Touring Eastern Jamaica

Kaelyn’s dad recently came to Jamaica for the first time. So of course we had to show him some of the wonderful things that the island has to offer. We chose to spend our time in Eastern Jamaica, because this would give a sense of city life and the heart of Jamaican music in Kingston, while also allowing for the wonders of jerk and serene beaches in Portland. The trip also allowed for a tour of the concrete jungle that is Portmore.



We started out in Kingston, going to the Bob Marley museum, Knutsford Boulevard, and Devon House. The Marley museum really has a good tour, so you should check it out if you get a chance. There are tons of intimate details such as the bullet holes from where Bob and some of his entourage were shot in a politically motivated murder attempt. You can see where Bob played football, and his favorite shorts to play in. Then there is a short movie that highlights the music and lyrics of Bob Marley and the Wailers.



Knutsford Boulevard had some interesting places to visit. There was Juici Patty, one of the two most popular patty shops in Jamaica. The food is cheap and good, beef patties, vegetable patties, and other treats. Devon House has plenty of fine shops and restaurants. The Grog Shoppe was where we chose to eat dinner. It has a wonderful outdoor eating area set amidst the old stables of the first black millionaire in Jamaica. The food is tasty as well. We also went out to Two Sister’s Cave and Prendy’s on the Beach, both in Hellshire. Prendy’s has some of the best fried and steamed parrot fish on the island, along with lobster, bammy, and festival, as you can see in the picture.



Every beach in Portland seems to be perfect. But Boston Bay is especially interesting because of it has some of the biggest waves in Jamaica and is the site of the biggest jerk centre in the island. Great Huts, a natural paradise with tents and tree houses, was our base in Portland. Boston Bay has beautiful water and waves, some interesting snorkeling, and is surrounded by cliffs, giving you the impression that you are inside of a big bowl while you are swimming. The jerk centre offers jerk chicken, pork, fish, plus festival, breadfruit, and yam.



We also visited Port Antonio. There is a busy market with food vendors and craft vendors all in one location. Rock Bottom was the name of one craft vendor who makes really nice wood carvings, although they were ridiculously overpriced. The Port Antonio marina is the site of Norma’s on the Terrace, one of Jamaica’s best restaurants. The restaurant has a view of the marina, and while we were eating a small cruise ship was leaving the dock. There are also a number of impressive yachts to see. The food at Norma’s is really good, we had smoked marlin, butterfish, shrimp salad, and stuffed crab back. As you can see, seafood was the order of the day.



We ended the trip in Ocho Rios. The craft market was fun, but tiring. There are only so many times you can hear a vendor tell you that their wares are the best in the market, better than everyone else, even though most are selling the same items. Then we went down to Island Village, browsed the shops and ate at Margaritaville. The Margaritaville people tried to get us to stay for a party with tourists from all the hotels attending, but at 8:30 there was nobody there yet so we left. The next day we stopped at Walkerswood to take a tour of their facility. It’s really fun. The tour guide shows you how to make jerk paste, and then you get to see their clean, modern factory and sample all of the sauces. They were making jerk sauce the day we went, and the smell of pimento and scotch bonnet pepper suffused the whole compound. It is a very nice tour. We made one last stop for jerk at Faith’s Pen before enduring the backed-up traffic on Mt. Rosser and heading home.

Sadly, the journey had to come to an end. As Bob would say, “Jah live i-tinually.”

-Shane and Kaelyn

Birthday Weekend

The past weekend I celebrated my 26th birthday with many of my Peace Corps friends. I got to celebrate my birthday for three whole days. It was tiring, but well worth it.

