Bassin Bleu is a chain of four spring-fed basins stepping down a limestone gorge in the hills above Jacmel, on the south coast of Haiti, cobalt-blue pools of cold clear water, the deepest 22 metres, and the last of them, Bassin Clair, has no way in on foot and is reached by climbing down a rope on the rock face with a guide from the village. The colour comes from the limestone: rain sinks into the hills, dissolves the rock slowly and comes back out of a spring carrying the minerals that scatter the light blue, and the basins hold their full colour through the dry months of January and February, when no silt washes off the slopes; the way in is by four-wheel drive from Jacmel across a river and up a rough track, then a walk that climbs above the canyon, where the hills open on a valley of coconut palms falling away to the Caribbean with Jacmel's bay a pale line at the far end, before the path drops to the basins. The first pools are shallow and warm, and the rock shelves ringing them are the local diving boards, used by the guides without ceremony.
Bassin Clair is the one to reach. A single waterfall drops about ten metres into the deepest of the four basins, the water under it cold, clear and far over the head, walled by rock and hanging ferns, and the descent to it is a rope down a slab that turns slick in the rains, when the fall runs hardest in May and October but the runoff browns the water for days. Local stories say that water spirits live in the pool, each with a name, and that they draw down swimmers who stay too long, so the guides keep the visits short. Jacmel itself is the town of Haiti's carnival and its papier-mâché masks, with a coast of beaches to the east, and the basins are its excursion, an hour from the harbour. Bassin Bleu is a spring that comes out blue, and the last pool is behind a rope.