Jamaica!:
Ocho Rios & Nine Mile
We left out of Porti early Friday the 19th, enroute for Ocho Rios with little wind and about a 5 foot sea that was on our stern, but very disorganized. After about 3 hours of no wind it began to clock around and fill in from the North, so we set the main. In putting up the main the boom vang had disconnected at the mast from years of use. The vang pulls the sail down making it flatter, an important piece for sail trim but not vital to sailing. We pulled into Ochi and were able to put some rivits in place of the screws, and we were back in business.
The next day we arranged for a trip to the town of Nine Mile where Bob Marley was born, grew up, and wrote many famous songs including one with a quote we displayed at our wedding reception, ("we'll be together with a roof right over our head"). We sat in the "single bed" that he wrote about in Is This Love as well as on his meditation stone in his yard that inspired him to write the lyrics "rock was my pillow too" from Talking Blues. We also enjoyed the view from outside of his small house which inspired the songs Iron Lion Zion and Natural Mystic. Unfortunately, we didn't feel that the tour was worth the money, but as Bob fans, we still enjoyed making the pilgrimage. This picture is of the famous purple gates outside the property with the homemade begging stick baskets from the local kids sticking through.
Tuesday we are planning to head to Montego Bay and a nearby anchorage to ride out a strong front that is keeping us from leaving sooner. If all goes well we will depart Jamaica around Friday the 26th Feb, and arrive to Roatan Honduras around Tuesday the 1st of March. There is a Ocho Rios shutterfly album up as well.
Also there is a shutterfly of Long Island, Bahamas to Jamaica that has been put up. Thats three if your counting. This is the first time we have had good internet in a while.
Port Antonio, bamboo rafting, and coffee expedition
The town of Port Antonio or Porti as the locals call it is a charming town with a victorian flavor left over from the early days of trade and slavery. The nearby Navy island that protects the harbor from the ocean swell was used as a port call by Captain Bligh, who delivered bread fruit here in 1793, just six years after famously being set adrift from his mutinous crew of the sailing ship Bounty. Many years later Errol Flynn purchased the island as his private retreat for his friends and many lovers that he brought here. The story as it is, presented as fact, is that after seeing the locals rafting bananas down the river from the plantations to the cargo ships he got the idea of taking his dates down the river gondoleire style on these bamboo rafts. With valentines come and gone I thought it would be nice to do something special in Jamaica to get us out of town and give us a break from boat work and chores that are required after a long passage. We thought that this would be relaxing and we were thoroughly impressed by the beauty of this meandering river that flows between the cascading foothills of the Blue Mountains as it reaches for the ocean. This ride down the river has ranked up at the top of most beautiful sceneries we have ever seen in our lives. We have come to find that as we sit in awe snapping photos at the beautifull natural beauties we have seen along the way, that photos really don't give it justice. None the less there is a shutterfly album up of Port Antonio
You see this "tour" that was invented by Flynn was the first tourism that Jamaica had really ever seen. The irony is that in the 40's, 50's and 60's Port Antonio was the biggest, and only tourist town in Jamaica. As time went on and the cruise ship docks were built in Montego Bay and Ocho Rios, Porti went back to being a sleepy agricultural town as the tourism migrated west. We saw very little tourist here and it likely looks very similar as it did 60 or more years ago. So, if you're offered a bamboo raft ride on a Jamaican vacation, tell them you only want to do it on the Rio Grande River. When floating down river through "lovers lane", two rock outcroppings to float through, you will see why Flynn got away with taking as many as three lovers down the river in one day, so the legend goes!
So, Jamaica is said to grow the best coffee in the world! This is due in part to the wet and misty blue mountains where the soil is extremely fertile and the climate is tropic cool with a steady mist that creates the "natural mystic" as Bob Marley sings about in his famous song. We found from asking around that the stuff on the streets that they sell to the tourist is commercialized machine proccessed "lowland coffee" for the tourist and all the good stuff goes to the Japanese, except for Jablum which is indeed Blue mountain but still massed produced for a high price. To be sold as Blue Mountain Coffee, it must be grown between 3000-7000ft in the Jamaican Blue Mountain range.
