Dunn's River Falls comes down about 55 metres of limestone terraces on the north coast of Jamaica, and it does not stop at the bottom: the water runs out across a beach and straight into the Caribbean. Almost no waterfall on Earth does that. Most springs shed their dissolved limestone far inland and finish building their terraces long before they reach a coast, while this one carried the load the whole way down. Algae and plants line the pools and pull the mineral out where the water spreads and slows, cementing it into new rock, step after step. So the staircase is still being made, and its steps are rounded and slick with the algae that built them. The way to see it is to climb it, from the sea to the top, through the falling water.
Guides link people hand to hand into a chain and lead them straight up the water, about 180 metres of terraces and an hour of climbing, with the river pouring around your legs the whole way. Between the steeper steps the falls level out into shallow pools and smooth stone chutes, so the chain keeps stopping. You sit under a curtain of cold fresh water, slide down a flume the current has polished glassy, and float in a shaded basin while the line climbs past you. Wooden stairs run alongside the whole way for anyone who wants out. At the foot of it, where the fresh water spreads over the sand, you can swim in the seam where the cold river meets warm salt. That beach was a battlefield in 1657, when an English force beat a Spanish one sent to take Jamaica back. The Spanish name for this coast, las chorreras, the spouts, is the likeliest reason the town next door is called Ocho Rios — eight rivers, in a place that has none. At the top the trees open out. You have climbed the entire river, and it is still going the other way, over every step you just used, down to the sea.