I am back in the appartment in one piece after a very memorable trip! Me and five of my collegues went to visit Le Bassin Bleu (I linked to the website in my previous post). It took us about 3.5 hours each way (actually, coming back was longer, but I'll explain that later). The road to get there took us through the Red Zone of PaP. The Red Zone are areas where we cannot travel to for security reasons. If we are to drive through a red zone, then we need an armored vehicle as our escort. Once we leave the red zone, the escort turns around. There was not allot of traffic this morning, so this went smoothly.
Once we were out of Pap, we soon took the mountain road. The views were breathtaking! Only problem, I have vertigo. I was fine for a long time, but then I started having motion sickness (because of the rocking back and forth of the vehicule) and then the vertigo set it. Ah well. I closed my eyes and took deep breaths and that helped.
The Bassin Bleu is about 12 KM out of the city of Jacmel (that is where our current Governor General, Michaelle Jean was born). The road to get to Bassin Bleu was somewhat rough... okay, extremely rough! But, we made it in one piece. The Bassin was beautiful, but my vertigo got the best of me once again and I did not proceed to the third bassin and stayed back with two of my colleagues who did not proceed as well. We basically had to hug a tree on the side of a cliff to continue on and that is where I put on the brakes! Ah well. I still have amazing pictures of the 1st and 2nd bassin and will post these later (maybe when I'm back in Canada, the bandwidth here is terrible).
When we got back to base camp, our driver, the guys that got there before us, and the locals were busy changing a tire on our Land Rover. It took a while cuz some screws were seized that were holding the spare under the vehicle, I think, but they got the job done. Once this was done, we proceeded to return to PaP! I managed to buy a few gifts for the girls at the souvenir shop there.
The drive back was more interesting that the drive out. First, I did not have vertigo and almost no motion sickness. Second, when we got to the outskirts of PaP, there was a huge traffic jam! Think of the worse traffic jam you've been in and multiply it by a factor of your choice. ;-) We were very lucky that our escort vehicle has police horns. You know that blaring sound police cars make when they want you to move out of the way? Well, with the help of this and some amazing driving skills from our driver, we were able to get out of the Red Zone fast! Ussman (our driver), you did a fantastic job!
Before you knew it, we were back at the Batiment Bleu. I've got more stuff to blog about, but I'll leave that for tomorrow. J'vous aiment les cocottes!
;-) LIL
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