On Friday night, some friends came over and we had potato and pumpkin ragout, salad, and frozen rum lemonade. Frozen rum lemonade would turn out to be a theme for the weekend, as we had it on all three days. On Saturday morning, I set out to Lime Cay with a group of about 12 friends. We made it there in the early afternoon, after taking a ferry from Port Royal. The island is very small, and takes about 5 minutes to walk from one end to the other. It is not affected by pollution from Kingston, as there is a strip of land called the Palisadoes that lies in between Kingston and Lime Cay. This means that the water is very clear and there is less debris washed up on the sand. We had a fun time swimming, lounging, and eating some fried fish and festival. I got a really awesome belt from Khaled and Caitlin. It has the really big silver buckle that is popular in Jamaica, but the image on the buckle is a lizard. Kind of reminds me of the famous Jamaican iguana, which is only found in the Hellshire Hills near where we live. Anyway, then we went back to our apartment and had coconut pasta while we watched the KU game. Unfortunately, they lost.

Sunday was spent cooking, eating, and watching the Super Bowl. There was chili, beer bread, twice baked potatoes, seven layer dip, tortillas, tortilla chips, rice krispy treats, chocolate cheesecake, and carrot cake with ice cream (the last being my traditional birthday treat). After all that eating, it was hard to stay awake for the football game. But the team I was nominally rooting for did win. This did not make up for KU losing, but it helped me to move on. All in all, it was a really jam-packed, exciting birthday weekend.

-Shane

Kindness

The other day on while on the bus on the way home from Kingston I witnessed 2 random acts of kindness. The first was bestowed on a man who stood up in the center aisle of the bus and started preaching. Now this is a fairly common occurrence because bus riders are a pretty captive audience, since they don't really have anything else to listen to and are rarely going to leave until they reach their stop. But the man soon revealed that he wasn't really a preacher, in fact he wasn't exactly even a Christian. This was a bit amusing and it seemed that his conscience had gotten the better of him. He started out with the typical preaching beginnings "Good evening in the name of Jesus Christ ..." and then stopped and decided to fess up. But eventually he got to the point, what he really wanted was some money for food. Now I didn't have any smalls (small change) handy or I might have given it to him because at least he was being honest, and fessing up about not being a devout Christian in Jamaica is a pretty big deal. But I did notice that a few other of the passengers gave him some coins and then the women sitting across the aisle from me did a very impressive thing. She opened up her bag and removed a box lunch (a styrofoam container of cooked food) and gave it to the man. Now this was probably her dinner that she was carrying home and I couldn't help but be touched by this kindness. And I also couldn't agree more that giving the man actual food was probably much better than giving him money because then you knew he would be eating a proper meal that night.

Well it wasn't a few minutes later that this woman's kindness was repaid to her. As we were turning onto the causeway the woman made a loud exclamation. She realized that she had missed her stop because she certainly wasn't expecting to be on the bridge heading towards Portmore. Well there must have been 10 people trying to help this lady out, they were yelling at the driver asking him to stop so she could walk back and they were inquiring as to this lady's destination and trying to come up with alternate routes for her to take. Pretty much everyone sitting around her jumped into action and came to her assistance, truly concerned that she get where she need to go. In fact when we finally reached the next stop at the Portmore Mall I even saw persons stand up and look out the window to make sure that she headed in the right direction to get the next bus back to Kingston. And this is something I have often seen in Jamaica, whenever you ask someone for directions or assistance whether you know them or not they will often go out of their way to help you.

There is something refreshing about seeing persons come to the aid of others and even though I had not been personally involved in either act I felt very satisfied that the beggar had gotten a good supper and the women had gotten back to where she needed to go.

-Kaelyn

Caught in the Rain

Yesterday something happened to us that hasn't happened in a long time, we got drenched by the rain. True it has been the dry season but I have to think back much further to remember the last time I ended up looking like a drowned rat as I ran for cover. In fact the times that come to mind were all during training way back in July and August 2005 when we first arrived in Jamaica. And I really don't think it has been pure luck that has kept us dry for so long. I think it is more the adoption of the Jamaican attitude that getting wet by the rain is really, really bad (cause it will make you sick and crush up your clothes) and you should avoid it at all costs. To do this you either don't go outside when its raining or you think it might rain and you carry an umbrella with you everywhere you go.

