Jamaica’s Fern Gully and Face Cave
Fern Gully – Jamaica
This is a site you just drive through as there is hardly anywhere you can pull over. The road was once a river but after an earthquake, it was dry and became a convenient place to put a road. Eventually, a twisty-turny paved road was put at the bottom, with beautiful views of greenery and many different kinds of ferns. It is 3 miles long, and IIRC, our guide said it had 57 turns. It definitely has a lot of them and is beautiful and shady.
It tends to be 10 degrees cooler in Fern Gully because of all the vegetation. Supposedly it was quite dark before a hurricane took off many of the treetops, letting more light in.
At a wider area in the road, there are vendors selling artwork and food/drink, some of the display wares are figures who probably took too many male enhancement pills. You can pose with them for a fee. I can’t imagine how you could take any of them home as they wouldn’t’ fit in any suitcase.
Along the way there is a small shallow cave with carvings of faces in it. Supposedly they are carvings from former slaves, per our guide. But others report that the artists in the area are adding carvings and requesting tips.
Near the pier is the requisite shopping area with the traditional Diamonds International, Effy, and the other stores that seem to be at nearly every port. But a little further down the road is the old bauxite processing center (for aluminum, or aluminium as they say here) and a large tank a bit closer to the port that is used to hold brown sugar for export (which is sent to many countries)
