Jacmel

Jacmel is the handsomest town in Haiti, a coffee port whose merchants built brick and cast-iron houses with deep balconies in the nineteenth century, most of the ironwork shipped in from France. It is the craft capital of the country, and workshops along the streets turn newspaper and paste into painted papier-mâché masks that the Carnival wears. Bassin Bleu lies an hour inland, three pools of cold blue water stacked under a waterfall and reached by a scramble with a rope. Beaches run east to Kabic and Ti Mouillage. Jacmel is said to have been the first town in the Caribbean with electric street lighting.