Kingston and Craighton Estate
So this was my first trip back to Jamaica since I was a baby. I wanted to see where I was born so invited my Dad to come with me and show me around. But he's not been back in a long time
either, so we would both be tourists in our homeland. So I decided I would fly into Kingston, see the sights, and then meet dad in Montego Bay a couple of days later. When I first suggested this,
it was a father-son trip, that became a father-son-and-father's-SO (Ivy) trip, then a father-son-Ivy-Ivy's daughter (April)-and-April's SO-trip (Peterson)... but the more the merrier!
And let me say: Kingston is not a tourist town. It's kind of rough. The transitions from nice neighborhoods to sketchy to dangerous happen quickly and without warning. I was staying in the business district of New Kingston, and even there I wasn't comfortable after dark. But I asked Jonathan, my tour guide for my two days in Kingston, to show me everything: good, bad, and ugly. And he did.
My first day there, I actually went up to Craighton Estate, up in the Blue Mountains, to visit a coffee plantation. (I was going to do Kingston on Friday, then Blue Mountains on Saturday, but Jonathan said due to when things were open, it would be better to swap the days.) So went for a nice walk up in the mountains and walked through the coffee plants. After that I walked to Tastee Patties for a late lunch. This is the equivalent to going to McDonald's to get a "burger". Yes, it technically counted, but it was definitely a "fast food" patty (which consider patties are already fast food, you can imagine the quality). I still enjoyed the heck out of it. And they had Ting in the soda fountain. Score!
Day two consisted of lots of driving and getting the whirlwind tour of Kingston and surrounding areas. My primary goals were Nuttall Hospital (where I was born) and the house where I spent my first few years. Unfortunately my camera ran out of juice literally right before I got to the house, so I have no pictures of it. But it was a pretty non-descript (now bright blue) house at the end of a very pot-holed street. Although that's not saying much: Kingston is more pot-holes than roads really. That day I also the Chinese Gardens (beautiful), had lunch at Gloria's out at Port Royal (totally agree with Jonathan: great food, terrible sevice), saw Spanish Town, St. Catherine Parish Church, as well as loads of other places.
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Montego Bay, Ocho Rios, Dunn's River
I took the Knutsford Express bus from Kingston to Montego Bay. It was an rainy, but uneventful, three-and-a-half hour trip across the island;
and I beat dad to the brand new RIU Reggae by about a half hour. And when I say brand-new, I mean brand-new.
It opened the previous day. Let me say this: never again will I book a stay at a newly opened hotel. Give them a month to work out the gremlins, e.g. when we checked into our rooms there was no hot water
(fixed within an hour), and not all the on-site restaurants would be open till day 3. But after some minor hiccups it went pretty smoothly. But let's just say construction was still on-going.
The next day we took a tour out to Ocho Rios and Dunn's River Falls. Now the lunch stop at Ochi was at Margaritaville; not exactly the authentic Jamaican experience. So, since we were on our own, I mentioned I saw a guy on the street outside selling jerk chicken. So rather than $15US for some generic nachos or a cuban sandwich, we went outside, sat on some benches, and ate fresh jerk chicken with hard-dough bread for $6. Hard to beat that, and pretty damn tasty. After that Peterson and I climbed the falls at Dunn's River. The water was cold, but not unbearably so. November in Jamaica is not exactly beach-weather. I still went swimming and such, but it was definitely brisk.
The highlight of this day out though was Darlene, our tour guide. We were the first group to get picked up that day, and she immediately realized that Dad and Ivy were both Jamaicans. So the sassy-patois came out and they were talking about all sorts of stuff. April, Peterson, and I maybe got 60% of it, but it was pretty great. This would be a recurring theme of the trip as tour guides/taxi drivers would be talking to Dad or Ivy for a minute or so before the inevitable question: "You a yardie?" (Outside of Jamaica, "yardie" tends to refer to gangs, so not something you should really call people. But from-Jamaicans-to-Jamaicans, it just means "from Jamaica".)
Croydon Plantation
The next day we took a tour out to Croydon Plantation. Original envisioned as a commercial pine forest, it was converted to
a fruit and flower (and pine) farm, where a vast variety of fruits are grown. The best part of me was the pineapples. The "common" pineapple you find in the grocery store is likely an "MD-2"
hybrid created by Del Monte and Dole. So when Croydon laid out four samples (Cowboy, Guyana, Cheese, and Macau I think), it was great. I really liked the Guyana (a bit more tart/acidic).
The guide said that if we were there in April or May there would easily be ten varieties to sample out of the nineteen grown on site. The only problem with this tour was the distance, and the
fact that apparently "jerk chicken" is the only "signature dish" of Jamaica (or at least Jamaican tours)... I was rapidly becoming jerk-chickened-out.
April and Peterson took this as an off-day and visited MoBay (and the local KFC, which all the tours/taxis told us was way different and way better than US KFC's, and April and Peterson agreed). In Jamaica it's "Keep From Cooking".
Appleton Estate and Ys River
Another day, another tour. This time we headed across-island to the south-coast to visit Appleton Estates and do a rum tour, and then Ys River.
Today our group consisted of only the five of us, plus a couple of ladies from Las Vegas, Leslie and Debbie, who became part of our extended family for the day.
Our guide was Lindsey, and apparently he was a Maroon, and told of some interesting things about how the Maroon villages and laws work.
Appleton's was actually more interesting than I thought it would be, and there was free rum samples of many of their products at the end. I'm not a huge rum drinker, but it was good. None of us were all that excited about Ys Falls, but I'm glad we did it anyway. It turned out to be really good. Not nearly as overrun with tourists as Dunn's River. It was much more relaxed and laid back. Leslie and I were thinking about doing the zip line, but apparently they had shut down for the day just before we finished, so didn't get to go. Next time.
Family Visit and Relaxation
So in the morning, we visited with Ivy's brother who lived nearby. This is Arnold's retirement house; and let me tell you, this is the kind of view I want when I retire. Holy cow. You can actually see
the resort on the far left of the picture. I believe he bought the property when Jamaica was in a recession a decade ago, but I cannot imagine what that plot cost.
The rest of the day was just a lazy day of lounging at the beach. Now I don't know if it's just Montego Bay or because the hotel is new (maybe they dredged the beach). But the beach at the Riu Reggae was not so nice. Sure it was nice that all the beach chairs were new and the "dry part" was great. But once you got four feet out, the bottom was this weird soft clay-like substance (just like Luminous Lagoon). You kind of sank into it and it was sort of soft, sort of slimy, and altogether unpleasant. So normally I would just swim out till I no longer had to touch it, but further out were seagrass beds that were even shallower (so your hands could touch the bottom while swimming freestyle). So yeah... not the best. But still enjoyable.