Well, we wanted the real deal, and after talking to our bamboo raft guide he said "ya mon, I know some friends in da mountains who pick it by hand and sell it to the Japanese." With the little bit of reading I had done before, I the key word for me was the Japanese. It was a whole day's travel to and up the mountains past all of the end of the road tourist stop to where a sign made by hand said "road closed" and the cliff side road was washed away with only half of a small mountain road remaining. We then squeezed through and were thinking "where the hell are we going?", but I knew Rebbo our guide was a good person and we were in no harm. "Tourist no come up here no mo, the goberment wont fix da road, it not right for da locals" apparently the only good way to get to where we were going was to come up and over the mountain from Kingston. This road was ruined by Hurricane Ivan and it has been a very slow rebuild. With Rebbo speaking to our driver in Patois (pat-wa) the whole way up (an indeciferable, part broken English, part Creole language that is spoke amongst Jamaicans), we eventually came to a steep muddy hill with a long fall down and Rebbo says to the driver, "I think we walk up, you drive." Heck yea, so we got out and watched the little car slide up the hill, and we got back in and continued on. We arrived to the small town of Section, and saw only two other tourist for a moment as we headed to "the place." Rebbo said they come up here from Kingston and spend a night or two hiking the mountains and such. We began to smell the strong scent of ganja and coffee (the latter being something we haven't smelled much in Jamaica). As our tour guide led us down the stairs we arrived to a "coffee shop"; a bar with a sink and some paintings of the owner and a couple of articles from American big name papers with this old guys face on it. When we arrived one of the relatives of the late James Dennis, who died last year, explained to us the process of growing and processing coffee. Don't let his shirt fool you, they where all very hospitable and wanted to have conversation with the few and far between tourist. After a cup of java, Rebbo and I talked business to the lady while Liesel hung with the young kids who where roasting the coffee and letting her try too. Meanwhile, the older males were smoking lots of ganja and doing alot of nothing and would occassionally spout out a random "Jah, Rasta fari, Halle Sellasie-I" those famous words associated with Rasta men. One of our drivers in Ochi told us an estimated 70-80% of Jamaicians smoke marijuana; no wonder you smell it everywhere. We worked out a deal on 15lbs of coffee and they came out of the back room with a scale, a vacuum sealer, labels, bags, and n round crate that one would put apples in the days of johhnny apple seed. They bagged and labeled the hand proccessed coffee right there. All the other beans of this farm, and all other beans from Blue Mountain farms, get sent to Kingston where they get machine processed and sent to Asian connoisseurs. I am told that they do it by hand here for the rare few (usually Euros and coffee people) that venture to the mountains for the finest. Upon returning to civilization I did a search for this James Dennis coffee with a picture of the old man roasting his beans and smoking a "spliff" of ganja. It turns out we discovered the Real Deal- what many call the best coffee in the world. There are a few articles on the internet about this town but here is one from National Geographic Explorer.
It took us $120 and a days travel to get there and back, half on public transportation (20 people in a 14 passenger van) and the other via private car up the mountain, plus the cost of the coffee, in exchange for a jungle coffee expedition that some coffee guru would die for.
Samson Narrowly Escapes Injury
One day, in an undisclosed country (not Jamaica), we took Samson to shore to stretch his paws. Soon after arriving to land we discovered a building in disrepair with lots of lush foliage entangling it. We walked up a couple of flights of cement stairs with Samson running ahead. So, far like any other shore excursion for our little family. After reaching the top of the second flight of stairs, I see Samson leap onto an area where there was no floor, only rafters remaining. "Oh, my God!!" It was worse than we immediately realized. When we got to Samson he was balancing on the second rafter in, with the rafters being each about a yard apart. Four paws and 45lbs. balancing perpendicular on a rafter with a 4 inch width about 18 feet up with concrete below. What do we do!?! He could fall at any second. Mark was able to walk down a joist board sticking out from the side of the 1/2 wall and slide and shimmy himself over to Sam. But, Mark said that although he had a solid position he couldnt balance himself and pick up the dog at the same time, much less get Samson to turn around and use Mark as support. We thought we were going to either have him try to walk to Mark (very dangerous; as he could fall) or have let him fall and catch him. I ran back downstairs, hands shaking, to move a big board with metal out from underneath them in case samson did fall. We both calmed down enough to assess our surroundings and how to utilize them, all they while chanting, "Stay, stay!". There were lots of short boards around, most not long enough to help, but there was also a pallet and a couple of longer boards scattered around the top floor. I slid the pallet over which was just long enough to cover the length of one rafter to the next, and then slide the boards over the pallet to bridge to the second rafter where Samson and Mark were. All the while I'm thinking Samson could fall at any second; he was in such a precarious position. Mark soon was able to help Samson turn 90 degrees so that he was now standing along the length of the rafter as opposed to the width. With a fair amount of coaxing, and Mark's hands guiding him, Samson came across the "bridge" to safety. My hands stopped shaking, but then the tears came.