Beholding the Beauty of Southern Haiti for the First Time: Photo of the Day
Like most every road in Haiti, the winding stretch that leads from Port-au-Prince to Jacmel on the country’s southern coast brims with curiosities, some more attractive than others.
At varying turns you’ll see awe-inspiring beauty, smiles, camaraderie, chaotic traffic, and struggle, though the overall scene is far from the post-apocalyptic image of the country so popularized in the mainstream media over the years.
I took the drive just this past Saturday and found most of what I saw to be not all that dissimilar to local roadside environs I’d witnessed recently in Dominica, Grenada, Trinidad and elsewhere around the Caribbean.
People scratching out a living selling local fruits, veggies, and other goods; some stray dogs; acres of sugarcane, banana, corn and other crops; some areas more litter-filled than others; people limin’, drinking rhum, playing dominoes – typical Caribbean.
Haiti is still coming along for sure, but what I saw on the road to Jacmel, in particular examples of the country’s natural beauty like the image above, inspire hope in me for the future of this very special place.
The photo is of the north coast of Haiti’s southern region facing the Canal de la Gonâve. We were just a few minutes outside the town of Léogâne, heading up the Massif de la Selle mountains southward to Jacmel. It’s impossible not to stop here and marvel at the landscape below and consider just how far Haiti can go…