Blue and John Crow Mountains

Mist-wrapped ridges in Jamaica's south-east sheltered people escaping slavery: first indigenous Taino, then the Maroons, whose hidden trails and settlements along the Nanny Town Heritage Route sustained decades of resistance to colonial rule. The same forests are a Caribbean biodiversity hotspot, dense with endemic mosses, lichens and flowering plants — and famous coffee grows on the lower slopes. UNESCO inscribed the Blue and John Crow Mountains in 2015 as Jamaica's first World Heritage Site, in the rare mixed category.