ME WON COME OUT!!!!! (070510, Monday, Day 5 Port Antonio)

"Speedy" takes V, Y, and me for a late morning stroll around Errol Flynn Marina, and even though the day's overcast, the water's lovely.

Speedy tells us that the contraption in the water is what we're going to ride later in the day, rafting down the Rio Grande. I think he's just fucking with us.


You know that guttural sound Homer makes when he sees donuts? Like, "uuhughuuuh"? That's the sound I make when I see water like this.



Speedy's always picking and plucking ripe fruit for me, and it's no different today. A mango--"how do I eat it?" I ask, stupidly.


Dur, you bite it, like an apple.

By this time, T and t are done with their day's tasks, and we're off to the Rio Grande, but not before T decides to make a meal of "bun and cheese," a combination of this:


Spiced bun, slightly sweet.

and a dense, creamy, cheddary kind of local cheese. To make this:



Mm, refreshing. There's nothing like Jamaican beef patties to make me think of bottled water.

So, a brief history of rafting. Originally used to transport bananas to Port Antonio, the bamboo rafts were fleet enough to traverse the river at all depths. But it wasn't 'til playboy Errol Flynn decided to flip the script and, you know, make the natives bow to his nonsensical whims--"Take me down the river in your raft, peon! Get me ice milk and a rhinoceros! A beautiful woman that I mayest bone her!"--that we have what is known as recreational rafting (allegedly).


These rafts are being repaired. After several months traversing the river, the bamboo eventually gets water-logged and needs to get replaced. The seat structure, jury-rigged after recreational rafting was introduced, however, can be replaced half as frequently as the rest of the raft, since it doesn't come into contact with as much water.

Anyway, cuz Errol Flynn was rich and profligate, nowadays, tourists can do the same thing. Wee~! We start the three-hour journey at Grant's Level. I get offered miniature bamboo boats, and of course I don't want them, and of course I am nevertheless racked with guilt for not really having the means to "Contribute to the Local Economy" through the purchase of knickknacks. (Credit card is hurtin' from this trip.)

I had anticipated, not this leisurely, contemplative promenade down a mostly placid river (which, while pleasant, just makes me want to take a nap), but rather, screaming, white-knuckled, white-water...rafting. Ooooh.

The boatmen stands near the bow, barefoot (our dude has a wonky big toe, separated from the rest of his toes by inches, likely from clinging to the bamboo for balance--Y points that out in a stage-whisper--I'm like, "they speak English, you know!" and [head desk]). He wields a long bamboo pole that he uses to push against the stones and boulders of river bottom. This job ain't no cake-walk, but even crazier is the dude bringing rafts back up the river. We pass him as we're heading down-river, and he is a 50 year old, slick specimen of musculature. The only thing I can think is: Jesus fuck.



There are occasional whirlpooling flurries--areas where the water runs a little swifter--and the boatmen maneuvers us deftly through narrow shoals.



We stop mid-way at a river-side canteen, sloshing through the riverbank pebbles, then splashing and floating toward deeper water. Despite being the most competent swimmer of our crew, I'm not really that happy here. I'll jump into open-ocean, to hell with visions of Shark Week, but I think I've seen one too many 1980s/1990s horror movies to really relax in freshwater; plus, I have a horror of amoeba and a tendency towards swallowing (water). (I know, namby-pamby American girly-girl.)


Rasta mon bathing in the Rio Grande.

Our journey ends at Rafter's Rest, where, after some time spent with mosquitoes and a tree-swing, Speedy (with Dane in tow--I think as a result of my earlier, unavailing insistence that he be brought along for the trip to Rio Grande) comes to pick us up for another gander through town. Y and T wanna get their hair re-braided...


Town dance-hall.




Town market.


My peeeeeeeeopllllle.

and, at T's insistence, we've got to pick up "ice cream cake," which doesn't sound like such an imperative, but as I discover later that evening...is a great, motherfuckin', delicious idea.

Dane tries to teach me some local flavor, a bunch of phrases that I mostly can't remember, but "wuh gwon" means "what's up?" or, more specifically, "what's going on?" "Blessed" is a response one can give when folks ask how you are, or alternatively, "nuh'm much" (nothing much).

Dinner is brown stew chicken, rice and peas, an innocuous vegetable dish, home-squeezed mango juice, and the much anticipated "ice cream cake":




How many times am I going to post a photo of rice and peas? However many times I damn well please!





