Actually, I should probably start with Friday. As I'm here as a medical volunteer with Projects Abroad, occasionally the PA volunteers get recruited to do other volunteer tasks. As such, on Friday we went to St. Elizabeth to do a beach clean up.
It's a beautiful beach isn't it? Well, imagine what it looked like before we raked up all the trash. In Jamaica, there's no real system of municipal waste such as public trash cans. I've noticed not one since I've started looking. So what happens here is the fishermen just toss their trash out of their boats. It was rather unbelievable how much trash there ended up being in short distances of the beach, but it wasn't too strenuous of work to clean it up and how much better it looks for it!
My first Jamaican beach photo! And yes, I know I have a bit of sand on my face. It's interestingly a mix of dark and lighter sand. Actually, one of the guys was saying that it's so dirty, that's why the sand is dark but I know enough geology to point that out as false.
Regardless, it was hot and sunny and the beach was beautiful. Onwards, to Kingston!
I went with my friend Helena, from Sweden. She had booked a music tour of Kingston for her only weekend in Jamaica, so I tagged along as the music lover I am. We had a lovely tour guide, and we started off with listening to the music, getting the history of reggae and ska starting with Harry Belafonte (whom many Americans would consider calypso, but the beats develop from there). We headed directly to the Bob Marley Museum, which was really cool.
There's all these great photos of Bob in a mural on the wall, and some great statues too.
Bob was apparently only 5'6", so the statue is life sized. A very interesting life, and I always wonder what would have happened had he amputated the melanomatous toe, instead of keeping it because of his love of soccer. What he could have done! It's amazing what he did in his short life. Also, they have a Grammy in the museum, so I was really quite excited to be in the presence of a real Grammy statue. It's his old house, his wife donated it to make the museum, so there's lots of fun stories to be had and the tour guides here are great too! We had a rousing rendition of "One Love," all six of our group. :)
From there, we headed to National Heroes Park and I got to hear a lovely bit about Jamaican history and its national heroes. Did you know that's where Marcus Garvey ended up? I dredged up some of my Civil Rights history background and got to supply some information for the tour.
We ended up driving through Kingston and getting to see some of the statues and sights (Hello Port Royal off in the harbor! No pirates or Johnny Depp sightings however...) but then headed to an apparently famous restaurant near the harbor. They served curry, and considering I can't eat beef or chicken...this is curry goat!
It was rather good, even though I don't eat a lot of meat and can't really tell you what texture goat is. The curry was spicy, but not too so overall a lovely win.
After that, we were off to Trench Town to see where Bob Marley grew up and took his first music lessons, and we got it from a genuine Rastafarian man, named Stone Man. There was an undeniable marijuana smell around the house and the people hanging about, but it ended up being atmospheric, considering the culture.
We finished our day with ice cream from Devon House, which is apparently rated the 4th best place in the world to get ice cream (by National Geographic). As a big fan of ice cream, I have some issues with this, but it was still good ice cream.
Onwards to the Blue Mountains on Sunday!
This is Jerome, our tour guide on the coffee plantation we visited. He's pointing out some of the coffee beans, and it's a very interesting culture on the island. He was wonderful--he knew all kinds of dates in the history of coffee, and plenty particular to the coffee industry in Jamaica. ALL the coffee plants are derived from the original plant. This man departed from France (the coffee plant had been brought to Versailles by Louis XV) with six plants, and through storms, attack by pirates, and attack by his fellow shipmates, one plant survived to Jamaica. And a whole industry is grown from that one plant!
Jamaican now is home to the Blue Mountain coffee, rated the second best coffee in the world. It's a very particular industry, and the elevation at which the coffee is grown determines how good it is, and lots of other things like moisture and acidity and sulphur. Also, it's good coffee because it generates its own sucrose and glucose, and doesn't release bitter acids.
I tried it, and I still don't like coffee, but it's the best of the bunch I've tried!
We climbed all the way up the mountain, viewing the coffee and wonderful vistas throughout the climb (and it was worth the pulled quadriceps I got somewhere along the way).
This is still the vista from the top of the mountain, in the glorious Blue Mountain range. We spent the rest of the day hiking and enjoying the lovely flowers growing throughout. I took some photos, but this was my favorite of the bunch, crouching amongst the flowers which enclosed the entrance to a waterfall.
It was a glorious day, though misty and rather atmospheric once we were in the mountains. A nice change from the medicine, even with having to read and prepare for lecture the next morning hanging over me on the trip back to Kingston. And it was nice to safely make it back to Mandeville and negotiate the taxi trip home even though twilight had passed and night had definitely fallen.
If anyone is ever in the Blue Mountains or Kingston, they should stay at this lovely B&B called RafJam. The view from our little treehouse:
And despite the problem of stray dogs, there are puppies that go with said stray dogs, and they're just adorable! (Despite the likely profusion of fleas, I couldn't resist!)
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