The view was spectacular, and the path went down the hill right into the ocean. Cabarita Island seemed like you could reach out and touch it. On our left was a house and nothing else all the way to the sea. We walk up and yelled, “Hello! Anybody there?”. A lady came out to the verandah drying her hands as she walked. She said she was Jah Mike’s girlfriend and that we could put our things inside and wait for him as he was soon to be back. He was out in the “bush”. It seemed there were mostly only three places anyone could be. The house. The yard. The bush. Anywhere else was just “gone somewhere”.
While we were sitting on the verandah wall, a nicely dressed youth approached and introduced himself. He said his name was Tony and a good friend of Jah Mike. We talked for a bit when he asked if we wanted to take a walk up to Firefly which was the former home of Ian Flemming for an even more spectacular view of the ocean. Why not?
So, off we went on our first adventure.
The driveway up was steep. That along with the heat caused us to labor our way to the top, but Tony just climbed effortlessly taking time to teach us about Firefly on the way up. To say the view from Firefly is spectacular does not do it any justice. I have seen many pictures of it since and it still fills me with awe. There was an old gentleman caretaker of the property who gave us a tour of the house and grounds. He was some relation of Tony, so he took us where tourists are not allowed. There was a tunnel in the basement that he said was dug in Captain Morgan’s time as an escape route and some said to hide treasures looted from passing ships. Firefly was later built over it but an opening still exists.
Just before leaving, we were relaxing at Firefly when Tony asked to see my wife’s sunglasses. She took them off and handed them to him and he put them on. “They look great on you”, she said. “They are yours”.
A gift to a new friend but who knew it would cause so much trouble?
