Lead Us Up the (Blue) Mountain…. Trek to the Peak

In one of our weekends off we decided to make the most of it and hike up Blue Mountain to the highest point in Jamaica, Blue Mountain Peak. We caught the public bus from Montego Bay to Kingston which was crazy even before it began. Drivers from all the buses shout and do their best to persuade you to get on their bus and not anyone elses, once on the bus the driver does his best to fill every part of the bus with a person so he can get the most amount of money per trip possible.

When we got to Kingston we caught a taxi from there to a small village a quarter of the way up the mountain. The scenery was breathtaking as the taxi drove up the winding hills at incredible speeds. Most of the time there were no barriers between us and a sheer drop where we would have plenty of time to think about the bottom before we hit!

From the small village a quarter of the way up we caught a 4×4 up deep into the forests of the mountain to our lodge half way up.  We realised why we needed the 4×4 and could not take a normal taxi, we went through rivers up, dirt track roads; incredible experience. By this time it was night and looking down we could see the lights of Kingston far off in the night. Was incredile to drive through little village and hamlet communities so far and deep up in the forests of the mountains.  It was strange to see in these little communities in the middle of nowhere hat they had massive stacks of speakers pumping out the jamaican rhythms. We arrived around 11ish at a little lodge lit by only oil lamps in the rooms. We set our alarms for 1:30 to get up and make the peak in time for some rise. We managed to leave the lodge by 2am and made it to the peak by sunrise at around 6am. The sunrise, colours and scenery is something I could never forget. We were so high up some clouds rush over the mountains and many are below you as you stand on the peak. We watched the sun rise slowly from behind the clouds, was so perfect. Reminded me of the film ‘City of Angels’ where the Angels come every morning to watch and see the song of the sunrise as it peaks up from behind the horizon.

We stayed for about an hour before beginning the 3 hour hike down. On the way down we met a very strange donkey called Jordan with an obvious multiple personality disorder. We arrived back at the lodge around 10am after 7 hours of hiking in total.

Amazing what you can do when you wake up early.