And the piece de resistance, nearly the Waterloo to my Napoleonic appetite:


Note the slash marking the flavor. You gots it, boo: grapenut. You ain't never heard of that.


I was one of those kids who was bamboozled into thinking Grape-nuts cereal was actually delicious, when it is so profoundly not. But this? This works.

Here's Dane on his first kayak adventure. He's literally in two feet of water. The look of despair on his face? Real. He's crying, "ME WON COME OUT! ME WON COME OUT!"


Eventually, because I'm awesome, I've gotten him paddling in the water, flutter-kicking per my childhood YMCA training, and then, eventually, back onto the kayak, this time, without the ugly, crumple-face crying.

Alas, I'm perturbed by a stinging sensation on my wrist. Is that...a...fucking jellyfish sting? I haul myself out, and we hustle Dane out as well, and I'm counseled to pee on the sting by V. I think, well, V's an educated woman of the world, and there's a Friends episode about jellyfish and peeing, so I scramble into my room and into the shower, position my wrist accordingly, and pee.



Now what? I don't intend to stand here in the shower, waiting for the pee to...I dunno, set in. And I don't really wanna walk around with a patina of urine on my arm. So I wash it all off, and make my way back upstairs.

Our neighbor, the on-site chef, Ja-merican with a day job as a nurse, laughs at me, saying that peeing on a jellyfish sting is a local cure, but that vinegar will do a better job. And it does. I press a paper towel soaked in vinegar onto the sting, which is at this point feeling like tiny electric worms wriggling under my skin.

I'm freaking out a little internally, especially after Y comments that she'd prefer if I didn't sleep alone tonight (implying anaphylactic shock?), and because my last encounter with local sea-life--the bu-su--didn't go over so well.

But I'd rather suffocate, alone in my bed, than admit that I'm concerned, so I dismiss folks' solicitous inquiries with a nonchalant flap of a hand, then decamp to my room to lick my wounds in private.

New Camera!!!

My PowerShot just officially bit the dust. Tried to take a picture of my first homegrown tomato, and noticed that it was just. not. focusing. I guess five years, three international trips, and a plethora of mini-milestones is good enough.

My next camera? One I bought in a whirlwind, 15-minutes-before-closing trip to Best Buy?

Imagine this scenario: a couple of friends (girls mostly) want to take a picture of themselves. The one with the longer arms turns the camera around, estimating where to point and shoot. Click, and oh, drats. One of you sucks her teeth. You've taken a photo of the top of your heads, or cut someone out.

Or say you're alone and sitting on the steps of the Bob Marley Museum, with only seconds before someone comes to reprimand you for taking a photograph of yourself...sitting on the steps of the Bob Marley Museum. You don't have time to take test-shot after test-shot when you can't get a good angle on the stairs and the inner sanctum.

Hypothetical, of course.

Anyway, despite being senselessly and appallingly brand loyal, I've purchased a Samsung TL205, a camera whose primary feature is that it has a dual-screen, meaning the awkward self-portrait will be ELIMINATED!



Now, the next time I'm sitting alone on a cliff in Jamaica, a ------ hanging from my mouth, I don't have to take shot after shot to get the viridian water rocking below me.

Hypothetically speaking.

Jerk Fest (070410, Sunday, Day 4 Cont'd Port Antonio)

The three of us are happily frying when I hear T's voice through my earphones and through the ambient, sunblock-sticky, tropical "Jamaica Vacation" haze. "Look at them," she teases, as I squint sleepily up at the new arrivals. The decision is made to return to the house for further swimming--T's not a fan of cold water. Once back at the villa, I'm first, as usual, to slip into the water, visiting again with the purple fish, and blue fish, and striped yellow and black fish, and the orange fish with big eyes, and so on. Plus a spotted sole type thing, swanning its way across the sea-floor.

After a failed attempt at making Y look at the reef--her response, “it feels weird,” regarding the mouthpiece--V and I are off to undeveloped Monkey Island, which only has a tiny spit of a beach, maybe 20 feet long, 10 feet wide, consisting of pebble-sized pieces of coral.



To get there, we swim over a bed of kelp (grody--how can something under water look dusty?) and hundreds of white-spined sea urchin, and V nicks herself on one of them. She hunts for seashells while I sit happily in the shallows, splashing my hands at the surface of the clear water. After deciding to make our way back, V gets curious about what nicked her, and I reach down, graze my finger against one of the quills in a preliminary safety check, then pick up the urchin to show her. I find the skeleton of one, try to hand it to her, since she's apparently one of those seashell collector type people, and she's reluctant at first--“is there anyone still in there?”--I tell her no, so she finally takes it, now exclaiming that she's going to bring it back with her. She has a harder time maneuvering than I do, so I take the shell back, promising to bring it back to the villa safely.

