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.
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.
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.
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.
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