My pencil following my heart to Haiti: Mountain Drive

Mountain Drive

Last Sunday Paul offered to take me on a drive into the mountains. I can see the mountains behind the base but never thought much about them since it seems we are always looking at the beach. So we did.

The turnoff to the mountain road is about five kilometers from base towards Leogane. It is paved and goes across the island to the town of Jachmal, another coastal city of around 10 or 15 thousand and 45 kilometers distant. It starts climbing immediately from the coastal plain and doesn’t really stop for quite a ways. It has many blind turns and steep inclines with slow trucks and speeding motorcycles. It is wise not to go too fast as one might find a broken truck around the corner. In fact, many broken trucks around any corner. One large dumptruck was sitting on a stack of tires and rocks. The entire rear axle was sitting off to the side as the Haitians tried to figure out how to fix it. He was still there on our return trip. Another truck was simply in the road and had been there for quite a while from the appearance of it. No one was around, it was just there with a couple of rocks in front of the wheels to keep it from rolling.

I was surprised to find each turn in the road revealing a magnificent mountain view. At first it was seeing the ocean from high up. The entire coastal plain stretching from base camp towards the haze at Port au Prince could be plotted. From our perch the individual structures were too far away to be seen so all we really saw was the green fields and sections of palm trees along with the outline of the city of Leogane. I can see why Haiti was at one time considered the gem of the Caribbean.

The higher we got the more spectacular the scenery, from a distance. The road was relatively free of trash, but still seemed unkempt and old. It was strange to come around a bend and see perfect stone cobbled road drains, curbs and erosion control going up the mountain sides only to disappear into eroded ditches and trash a little further up. Someone t sometime in history had taken the time and expense to really build this road correctly with proper drainage. Over time, without maintenance, it deteriorated and essentially even disappeared in places.

There were four little villages that we passed through on our trip to the top. You could tell when one neared because the trash and cars along the road intensified. Usually a large speed bump or two would herald the edge of a villiage. They were generally small and seemed almost pasted to the side of the mountain. People had their little ‘shops’ outside, though not nearly as many as in Port au Prince. Many people simply wandered around town or sat along the road just to watch. A central building like a gas station or a small repair shop marked the center of town and then the houses petered out until the speed bump at the other end of town bumped our exit. I noticed that guardrail at each end of town provided convenient seats for the younger adults who tended to congregate away from the activity in the villiage.

In between the towns were more windy turns with a mix of tropical vegetation and bare, eroded hillsides. One town seemed to have a one time open pit mine next to it. I understand that bauxite, the parent material of aluminum, had once been mined on the island. Perhaps this was an abandoned pit alongside the road that had once provided that mineral. Further up the clouds rolled in and covered the view for a while. It seemed odd to drive in the clouds on an island. I think the elevation at that location was above 2000 meters, that would be over 6000 feet. Out of the clouds, about 28 kilometers in we spied the ocean on the other side of the island. It was here that we turned around as the day was getting late and we didn’t really want to be out on that road after dark. Once again, the view was quite incredible; steep hillside, occasional cattle or donkey roaming the slopes; terraced hillsides for growing crops, that strange mix of tropical vegetation and mountain valleys.

I could see a beauty in this place that was not seen along the coast. With the correct development this really could be a gem of the Caribbean.