Nap-time.

We're lounging when t and her Kingston friend C arrive from their mid-day festival jaunt with jerk chicken and jerk pork wrapped in foil.



We all have a bite of the jerk chicken, which is pronounced by all, even finicky Y, to be delicious, and then the few pork-eaters/infidels have a taste of the jerk pork. Which I quickly find is sent from the fiery pits of hell to punish sinners. It's fucking hot, but rather than say so, and get mocked for my pains, I simply retreat to the kitchen for some good ole Coca-cola, which I hear is good for relieving spice (there are conflicting theories about this).

Dane, the little boy from yesterday, is also here now, and sitting on the steps with a glass of water panting away from the jerk spices, and I offer him some Coke, which he accepts gratefully. I j’adore him. Kids are awesome when a) I don't have to teach them, and b) there aren't too many at once. Aaand when they've been clearly brought up to be seen and not heard, and acutely respectful of their elders. That's good, too. American kids talk too fucking much.

I'm decked in my usual flip flops, which are quickly overruled as inappropriate attire. It's muddy at the fest, so I change into my New Balances--which go spectacularly with my turquoise sun-dress--and we're off.

And, holy fuck, it's a shit-storm of people. And the clusterfuck is flanked by cops carrying semis.

Eee! Scary!

S says the festival easily triples the town population, and after he drops us off at the entrance of the Folly Estates, we shlep down a pitch-black dirt road pocked with vendors squatting in the dark with their cheap wares (things that flash multi-colored lights, things with plastic moving parts). This walking in the dark bullshit is a bit too much like camping for me, so I'm relieved when we finally arrive at the wooden shacks where we purchase tickets for 1,000 J, then hike up some muddy, gravely area where we get wanded and have our bags searched, then trudge up to formal entranceway, where we're greeted by ticket-takers, turnstiles, and more uniformed cops, except these folks are more dress blues and less body armor.


Though Boston Bay is the birthplace and epicenter of jerk, they've changed the festival venue to Port Antonio to accommodate the crowds, or so I am made to understand--half the time, I'm not really sure what people are saying, so this is only an approximation.

The turnstiles are a bit much--do they expect folks to storm the jerk fest in a zombie-frenzy for freshly grilled and spiced meats?



There are about 30 tents of different jerk purveyors, and, what I didn't expect, a huge stage for a multi-artist reggae concert, with a crowd of hundreds, likely thousands.

I am less interested in frantically twirling a small piece of cloth than in eating dead flesh.


Mmm, dead flesh.

After making a turn around the entire tented area, we let Dane make the final call, and he tells us Fishers Best is…uh…the best, so we head there. I order a foil wrapped wad of jerk chicken for 500 J, another tin-foiled wad of pork for 300 J, and 100 J worth of festival:



Coconut water for 200 J from an itinerant vendor:



The chicken is awesome--still warm, moist, flavorful, hints of an unfamiliar spice--as is the festival--slightly sweet, warm, chewiness. I mean the food festival, though the greater affair is pretty cool, too. Nary a tourist in sight but for our crew. I drop the pork into my canvas satchel, as I quickly realize the chicken will be more than sufficient, and because, one again, the jerk pork is violently and maliciously spicy. And I think I'm coming to appreciate coconut water, especially as a counterpoint to the jerk. My understanding of coconut water, prior to about a year ago, is the white, creamy stuff of pina coladas. Coconut as Mounds and Almond Joy. To my consternation, when I had a green coconut in Ubud, Bali, it tasted nothing of coconut, but a musty, not-very-sweet...water.

When we've got our grub in hand, we tiptoe and slip-slide through the mud to find some standing room in the crowd of concertgoers. It's like Glastonbury, minus the wellies and the white people.



For some reason, the folks in front of us have taken off their shoes and are standing on newspapers/magazines:



It's fun for a second and a half, and I learn that Jamaicans show their disfavor at concerts by clapping artists off--I don't go to enough concerts to know if this is what folks do in the U.S., too--but after about forty-five minutes of shifting from foot to foot, I'm bored and sleepy, so when Y mentions she feels the same, I wonder out loud whether it'd be wack for us to hitch a ride home when Dane has to be dropped off for curfew.

