Six additional reasons to go to Haiti
1: The colour
Haiti is one continuous swirl of pattern and colour. Children in green-, blue- or red-checked gingham uniforms gather for an after-school snack. Pink and turquoise plastic kitchen utensils are piled for sale next to mountains of orange, yellow and green citrus fruits at the market. Lottery kiosks, store signs and wall murals are painted with stencilled letters and crazy patterns straight out of a pop art show. In Cap-Haitien, Haiti’s secondlargest city, the houses are all turquoise and apricot, with white gingerbread trim.
2: Street life
Everything in Haiti happens in the street. Every square inch of sidewalk and roadside is taken up by food carts and street sellers. Women carry coolers of soft drinks, baskets of fruit, even potted plants, on their heads as they weave their way between tap buses, which are gaily painted buses or pickup trucks that serve as share taxis. Carpenters, shoemakers and hairdressers set their tools on makeshift tables in front of their houses. At the corner, there’s a lineup for barbecue chicken sizzling on a steeldrum grill. It winds past an ad hoc antique store selling armchairs in the style of Louis XV.
3: The beach
Haiti’s north and south coasts boast some of the most pristine white-sand beaches in the Caribbean, some accessible only by boat. Walk for kilometres and never see another soul. In the north, outside CapHaitien, take a water taxi to one of Labadee’s secluded coves or head for Cormier Plage, a beautiful private resort with two hectares of beachfront and an extraordinary beachside bar. In the south, the historic coffee-export town of Jacmel features Haiti’s most scenic swimming spots. And along the Cote des Arcadins, not far from Port-auPrince, beaches are dotted with small family-owned resorts.
4: The rum
Rum is Haiti’s national drink, and Barbancourt is the rum of rums. The Haitian cocktail of choice is the lime-intense rum sour. Taste the five-star Barbancourt reserve special on ice with a zest of lemon, or sip 15-year-old Reserve du Domaine from a snifter, as you would cognac. (Just remember to spill out a few drops before taking your first sip, as Haitians do. A gift to the spirits.) Visit the Barbancourt Distillery, built in the middle of a sugar cane plantation in Damiens, 16 kilometres outside Port-au-Prince. It has been run by the same family since 1862.
5: The art
Haitian art is bold, colourful, shocking. Some of Haiti’s best-known modern artists were members of the Saint-Soleil school, which revived and reinterpreted primitive art. It’s a style Petion-Ville art dealer Georges Nader describes as “a little voodoo, a little mystical, a little political commentary.” Their work commands thousands of dollars and is sold in galleries around the world and at Galerie d’art Nader. But at the Iron Market in Port-auPrince and on just about every bend in the road, naïf landscapes, and voodoo-inspired wood and stone masks and sculptures sell for much less.
6: The food
Haiti’s culinary heritage is a source of great pride. The food is bold and zesty, a mix of Creole and French cooking that makes liberal use of garlic, hot chili peppers and citrus.