Chris was in rapt conversation with his buddy when we walked up but made his goodbyes as we grabbed our beers and comes over to pick us up. As we head down the difficult road Chris tells us about the bikes. “Fella road up here from Negril on that scooter,” he says, “can you believe it?” Well only because we saw it in the parking lot. “Got a flat tire on the last stretch.” This doesn’t surprise us, what surprises us is he didn’t get one BEFORE the last stretch. “Guy on the motorcycle is trying to help him but that’s not going to be easy.” That is a hilarious understatement. “He needs a truck, not a motorcycle,” I say. “Yah, mon.” “He’s got a difficult evening ahead of him,” I add. “Oh Yah, mon.”
Chris says if we see anything we want a picture of to let him know, he’ll stop. We’re chatting and viewing and miss a bunch of great pictures but do stop for one that I think is gorgeous.
We come out of the mountains and into the cane fields and see men heading down the road in heavy wool shirts. “Coming in from the cane fields,” says Chris and you can tell his description this morning was dead accurate. “They wear the heavy shirts to protect themselves from the cane,” he says.
We pass the roadside bar and it is busier. “That’s the place to be, eh?” I ask. “Yah, mon,” says Chris and provides a very entertaining description of a day in the life of a village bar from the first folks headed of to work to the guys who “just don’t want to go home” for a variety of reasons at the end of the night.
We drive through Sav and I say, “It’s market day, isn’t it?” “Yah, mon, you want to drive down to it?” I love market days in the Caribbean, they’re like the essence of community to me. “Of course.” So we take a left instead of a right. Shops seem to put everything out on the street on market days. We pass a few dress shops that have mannequins stacked four high out front. They’re all sexy dresses. Jamaican women love their sexy dresses and pretty much all men love Jamaican women in their sexy dresses. I promise Sweetie Pie I will buy her a Jamaican sexy dress one day, she is totally built for it. We pass street-side lingerie shops. What a place! The town is bustling and we love it.
We head out of Sav and Chris says he’ll take us back on what he calls the highlight tour, along the coast south of Negril and back in to town going past the lighthouse. It’s a beautiful drive and he points out many places we could build or buy a house. We pass Jamaica Jurassic Park on the way. We get back to the hotel and settle on a noon pickup tomorrow to get to the airport.