Now I'm not sure what happened yesterday that caused me to drop the ball and end up soaking wet. I think it was the fact that we left work about an hour later than we normally do because we were trying to finish up a project with an upcoming deadline. So while we are usually home in advance of the occassional eveling (evening) shower that hits Portmore, yesterday we were not. Now of course we should have been carrying an umbrella but in our normal workday routine we don't often need one, shame on us. And in fact we thought we were mostly in the clear becuase as we were walking to get a taxi home it was only spitting and we were pretty sure that it wouldn't really start raining until we had made it home. But as we got closer and closer to our house the raindrops seemed to get bigger and harder on the taxi windshield. And when we finally reached our stop it was a full on downpour. There was really nothing else to do but laugh as we walked to our house getting drenched to the bone. And of course we didn't see another soul outside becuase what sensible Jamaican would dare get caught in the rain like that.

-Kaelyn

Peanut Butter

For those who don't know, I am a very big consumer of peanut butter. My favorite kind is crunchy natural peanut butter, with no added oil or sugar, just salt. I first tried the stuff at a friend's house in Portland, OR over 6 years ago, and I have been hooked ever since. Although it has its detractors, who will tell you that natural peanut butter separates, or gets hard in the fridge, I believe it is the best kind. For one, you don't have to worry about sugar content or hydrogenated vegetable oil, because it doesn't have any. The best thing about natural peanut butter, though, is the way it melts into a liquid when you put it on a hot piece of toast or bagel. When I went back to the US over Christmas, I made sure to bring back a jar of the good PB. Sadly, it is now gone. Back to the regular stuff for me.

-Shane

New Passport Rules

For all of you people itching to come visit us:

The new passport rules governing air passengers into Jamaica and other Caribbean and Latin American nations went into effect today. Basically, you have to have a passport if you want to come to Jamaica by air. If you come on a cruise line, you don't need a passport until next January. This may influence some potential visitors not to come, but it shouldn't discourage you. Just start applying for your passport early (like today).

-Shane and Kaelyn

From One Extreme to the Other

So I think it is worth mentioning some of the details of our journey from the US to Jamaica. On the day we left Kansas City we had to wake up at 3am so that we could be at the airport by 4:15 when the ticket counter opened so that we could fulfill the requirement of checking in 2 hours early for an international flight. This meant that we were leaving our hotel before the airport shuttle began running. Side note: the whole reason we chose to stay in a hotel by the airport was so we could take the shuttle, that didn't really work out now did it. So we asked the person at the front desk to call us a cab. We ended up getting a fancy, schmancy Lincoln Town Car. It had warmed seats and everything, which was a really good thing since it was 27 degrees outside and we had shed all our sweatshirts and coats the day before so we wouldn't have to carry them back to Jamaica where they would just get moldy. So our last impression of the US was luxury and the bitter cold. Many hours and airports later we landed in Jamaica. Another side note: The pizza place in Concourse D near gate 50 of the Miami Airport is most fabulous. El lugar de la pizza en el Concourse D cerca de la puerta 50 del aeropuerto de Miami es lo fabuloso. As always we had encountered a few delays but luckily all our bags made it and we sailed through customs with ease. Then we had to do a little bit of convincing to get an airport taxi driver to take us all the way to our house without charging us an exorbitant fee in American dollars. Luckily we found a nice guy who only charged us J$300 (US$5) over the regular price. He did try to get us to pay the toll too but we weren't falling for that nonsense. As we were driving through Kingston in his beat-up "deportee" station wagon with the windows rolled down I breathed in the familiar scent of burning trash. We finally reached our final destination at 9pm and of course in true Portmore fashion our apartment felt like a sauna, even though it was only 82 degrees outside. After 17 hours (we lost an hour due to time change) and a temperature difference of 55 degrees we were definitely feeling the changes of being back in Jamaica.

- Kaelyn