Alana Jadoo

“Al­lyuh, we in the bush!”

That was my first thought as the group stepped off the beat­en path and in­to the rain­for­est, greet­ed by views of an open, over­cast sky, lush green moun­tains, and tow­er­ing vines and trees that dwarfed even my col­league Aidan, who stands over six feet tall.

On June 20, co-work­ers, fam­i­ly and friends par­tic­i­pat­ed in the lat­est Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed hike—this time to Rin­con Falls in Las Cuevas.

Af­ter ar­riv­ing at the lo­ca­tion at 8.30 am and re­ceiv­ing a safe­ty brief­ing from hike leader De­wayne Berke­ley, our fi­nal head­count was 14.

We be­gan our trek down a dirt road, pass­ing a few hous­es along the way. As we ven­tured deep­er in­to the trail, Moth­er Na­ture showed her sweet­er side, and we took full ad­van­tage of the man­goes and pom­mer­ac she had con­ve­nient­ly stocked along the route.

How­ev­er, we were soon about to en­counter her less ac­com­mo­dat­ing side: the un­touched rain­for­est.

De­wayne led the way, cut­lass in hand, clear­ing sec­tions of the track that had be­come over­grown with fo­liage.

Then a light driz­zle be­gan. It helped keep the hu­mid­i­ty down, but un­for­tu­nate­ly, it did lit­tle to dis­cour­age the mos­qui­toes.

With a few stops along the way for those need­ing a rest, wa­ter breaks and pho­tog­ra­phy op­por­tu­ni­ties, we ar­rived at the falls at 11.30 am af­ter nav­i­gat­ing what was ar­guably the most chal­leng­ing part of the hike: the ropes fas­tened to the cliff­side to help hik­ers reach the basin be­low.

Those lack­ing co­or­di­na­tion and up­per-body strength need not ap­ply.

Rin­con, the sec­ond-high­est wa­ter­fall in Trinidad, cer­tain­ly did not dis­ap­point.

I have al­ways loved wa­ter­falls be­cause wa­ter—some­thing of­ten tak­en for grant­ed—has the pow­er to carve path­ways through stone while cre­at­ing deep pools be­neath. As some mem­bers of the group plunged in­to the wa­ter with can­non­balls, dives and even one bel­ly flop, a few of us chose to en­joy the view while feast­ing on home­made cheese paste and tu­na sand­wich­es pre­pared by Dion and Kwa­mi, re­spec­tive­ly.

Af­ter pos­ing for some group pho­tos, it was time to head back to civil­i­sa­tion. There is no cell phone ser­vice at Rin­con Wa­ter­fall.

Every­one knows the old say­ing, “What goes up must come down.” We sim­ply ex­pe­ri­enced it in re­verse. We had climbed down in­to the basin, so now we had to climb back up and out.

Chal­lenges like this al­ways build team­work. By the time we emerged from the for­est, tired but ac­com­plished, we had not on­ly con­quered the trail but al­so strength­ened the bonds that make these Guardian Me­dia hikes such mem­o­rable ex­pe­ri­ences.