Port Antonio, Jamaica: Part 3

Last night, I had dinner, again at Marybelle's at the marina, with two couples from two boats traveling back to Portland, Oregon, and then spent some time poolside with the two French families, who will be departing on Monday. When I returned to my boat, the "music" was just cranking up in town.  Winning out yesterday evening was a DJ who played parts of recognizable songs, overriding them with canned sounds including shrill whistles, cheering, and spurts of drumbeats (or maybe gunfire or explosions). Making matters worse, he stopped tunes at random places, without regard to musical phrasing or even measures, paused a second and then started another song with absolutely no segue from one to the other. It was awful, and it continued until 3 a.m.! I have never stayed in such an uncomfortably noisy place.

This morning, after only four hours sleep, I got up early, and it was relatively peaceful, although there is always a low thrumming sound from shore, punctuated by occasional honking horns (which becomes more frequent as the hours pass each day). I cut up a local pineapple for breakfast and made a grilled cheese sandwich before tidying up down below and then putting on a swimsuit even though it was overcast. My next task was scrubbing the mildew out of the pilot house cushions, and I find it impossible to use a bucket and a hose without getting myself wet--hence, the swimsuit. It started to rain as I was working, which had two benefits. First, I could use the water falling from the sky to rinse the cushions. Second, and to my great relief, the rain muffled all the sounds from land and it was gloriously, aurally peaceful for a while.

So, now back to the beginning of our stay in Jamaica, back to dinner the night of our arrival. After a fairly unimpressive meal at Anna Banana's, we started walking back to the marina but after a minute or two caught a taxi. The cost was 100 Jamaican dollars per person--pretty cheap, since that amount equals US $0.80. The driver was honking and waving at friends as we went along. Then he suddenly stopped when someone hailed him from the street and said to Ula, Enis and me in the backseat, "Scoot over a little. That's my girl." The door by Enis opened and the girl squeezed in to the small Toyota. The rest of the way, the driver and she both greeted friends along the way.

Despite the ubiquitous loud music at night, we slept pretty well. Just after 9 a.m. (Saturday, March 9), breakfast was laid on the cockpit table and we were getting ready to eat when a dinghy came by with a young couple and four small kids. This was our introduction to one of the two French families who are traveling for a year, from France to Africa, across the Atlantic, up through some Caribbean islands, and then back to Europe. We invited them on board. Olivia, the mother, speaks English quite well, having spent a couple years as an au-pair in England. The four children were just part of their offspring. In all, they are traveling with their seven children, ages 14 to 2.

Ula, always the perfect hostess, immediately brought out cookies for the kids, and we showed them all around our boat. They are traveling on a four-cabin, 51-foot monohull, so they were impressed with how spacious our boat is down below. As we chatted with the adults, I brought out the neon green floating chair which Ula and Enis had brought for us. The kids had so much fun with it that we decided to give it to them, and they were thrilled.

Ula offering cookies for the ride back to their boat

Ysance, the baby, in the floating chair

After they departed, we ate breakfast. Peter was working on island time, but I was anxious to explore, so I hustled him off to obtain a rental car as well as a SIM card and some Jamaican cash. The agency is only a couple of blocks away, but he was gone a couple of hours. Ula, Enis and I got tired of just sitting around, so we washed the deck. Finally, after noon, he returned, telling us he had chosen the cheapest car on the lot and that the first thing we would have to do is find someplace to get air in one of the tires. A woman by the pool told me to try the Texaco station, so we headed there first. No, they did not have air, but an attendant directed us to a tire shop just down the street. It was doing a booming business, but they accomodated us right away and didn't charge us anything. Just to be safe, Peter had air added to the spare tire. The guy putting in air didn't use a gauge, he just punched the tire with his fist to test it.

First stop: air in the tires

Air for the spare

The car ran well and the AC worked, but there were some quirks. The outside handle on the front passenger door was missing, so I had to wait for Peter to open it or leave the window open so I could open it from the inside. The gas gauge didn't work, but we figured we could guage the need for fuel after putting in a few gallons by checking the odometer. Since that also didn't work, we had to estimate mileage and gas use. One safety feature that did work was the light on the display indicating a door was open. Peter didn't notice this at first, but we paid attention after Ula's door opened when she leaned on it shortly after we had left the city. It's good to keep the doors closed when there are no seat belts in the back! I don't know how fast we were going when that happened, because the speedometer was not functional either. At least the hand-cranked windows worked--at first. Somewhere along the way, Enis' refused to close all the way. Luckily, we were not caught in any torrential downpours.

