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We’re just back from a week in Jamaica. Good to go, good to be home. Usually winter trips around here are motivated by a desire to escape the cold. Not this time, I think it was in the 50’s when we left. We basically had about two weeks of real winter–very cold, lots of snow–but before and after it’s been like living in three month-long November, a month known for gray skies and lots of mud. Yuck.
Because of that, it was still wonderful to get away, mostly to glory in bright colors-Turquoise! Orange! Green!, and to escape the relentless To Do list that exists for all of us. Mine is especially, uh, challenging now. Mix my Epstein Barr/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome with ADHD, and interesting things happen. I am grateful to my bones that we were able to get away. Here is the scene that greeted us at sunset, after getting up at 3 AM, flying to MN, then Montego Bay, then a 1 3/4 hour-long drive to Negril. Heaven.
We stayed at Country Country Beach Cottages, a jewel-like oasis tucked in the middle of Negril, on the famous, or infamous, seven-mile beach. The rooms are spartan, it’s considered a budget hotel, but the aesthetics of the walkway between cottages was worth it for us. We adored our second floor room and patio (Room 524, just in case you’re wondering), once we got ourselves transferred from the first room they put us in. It was not what we had reserved, was charmless, and was the room closest to the road. The traffic noise kept me awake most of the night. (Someone please send mufflers to Jamaica.)
Once we got moved to the kind of room we’d reserved, I was able to sit on the patio and watch birds like this White-crowned Pigeon eating palm fruits. More heaven.
Heaven, that is, except for our drunken, noisy neighbors for the next two nights. Jim and I, Mr. and Mrs. Midwest Nice, kindly asked them to keep it down the first night. Initially at 10:45, then at midnight. “Get some ear plugs!” was their response. We howled with laughter the next night when other neighbors went over at 11 pm and yelled “SHUT THE F#%$ UP!”
The noisy crew checked out the next day. Whew. After that the place was perfect, and the other guests and staff couldn’t have been nicer.
We took an excursion on one of the many “glass bottom boats” in Jamaica, down a river to see more fun birds. I don’t know where the whole “glass bottom boat” in Jamaica thing came from, but I took one on my first honeymoon with Patrick in the eighties, and the glass was as opaque as it is now. But who cared, because we had a lovely, relaxing glide down the river, and saw tropical birds galore. Here are some if my favorites, Black-necked Stilts:
One of the best parts of our trip was our driver, “Famous Vincent.” That’s his actual name. He had a laugh like a sandhill crane, and a smile that lit up the entire river.
The snapshot below of his hardworking assistant is one of my favorite photographs of the entire trip. I wish I remembered his name.
We visited Barney’s Flower and Hummingbird Garden the day after we arrived. The birds were sparse, a water main had broken and the garden was starving for water, but we did have a lovely encounter with the Jamaican National Bird, the Doctor Bird, or the Red-billed Streamertail.
We also went to Benta Falls, about an hour’s drive away. Thankfully we hadn’t rented a car, and relied on one of the many drivers looking for work around Negril. Thanks Michael, we never would have found it without you.
The falls are actually a series of low falls burbling over smooth rocks on the Benta River. Gorgeous.
Tourists like us pay an entry fee and are assigned a guide. He knew exactly where to walk and what to avoid, held my hand and propped me up part of the way. He handed me off to Jim after negotiating one of the many challenging parts of the falls:
You can’t exactly take a cane into a river, so I was 1) grateful for the help and 2) over the moon thrilled I had made it. It was about an 45-minute-long excursion. (Any and all comments about my handsome, manly, 75-year-old husband are welcome.)
I definitely need help providing an answer to this question: Why exactly was my mouth wide open in the photo below? It might have been something like “Holy S&^% that’s cold!”
One always expects some rough moments during any trip, but we did not predict a massive windstorm that closed the beaches and almost all of the beach-adjacent restaurants for two days because the waves overwhelmed them.
Most of the beach was impassable, as you can see below. The wind and waves disgorged massive amounts of seaweed, and heartbreakingly, thousands and thousands of sponges from the closest reef. They lay rotting on the beach and I still feel heartsick about them. It’s not like coral reefs don’t have enough trouble as it is.
Two days later they brought out the big equipment, which dug massive holes in the sand, buried the seaweed and dead sponges, conches, and sea stars. Heaven knows what they did with the sand. (Far too much to redistribute I’d think, the holes were the sizes of rooms.)
So we missed the ocean-related excursions we had planned, but hey, I got to watch a phalanx of Grackles chest their way across the hotel’s cafe, like a bunch of West Side Story wannabees, and steal fake sugar packets from the tables. Not good for them I know, but watching them go through their routine was like watching a very good play.
And, once things died down after two days of gale-force winds, I was able to bird watch to my heart’s content. Here’s a Jamaican Woodpecker, disguised as the Joker from the Batman movie.
I have a gazillion more photos, but have almost used up my energy allotment, and the second I get up the dogs will run to the door and say, in postural dog speak: “YOU OWE US A GAZILLION SHEEPHERDING SESSIONS! GO GET YOUR WHISTLE!”
So I leave you, hoping you had a good week, no matter what it entailed.
(Don’t forget to caption the photo with me with my big mouth open!)
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