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.