Front passenger door

And so, our two-day exploration by car began. We headed east, planning to stop and perhaps snorkel at a places, find a Jamaican jerk shop for lunch and enjoy the scenery. The crowded, compact city gave way to cultivated fields and dense jungles. Sheep and goats munched vegetation near the narrow roads, none of which have lines marking the edges or dividing the two lanes. We wanted to stop to see Blue Lagoon, but it was closed for some unknown reason. San San beach was closed because the north winds had covered the sand in thick layers of sargassum weed, we were told. Since both are below the road, we didn't even get a glimpse of them.

Sheep by the road:  Has he been eating the local weed?

Breakfast had been consumed hours ago, and we were all hungry, so we went directly to the little town of Boston, parking our car at the end of a narrow street lined with open-air jerk restaurants. The street dead-ends at the Great Huts Resort, and a wedding party was just arriving. The bride was resplendent in a traditional white gown, but the groom was more striking in his white tux with a bright orange shirt and a flashy green tie.

Walking back to the jerk centre, we passed goats and roosters and were soon accosted by vendors selling jerk chicken, jerk pork, local (and unusual) fruit juices in recycled liquor bottles with the original labels (which was a bit confusing) and bottles of coconut water. We enjoyed tasting several juices, including Jamaican apple, ginger-pear, star-apple and others. Ula and Enis purchased two bottles, which made good mixers for rum at the end of the day.

Sampling local juice

View from the restaurant terrace

Ula sampling the breadfruit 

Boston jerk shops

Ula petting a baby goat in Boston

Jerk sauce is a wonderful, flavorful invention, but eating at a roadside jerk center may not provide the best experience. The marinated meats as well as sweet potatoes and breadfruits are placed on the grill or in a pit early in the day, it seems, not when they are ordered, so the later in the day you eat, the more thoroughly cooked--and dried out--the meal is. Still, it was an experience!

After our meal, we drove the short distance to Boston Beach, and we could see first-hand why the other beaches had been closed. Local men were using rakes and milk crates to gather the seaweed and make a mountain of it under the palm trees. The seaweed also floated in large clumps on the placid blue water, so we were not tempted to take a dip.

Sargassum seaweed on Boston Beach

Continuing on, we stopped to look over a cliff down to the pounding surf, walk around an old church and cemetery, and admire a herd of cows who were sharing the road with us, using it to get from one pasture to another. With a couple hours of daylight left, we decided to go farther along the coast to the Morant Point Lighthouse. Following the GPS map, we turned off the main road and found ourselves on dirt roads crisscrossing an enormous sugar cane plantation. We made it by a large trailer filled with cane which had lost a wheel, and then we came upon the sugar mill, where the guard directed us to the road leading to the lighthouse. The smell, like brown-sugar, was heavenly around the mill, so strong and pungent that our tastebuds seemed to respond with pleasure.

Northeast Jamaican coast

Old Church 

Staring contest between a cow and Peter

Grazing cattle 

Toppled trailer full of cane for processing 

Golden Grove Sugar Factory

Great egret taking flight in the scrub beside the cane fields

Shortly after the mill, we encountered another disabled trailer. It was a double rig, and one of them had turned on its side and the whole thing had been abandoned there by the pulling tractor. Another car approached from the opposite side. We all got out to inspect the wreckage, and the other driver informed us that they were just returning from the lighthouse and the wreck had not been there when they drove out. A skilled driver trained at a young age in the outback of East Africa, Peter was undaunted.  He backed our low-clearance car up a bit, found a less used road nearby and then cut across a harvested field to get to the main dirt road on the other side of the toppled trailer.

A recent accident.  Perhaps it was overloaded?

It was somewhat of a disappointment to arrive at the tip of the island and discover that a high fence blocked us from getting close to the lighthouse. After snapping a couple of photos, we turned around and traveled back along the shore until we found a beach with a good view of the lighthouse without the fence. Unfortunately, the beach was a garbage dump of plastic containers, toilet seats, pipes and other flotsam and jetsam, so we piled back in the car to start back to Point Antonio. After a few yards, we heard a clunk. Jumping out, we discovered that the front wheel well covering on the driver's side had detached itself. Enis and Peter managed to twist and push it back in place. This was a temporary fix, as it fell off on the road a couple of hours later and, after running over it, Peter and Enis retrieved it and stuffed it in the trunk!

Helpful sign 

Posing great egret

Point Morant Lighthouse 

Trash filled beach near the lighthouse 

Peter and Enis re-installing the wheel well cover

Wheel well cover in the trunk

We were hot and sticky, and I was looking forward to swimming in the pool before showering.  But the pool was closed when we arrived. At least we can have a late dinner poolside at the marina, we thought, but it was 9:15, and the kitchen had closed at 9. The owners took mercy on us and offered to prepare something simple such as fried chicken or burgers, so that is what we had. And there were enough Red Stripes for everyone!

Time for another writing break!