Beautiful dry day, first time in a long time we have seen the tops of the mountains nearby, they are always full of clouds. So off we go to attempt the trip to Syndicate Falls and hopefully the Syndicate Nature Hike too.

Dinghy into the town dock and walk over to the bus area. The southbound bus is full with us added so it leaves right away. It’s only about 20 minutes to the drop off for Syndicate Falls.

Good news, I was right – the bus does NOT go up the road to Syndicate Falls.

Bad news, we have to walk – it’s 90 minutes to the start of the trail.

That’s OK, though we like the hike. It’s a pretty steep climb up a good road for about 75 minutes of that hike. The road crests a bit, descends a bit then climbs again into the Syndicate valley. Here it flattens out a little into lush gardens everywhere. The turnoff to the falls is well marked and its another 5 minutes or so up the hill to the entrance where there is a cute little cafe. We pay our EC$10 each for the privilege and off we go.

Quite a few people leaving the falls as we go in which is a good sign, maybe we’ll have them to ourselves. This is undoubtably the best maintained nature trail we’ve seen. Every 50 or 60 yards there is an information sign talking about the history, the flora, the fauna, etc. Very nice.

You walk through the river a few times and then come around a corner to see the spectacular falls. We take a few pics just approaching. There are 4 other people there but they leave shortly and we have the place to ourselves for the next half hour or so we spend there.

The water is cool of course and the massive size of the water falling creates quite a wind plus there is no sun so it is quite chilly after about 10 minutes of swimming and filming with the GoPro. We move a little lower where the sun is to have a spot of lunch, dry off and warm up.

Walk back to the entrance where I have a very good coffee and Christy has a very interesting home-made juice with ginger and tumeric added. The views across the valley from the cafe are stunning, but unlikely the pictures will do them justice.

The cafe attendant says the walk to the Syndicate Nature Trail is almost another hour so with that, the time it would take to walk the trail (apparently its easy at least) we elect to just go back down.

A very nice saunter down hill almost all the way, we pilfer a couple of mangoes from a tree overhanging the road.

At the bottom in about 75 minutes or so, we cross the road and hope for a bus. Sure enough, one comes by in less than 5 minutes and ferries us back to town.

Christy goes to check out the laundry situation while I blow up the sad sack dinghy which seems to be getting worse for holding air.

Christy makes pasta for dinner, a couple Father Mike’s and that’s about it.