This is my passive, non-confrontational way of getting Y to do the dirty work, and when it comes time to send Dane off, we leave, too.

We wend our way through the crowds, past a guardrail where townsfolk, mostly men, are posted. We're detoured frequently by S’s popularity, and wind up at a rum bar (slot machines included!), where we're introduced to a dude canoodling with his lady love. This is "real" Jamaica, and since we're loitering, I figure I may as well feed the little puppy, all skin and ribs, loitering in the street my jerk pork, but not before wondering out loud about whether it’s too spicy for him, and getting laughed at for my pains. “Dis Jamaican dog!” they say, "he eat everything!"



And he does. And I know this is my M.O. whenever I travel, taking bleeding-heart-pity on wretched four-legged creatures, I'm sure to the disgust of locals. Because it's only from the luxury of the economically privileged. But I. just. can't. turn. it. off.

Then we’re off again, past calls of “hey, sexy lady” and “sssss” and yet another pit stop, this time, A. Dormer Tavern, another rum shop (again with the slot machines) + a game of "Jamaican dominoes." S hops out and leaves us in the van without an explanation, and in the lull, I decide to crawl into the driver's sea, and at Y's abetting, drive the car twenty feet up to the doorway. We're giggling in the dark when S comes back out, looking in the direction of where he'd parked while Dane, Y, and I cackle.

S comes out looking at the spot where we’d parked bemusedly, then invites us in, I think primarily to give us another photo-op, so, click click 'til S lets me drive Dane back to his house.

Frenchman's Cove (070410, Sunday, Day 4 Port Antonio)

9 o'clock. It's the same a.m. routine: leap into a bikini, sweep open my curtains:

View from my room. That there's Monkey Island--
but there are no monkeys here.

From my view on the dock, no one’s up yet, except for Angela, Lorna, and Franklin, for whom Chow was substituting--Franklin, the real butler, a long-limbed, long-faced older man. He's my idea of a butler, lanky in an ascetic-looking way, and has what T later describes as having a "good, gentle energy" about him. Despite not being completely Californicated, I have to concur.

Anyway, I bound (gazelle-like) up the concrete steps and pop into the kitchen for a second, for them to tell me breakfast’ll be ready at 10. I take that as my cue to get out of their hair, and make my way back downstairs, tug on my fins, tighten my mask, and scooch myself off the dock. Since my first encounter with the giant manta ray, I’ve been told that a) mantas don’t have stingers and b) it’s possible to cling onto their "shoulders" for a ride. So I’m off to find that bad boy. To do this:



No dice, but I spend a good chunk of time around a shallow, reef-y area just off the dock, watching tropical fish flick in and out of cream-colored anemone tipped in fluorescent yellow and purple, like so:


I fink this is what I saw. Sebae anemone. Because I am the Google God.

...and avoiding spiny sea urchins, a.k.a., Diadema antillarum:



Wiki sez that their spines are "potentially dangerous." Whatever that means, I am glad I went against my instinct to...uh...pick. one. up.

It’s really too bad I don’t know anything about fish, because all’s I can say is that I saw purple fish, and blue fish, and striped yellow and black fish, and orange fish with big eyes, and so on. Also a Dory-looking fish that led me to chant, "just keep swimming" and "P. Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way" until I was so exhausted by my profound coolness that I had to stop.

After some time, I haul myself out the water--I’m trying not to over-exert myself so that I don’t go languishing miserably around with sore arms, as is my wont--but no one’s up yet. What's a gal in Jamaica to do? Climb into a deck chair and cat nap under the sun until called to breakfast. Say what, say what, say what? Girl, you know wussup.

Breakfast: freshly made mango juice (blend mango, blend ginger separately and strain, lime, some water to thin, and brown sugar), toast, fruit plate: papaya with lime, mango (this time including one of Blackie mangoes T purchased the other night), watermelon, pineapple,




Here's a Blackie mango cut open--not actually black on the inside.
Unlike my heart.

ackee and saltfish,



and fried salty plantains (“plant'n”?)



Then we manage to fritter the morning away, waiting on this person and that. It's already early afternoon when we finally get out the door for Y, V, and me to get dropped off at Frenchman’s Cove, a tourist "must see," and walking distance from Lolivya. T, t, and S are off to deal with tasks necessary to construct a one bedroom house that'll withstand hurricanes.

Sunloungers are two or three hundred J each, then another 200 for a bottle of water. I ask our server whether we can swim past the rope of buoys, and he tells me, "at your own risk."

