whole of Jamaica falls away from you - down there on the coast the sybaritic life continues, with the Elegant Resort hotels of Half Moon, Round Hill and Trident more spruced up and playing to fuller houses than ever. Over to the west at Negril - for centuries detached from the rest of Jamaica by the swampy Great Morass - is where you find most of the new action. Strung along this seven-mile stretch of pink powder sand are probably the world’s most hedonistic resorts - among them Swept Away, Thrills, Sandals, Hedonism II and the Grand Lido, one of the Superclub group which caused a flurry in the press when it opened, with its logo of two lions apparently mating. A long way from the elegance of Sandy Bay maybe, but Jamaica has something for everyone, and there are hidden gems on this island to please those with a taste for both the way out and the wild.