Rumpolephoreskin's Existential Wanderings in and Around Negril

[Rum-polephoreskin]

Day 5 (Sunday)

I wake up and the room temperature is perfect, warm but not dry. What's going on? Oh yeah I'm in Jamaica. Woo hoo! I check the seas from the verandah. The waves have built over night and the north wind is stronger. I'm not swimming this morning. Mrs. Peel wakes up and we have coffee on the verandah.

Mrs. Peel is hungry. Where does she put it? I suggest "Sips and Bites".

"Can we walk there?" she asks.

Pretty soon we're hoofing it up the road.

Road in front of Xtabi (early in the AM)


As we're walking, I find a restaurant you could only find in Jamaica. It's intimate, romantic and painted in bold colors. I talk Mrs. Peel into moving ahead while I stop to talk to the owner. I make reservations for Tuesday night. The owner asks for a 1000 $J, which may seem odd but I'll explain why later. She'll never forget that I proposed in Jamaica or the place I chose for the event.

Just a little way down the road I get a jelli (green coconut) and drink it without the straw, what's a little mess on your face when your having fun. "Sips and Bites" appears on the left.


Wow, not only Van Gogh colors but a likkle Fauvism thrown in for good measure.


Hitler absolutely hated Fauvism and I have a strong suspicion he would have hated Jamaica too.

I look in the parking lot and see a lot of red plates - the harbinger of good food. "Sips and Bites" has to be one of the prettiest locally run restaurants in all of Negril.


Just word of warning if you're planning on eating there the folks who run it are 7th Day Adventists so they're not open on Saturdays. The food was grand.

After breakfast we head back to Xtabi. This is Mrs. Peel's big day, her team, the Packers (boo-hiss), are playing the Giants tonight. We've already scoped out Seastar and we'll be heading there for the game. You ever notice when you watch a game at a sports bar you tend to drink more than you would watching the game at home? I know I do. Our plan was to eat at Xtabi before the game hoping to coat our stomachs. I had my third best meal of the trip that day, lunch, a simple conch burger with calaloo, but it was an orgasmic meal. Thanks Xtabi, you've blown my mind again.

Sunset from Seastar's bar


Chris (Seastar's owner?) was sitting at a table with his pretty wife(?) getting ready to eat dinner while watching the game. I thought there'd be more fans there but only about ten people showed up for the game. The game was a big disappointment for Mrs. Peel (I did not personally feel her heartbreak).

Things were about to get weird. A couple (close to my age) were sitting to our immediate right, I had been making noises like I too felt bad for the Packers. At some point they asked if we were from their home state? I told them yes and they asked where I lived. When I named the very small town the man's eyes got big.

"No way," he said.

"Why," I asked.

"I have relatives there," he said, and he named them. Not only were they our next door neighbors but I'd played cards with the guy he mentioned (a third cousin). Even weirder his cousin (a chronic reprobate) had lost his house and we'd bought it at a sheriff's auction. "Fatty" (his Jamaican name) eased our minds by confirming what we already knew: his cousin was the black sheep of the family. Fatty (he's not fat so one can only guess at what the name means - hoho) and his wife told us they were semi--ex-pats, living in Negril six months out of the year.
That makes complete sense to me.

[Biggs of the week]

Fatty a good Wisconsin peep !

[NikkiB]

I'm thoroughly enjoying this trip report and your writing style. Only a couple more weeks before I'm sitting on the beach enjoying some good books and cold beer!

[Lola]

Ahhh, Fatty & wife, you met a great couple!! Hey Rum, I'm from Wisconsin too :-)

[WiscoJudy]

Another fine Wisconsinite here...

[Rum-polephoreskin]

Lola,
Deb, isn't it?

I don't know Lola, you always seem swathed in an air of mysterious coincidence, some kind of Merlin-like fog.

[bbcamp2]

...an air of mysterious coincidence...

I will have to remember this and use it sometime...

[irieworld]

I love Sips and Bites. I sat at that same table my last trip and had some of the best escovitch fish ever. I have never had a bad meal there. Love their brown stew chicken also.

[Jbizek]

Loving the story, saving info for my trip. Country and Western Bar for Jenny Cake, took note. Though had such at Jenny's back in '10 and wasn't impressed, perhaps these are better?

[Rum-polephoreskin]

DAY (6) Monday

Alfred opened the door to his van. He was taking us to Rockland Bird Sanctuary. I’d never been further than Negril before. The only Jamaican country I’d ever seen was the old Mo-Bay rd. to Negril (with the ganja bridge) and now on this trip, the new road that sold the sea views to the highest bidder.

Verdant is the most apt description of the country side.


We headed out of Negril on the road to Sav. Alfred announced Likkle London, as it hove into view. It was the first time I’d noticed a Jamaican actually using that term. As we rolled along Alfred gave us a tour of Jamaican flora. He stopped the van at one point so I could get a shot of an honor-system-breadfruit-stand.

Breadfruit speaks loudly of Jamaica's history.


Mrs. Peel didn’t know that breadfruit wasn’t native to the island. I told her that in the late 1700’s the HMS Bounty had sailed from England for Tahiti. The purpose of the trip was to obtain live Tahitian breadfruit plants and ship them on to Jamaica. Why was England engaged in this botanical experiment? Unfettered (if you’ll excuse that expression in this sad case), free market, capitalism demanded a cheap, easily grown food to feed the Jamaican slaves.

To keep the plants alive on the long voyage the Bounty’s Captain cut the working sailors water ration to intolerable levels. Finally the sailors could take it no more and they mutinied. Captain Bligh and the breadfruit were thrown overboard, Bligh unlike the breadfruit was put in an open (23 Ft.) launch (essentially a lifeboat) with 18 loyal (to the crown anyway) followers. In an absolutely Herculean effort of seamanship Bligh managed to sail this small boat back to the arms of the empire (landing in East Timor- a Dutch possession). Ultimately Bligh was reassigned to the HMS Providence and completed the mission of bringing breadfruit to the W. I. Upon breadfruit’s introduction the slaves refused to eat it. Neither Mrs. Peel nor I imagined that the significance of breadfruit in Jamaica would come full circle by our tour’s end.

In Sav we stopped just past the hospital for some coco bread. Alfred bought it and shared with us (our first taste). He explained a Jamaican theory about breakfast. Alfred said that if you ate something heavy like coco bread or fritters for breakfast, it took a long time to digest and kept you from getting hungry before lunch - important if you’re working in the fields cutting sugarcane.



Our tour then wound on through Ferris Cross, Galloway and so on through Anchovy (located curiously inland) and on to the Rockland’s Bird Sanctuary located at the top of a seemingly un-navigable, narrow, ill maintained mountain road. Alfred’s driving abilities came to the front as he wheeled that big van up a road that would have challenged a motocross rider.

Then our cares were washed away. It’s hard to explain the serenity of Rockland’s, it’s close to intoxicating. Within seconds we were seated in the arbor, surrounded by bird feeders, and native birds. The feeders were visited by Jamaican Orioles, Bananaquits, Orangequits, a Jamaican Woodpecker and two kinds of doves.



Orangequit


Jamaican Woodpecker



(poorly focussed) Jamaican Oriole


Oliver, our host, seated us then took a chair for himself. He began the hard part of his job, calling in the Dr. Birds. Oliver assumed a soft, falsetto voice and began his gentle coaxing, “birdie, birdie, here birdie. . . etc.”. I thought to myself I don’t care how much he makes this must be the best job in the world. His blood pressure must be perfect.


More to follow . . .