Hmm.

The water's frigid, and I slosh into the waves just short of my tipping point, standing near a clique of women knee-deep and shivering. I share a grimace and a remark about the temperature with a bald-headed black woman from North Carolina, and we end up making small talk about our respective home-towns. The friendliness is so distinctly American, paradoxically warm and noncommittal, but easy in its familiarity. It's not that I expect a welcoming committee--although Jamaica's tourism board has certainly propagated its version of Jamaica aloha culture--it's just the constant staring. I suppose the tourist hordes don't typically comprise three black women, a black man, an Indian, and a Chinese. It's funny also because I haven't ever really experienced gregariousness and friendliness as an American cultural trait.

Or maybe I'm extrapolating too much, and lady was friendly just cuz she's from the South.



I finally take the proverbial plunge, ducking into the water, and striking for the buoys, which I find, in short order, float atop a stretch of water both deeper and more choppy than I anticipated. "At your own risk," indeed.

I moonwalk--less Michael Jackson, more Neil Armstrong bouncing with the swells--away from the rope, and quickly discover that the water at Frenchman's Cove varies in temperature, cold in spots, warm in other pockets, and the refrain between me and V is cries of "warm spot," "cold spot." I know. Two sophisticated ladies in their late twenties, early thirties.

What is it about clear water and a sunny day that reverts people back to this primordial, infantile state? A dopey sack of good feelings.

How much time can I squander bobbing up and down, watching the surf explode into the pitted rock face on either end of the cove?

The three of us are rotating time in the water with guarding our stuff, so I’m measuring time on my chair by Bob Marley songs--broil for two songs, jump into the ocean. And by jump, I mean, wade in apprehensively, flinching when a wave crashes a little two high, then taking a deep breath and dunking my entire body in, then emerging in a sputter of sea water.

Measuring time by Bob Marley songs is a good way to be, and I’m thinking that this day makes up for an entire class set of essay grading. Maybe.

Port Antonio: Family Day (070310, Saturday, Day 3 Cont'd)

We traipse up a couple of flights, maneuvering around folks loitering in the stairwell who give us the once-over (Jamaica = smiling strangers? Wrong.), for lunch at a hole called "Bobby's Place," an open-air, roof-top terrace with a limited menu--fried chicken, curry chicken, curry goat are the primary offerings.

Fried chicken in Jamaica is always served with gravy. Don't that look good?

I'm happy.

Dane's happy:



After:



Because more family business needs to be transacted--Social Security cards, bank stuff, etc.--I brilliantly suggest that Y and I take the kids for ice cream at the pier, so that we're not a huge, slow-moving cluster-fuck. The kids seem amenable, and off we go.

The only offerings, they tell us at the ice cream shop at the marina, are orange pineapple, chocolate, Fruit Basket, and Something Stout--a beer-flavor that I sample but pass on, quickly, for the orange pineapple (slivers of pineapple--yum) that the kids are also having.



I make weird conversation with the kids, asking them their favorite books/food/ice cream flavors, stopping for Seneeka's intransigent sandal strap, teasing the kids when they start panting from the vast amounts of ice cream we're consuming, then amusing them by patting my own stomach when the ice cream nearly defeats me.

The rest of the crew is to meet us by the pool at "Norma's at The Marina," a restaurant/bar with a little bit of a shopping complex feel to it. We set up shop, and Seneeka takes a phone call from her mom, repeatedly explaining, "Me wid Auntie Tamara friend!" Y eventually crawls onto a sunlounger with her iPod, and the kids intermittently disappear on mini-expeditions (to my paranoia), then returning to crawl onto another sunlounger together, giggling and pretending to sleep (the arm over the forehead, the fake-snoring, the fetal position).

T comes to collect us--apparently the ice cream shop was holding back on us and had mango and guava? The fuck?! I refrain from an unholy rage so as not to frighten the kids. We drop the kiddies back off at their grandparents'--T walking them inside the house, explaining that in Jamaica, you don't just drop kids off--then return to the villa, where I drink lots of fluids, take yet another Advil, and eat dinner that Angela and Lorna have left on the stove for us.


I love this shit. And I don't even fuckin' like beans.


Brown stew chicken


"Run-down" curry fish



After grubbing, I fill a glass pitcher with ice and bottled water, arrange myself in my usual spot by the patio to download photos, suck contemplatively on guinep, nurse the ice water, and fend off t’s insistence that we go out to a dancehall. Not happening, homie.