Monty & Melo's "5 Months Mon Goat Can Eat" Trip Report - Oct 2012

[Monty&Melo]

We tell the driver to pick us up at 330pm for the Ricks/Ivans/LTU trip. We had discussed the “goat BBQ” amongst ourselves on the long walk to Red Dragon and decided that we would do it on Thursday if that was going to work for all of our Jamaican friends. We pack up towels, change of clothes, a bunch of monopoly money (JA$$) and walk down to the road to meet up with our driver.

Upon getting in, I say, “Thursday OK for the BBQ, mon??” “Yeah mon, Thursday OK.” Of course we were curious about the whole experience and wondered what we needed to contribute (money, beer, rum, etc). “We will go to Chiney-mon tomorrow for beer and Whiterum, and milk; we drink the Whiterum with milk.” “OK I said, so are you supplying the goat?” "Yeah, mon, we will take him with us.” Wow, I thought, this should really be interesting…..

My brother and I fancy ourselves as amateur chefs and I was interested in helping out, not just hanging out having the Jamaicans cook for me. “Yeah mon,” I said, “I’m happy to help cut stuff up and assist with the cooking if that will be OK.” Almost immediately our driver responded, “Ok, mon, you can cut de goat’s neck.” Damn…..did you catch that, I went from chopping up onions and garlic to killing a goat in the matter of like 5 seconds. It was already too late, my brother was all over it, “Yeah mon, Monty kill the goat!!” I think he was on Facebook, Twitter and Text Messages letting everyone that I had ever met or known in my life that it was going to happen, Thursday at high noon. I wasn’t so sure, but what the hell, I wasn’t going to spoil JMA’s fun, so I just laughed along with everyone else in the car.

Thankfully, we quickly arrived at Ricks and climbed out of the car. Now I know Ricks is a total tourist trap and big rip-off when it comes to food and drink, but we have found that if you show up, buy a beer immediately you can generally stretch that beer into an hour’s worth of refreshment and assuming you don’t stay much longer than that, you get out pretty cheaply. We don’t normally go to Ricks unless we have a newbie with us, I think it is some sort of unwritten rule that you have to take a newbie to Ricks just for the spectacle of it all. We arrive, find a place on the stairs to hang out and get a Red Stripe.

While cliff jumping from the top didn’t appeal to me (any more!!!), I wanted to get the girls in the water (my brother can’t handle the pressure change of jumping in deep water….drives his ears crazy, or maybe he is just a wimp, the jury is still out!!). I was amazed that it didn’t take much coaxing to get the girls to jump from a platform about 15 feet up. Here we are after the jump swimming in the deep blue sea:



I’ll bet the view from up there is pretty good



One of the best things about Ricks is the people watching and getting to meet folks from the big all-inclusive hotels here for their trip to the “real Jamaica.” This particular day the group was from the Grand Palladium. They spent most of the afternoon at Margaritaville and now were at Ricks. So much for the “real Jamaica” I thought, but I didn’t judge, they all seemed to be having a good time. We hung out at Ricks until right about 5pm and then we changed clothes and walked down to Catcha.

Melo and I had been there before, but my brother had not been there and to say he was impressed was an understatement. He and LG loved Catcha and Ivan’s. LG took pictures forever and hanging at the bar listening to Shaggy (It wasn’t me!!!) was one of the highlights of the trip. The sunset wasn’t great that night, but colors in the sky and in the water were still pretty outstanding. Here is a shot of the sky around time the sun went down.



Here is another pic, taken of Melo and JMA at the bar



After Ivan’s we headed for LTU. Love LTU, the food is awesome and the mixture of locals, ex-pats and tourists always makes for an eclectic group. We were pretty tired of the camera by the time we got to LTU, so I only have this one picture of me and my much better half



After a long day of moving around and drinking, I forgot exactly what I had at LTU, but I do remember that it was awesome and of course the Pumpkin Soup that comes with every meal is beyond good. We called our driver and got him to come retrieve us so that we could retire for the evening. We had another pretty good day planned for tomorrow (Wednesday), including the first ever trip to the Chiney-Mon shop and dinner at Bentley’s which of course means a visit to Bentley’s during the day to arrange things for the evening, more moving and getting out and about, my favorite…….