Thirty Years Ago on the Beach - #2 Gilbert approaches

There had been no talk by anyone about any weather concerns on the horizon. It had been an excellent party time...

Waking early with the sun, the scent of Jamaican coffee drew us to the kitchen. We huddled around the sacred coffee pot. Ah, the good morning Blue Mountain brew...

We heard something outside and went to the open kitchen door. We noticed that the cook and groundsman were unusually excited about something. Apparently they heard it on the news. We were moderately hungover and ignored their animated banter. It was early Monday morning and we had a busy day to plan! Been meaning to visit the falls this trip but so far sand gravity had been winning. But it was a new day with great expectations!

The noise outside got louder then it cut off abruptly. The groundsman, was strutting off triumphantly toward the main road. The cook came in through the open door. She looked serious, which didn't strike us as a very good sign that early in the morning. We hadn't even finished our coffee yet.

Her present state was very out of character from the previous four days. We were introduced to her on Thursday by the groundsman who also happened to be the Villas taxi driver. And now it seemed like we were going to find out what all the early morning fuss was about.

The cook told us not to fret but we may need to take some precautions because a hurricane was on its way. Huh? What? Well, okay....

None of us had any idea what this meant. We had never been through a hurricane and we essentially knew nothing about them. Being from Ohio we knew tornadoes, not hurricanes. We weren't from Florida.

We listened and tried to comprehend her somewhat brief explanation and suggestions. Not completely understanding her because of the Jamaican patois explanation, it was felt it would be best to confirm what was supposed to be a major change to our vacation plans.

The cook suggested we turn on the news.

Not really believing what we had heard, we did as suggested. Turning on the only source of outside information, the radio, it was already tuned to our favourite station, IRIE FM. There was nothing but reggae on IRIE FM which did seem to momentarily settle the issue. IRIE was playing Bob, we were cool.

The cook was not amused by our instant ignorance but politely smiled and changed the station to a much more official sounding one. The anxious announcer's voice blasted through the villa. The Prime Minister was going to be coming up momentarily!

Okay, this can’t be good.

The latest news from the government disaster services was the obvious official word. And the official word was that a hurricane named Gilbert was just hours away from making landfall in Kingston.

Hmmm.... Okay, now what did that mean? We were clueless.

Part 1:
https://negril.com/forum/showthread....-Gilbert-Story