Trip Report: Blue Mountains, Boston Bay, Kingston

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we only saw two other groups at the falls- one local couple came up, popped their heads in and left. and then, right before we were about to head back down, a tourist girl and her guide came in to go swimming. they'd taken a motorcycle up to as far as they could and then hiked the rest of the way. we saw her helmet right outside the falls area and his bike on the road, as we walked down.

of course, the walk back was so much easier. ti boss managed to get cow sht on his sneakers and was wondering why the smell of poop was so much stronger on the way down than it was on the way up.

theodore wanted to take us to the barracks and a rope swing area, but that woulda eaten up almost a full hour of our already dwindling day, so we got them paid, got their contact info and headed back down towards port antonio.

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down in port antonio we stopped for patties at around 4- our first food since our 8:30am breakfast!

after that, we had 2 hours remaining until warren was off the clock and my family had their dinner reservations at woody's (for our prepaid curry goat dinner).

next stop after patties was rock bottom's wood carving shop.










ti boss had found a gigantic seed (similar to a horse chestnut- i used to have a pair of earrings similar that i bought in barbados, back in 1990) and wanted someone to bore a hole in it so he could make a necklace. i really needed a functional mortar and pestle (or as we call it in kreyol, yon pilon), becase the one we have has a large split down the middle.

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see the picture above? with the canes in the right-hand corner? ti boss decided he wanted the 6th walking stick from the left. i said okay.






he got his self-appointed nickname carved on it.



ti boss is VERY obsessed with carving.

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Fantastic photos!

thank you! jamaica makes it easy. and my family is photogenic.

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next stop, winifred beach!!!

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i meant to add this photo when i was giving my moore town rundown:





font zion church, moore town

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okay, back to winifred beach...

winifred beach was, unfortunately, another quick stop. we got there around 5:30pm and it was still crowded, but winding down. warren bantered with the woman who tried to get him to give a donation. he told her he'd donate next time and that we were really only just passing through so he could show us the lay of the land- they knew each other, so it was no big deal. he told us that if we took a route taxi and walked down they wouldn't even ask for a donation- it's just when cars pull in that they ask.

winifred beach was surprisingly crowded for 5:30pm on a monday.




this photo is boring, but i wanted to post something that shows a goodly part of the beach


in a perfect world, we'd take a route taxi over to there tomorrow (today, really), but ti boss wants to do a surf lesson at boston beach at 10am, then husband and ti boss are going to a gun range at around 3pm- husband wants to shoot and ti boss wants to hang with his father and do guy things. i'm not extremely pressed that we're not going to get to spend any great amount of time at winifred beach, but i would really like to come back and hang there.

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we got to woody's low bridge restaurant at exactly 6pm. warren didn't want to just leave us there to figure out how to make our way home without him, but we INSISTED that he let us take care of ourselves. i put it this way, "you're off the clock with us at 6pm. i know you have stuff to do. unless you really want to have dinner with us we do not need you to wait for us! it's business!" we knew we'd be fine getting a route taxi back.

i'm pretty much always a freelance worker, and i take the hourly rate very seriously- we booked warren for x amount of dollars for 8 hours, and any time he spends with us in addition to those 8 hours brings his hourly rate down!!!! plus, i'm sure he had stuff to take care of at home. regardless, he still wound up spending 15 minutes discussing something with my husband (i think they were arranging details about the gun range visit) and i had to stomp back to the car and pull my husband out.

on to the more interesting part of this section of our epic day: the meal!

we were led to a table scattered with flowers and a cute, hand-written reserved sign.




there were so many nice, little touches



first course was a creamy vegetable soup.









even though i didn't pre-order a special meal for ti boss (i told him he'd be perfectly fine with a cheeseburger), they were so sweet and gave him a bowl of soup.

then we were given a large bowl of salad (shredded lettuce and cabbage with tomatoes and a very light caribbean vinagrette dressing) that i kept for myself.

the main course was curry goat and steamed vegetables with the most delicious pumpkin rice.

and dessert was homemade cake with rum raisin ice cream- again, even though we hadn't ordered a special dinner for ti boss, they kindly served him dessert. miss cherry (the chef/owner) told me the name of the cake- it's an old school jamaican staple, but i unfortunately forgot it. it was a nutmeggy cake with a grated coconut batter- totally the type of cake i obsessively research recipes for looking for the most old school and authentic version. miss cherry is obviously well-schooled in the classics.

oh, and i ordered us all glasses of their celebrated homemade ginger beer. it was, of course, amazing. i would love to go back there tomorrow for lunch, if only for the salad and ginger beer. i'm sure ti boss would be perfectly happy to get another cheeseburger. i also feel like i didn't tip them well enough for the dinner. i'd paid a lot up front on monday, and kind of spazzed out on leaving a big tip because i couldn't do the math quickly enough.

so, that was dinner at woody's. delicious and chill. there were two other tables of tourists- both couples, both had obviously eaten there before.

we waited a while for an available route taxi and wound up sharing it with an australian tourist couple, who crammed in the back with husband and ti boss. the driver was very nice to us (my family), but kind of made fun of the aussies- the girl's accent, in particular. oh, well.

we paid $250j for the 3 of us to get to the boston jerk center.

we were home by 8:30pm.

that was a lonnnnnnnnng day.

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day 7: taxi to run vacation errands in port antonio, beach with ti boss, lobster and chicken dinner at boston jerk center.

details to come.