Tamarind Falls, a staircase of seven cascades

They are called the Seven Cascades, or Tamarind Falls, sometimes Tamarin Falls, and the number says what matters. Seven waterfalls follow one another in Black River Gorges National Park, and the highest drops forty-five metres. The walk starts from the village of Henrietta, in the district of Plaines Wilhems. The place has a rare quality: it lends itself as well to a quarter-hour stroll as to half a day’s walking, and it is the walker who decides.

The first is the simpler. Eight hundred metres on foot, about a quarter of an hour, lead to the first falls. For this approach, there is no need for a guide.

The second is a proper route: five and a half kilometres, two to three hours, starting from the top of the highest fall. From there you descend from fall to fall, through dense forest where birdsong accompanies the walk, and finish at the foot of the great forty-five-metre cascade, in the pool that opens beneath it.

Between these two options, every shade is possible. You see as many or as few falls as you like, depending on the time you have and how you feel on the day. The walk is shaded, and along the way the cascades offer a chance to cool off under a natural shower.

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The pool at the foot of the great fall

The high point of the place is this pool, at the foot of the forty-five-metre fall. You reach it at the end of the long route, and dive in with the feeling of having earned your swim.

For those with a head for heights, canyoning goes further still: it means descending part of the falls themselves, as close to the water as possible, on a guided outing. It is an activity for people at ease with height, and it changes entirely the way the place is seen. You no longer look at the cascade; you pass through it.

Those who want to go deeper into the park, towards a few more falls, would do well to book a guide. Seen from the heights, the park then unfolds like a thick green cloth, and you sometimes glimpse the macaques that haunt it. The advice applies only to those routes: the first falls can be reached alone. All around, the park’s forest holds more than three hundred species of flowering plants, many of which grow nowhere else in the world, and some guided outings combine, over one day or two, the Seven Cascades and the ascent of Le Morne Brabant.

The name Tamarind Falls does not refer only to waterfalls. It is also the name of a reservoir, used for hydroelectricity and irrigation. Its gross capacity is 2.3 million cubic metres, its surface covers at most 1.68 square kilometres, and its full supply level stands 492.36 metres above sea level.

The detail says something about the island. On land so small and so densely populated, water from the heights does not fall solely for the pleasure of walkers: it is held back, shared, put to work. Among the island’s reservoirs, Mare aux Vacoas, the largest, dates from 1885 and holds its waters at more than 566 metres above sea level.

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The other falls of the forest

The Seven Cascades are not alone. In the same park, a marked viewpoint looks out over both Alexandra Falls and the forest around them. From this viewpoint a walk of one to two hours leads to the 500 Feet Waterfall, ending with a dip in the cold pool at the top of the fall.

Further south-west, Chamarel Falls drop some hundred metres down a basalt cliff, in two ribbons, into an oval pool. Three streams feed them before joining the Saint-Denis river, and it is between December and April that their flow is at its fullest. In the south-east, near the village of Cluny, Eau Bleue offers, behind a curtain of forest and roots, a thirty-metre fall and a pool of deep blue where people swim.

Each has its own character. The Seven Cascades have theirs: not a single fall but a staircase of water, descended at your own pace, which leaves the walker free to stop at the first step or carry on to the pool at the bottom.