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

[Monty&Melo]

At 330pm we head out of Rondel towards the cliffs. First stop was the ChineyMon Store, otherwise known as First Choice Wholesale and Supermarket. Again another first for me even though I considered myself a Negril veteran.
Here is a pic of the entrance in case you are one of those that drive by this place every day in your Negril adventures and have never been in



Inside we purchased two cases of Red Stripe (in the plastic crates, not in the box), a bottle of Appletons Gold Rum for the Bentley’s trip, a bottle of WhiteRum for the host of the Jamaican BBQ, some rice, some oil, and two boxes of boxed milk. The manager (owner?) of the store sits in a little raised office right at the front door of the place. If you want phone cards or cigs you have to buy those directly from him. Everything else goes through the registers. After checking out, the receipt is handed to the manager in the perch and he checks off everything that you purchased on the receipt. This appears to me to be a NBS (No Bull****) type of place. The transactions were handled efficiently and effectively and we were on our way in no time. I thought the prices for the rum were a little better than the Hi-Lo, but I didn’t pay that much attention so I could be wrong, or maybe I was feeling the effects of drinking all day!!

Since the big BBQ was tomorrow and we had lots of questions about how this was going to go down, we made sure our driver stayed with us and had a beer at Canoe to answer our questions. Here is a pic of us all sitting around discussing the poor misfortune of one goat that was going to occur tomorrow.

I took the pic so I am not in it, but this is the rest of the crew



Obviously we were most curious about the goat, how big was it going to be, was it male or female, how old was it, etc. It was going to be a small, young goat, male. The thinking being that a young goat would cook faster and since we didn’t have a lot of time this would be best. This is where the theme of the trip came from. In response to how old a goat needed to be before it could be eaten, our driver responded, “5 months mon, goat can eat.” OK, that sounded pretty young to me, but he was the expert so 5 months sounded good to me. He then informed me that he had been at home that day sharpening up his knife for me so I would be able to kill it quickly and efficiently. I still wasn’t sure. He said that when he picked us up for the trip tomorrow the goat would be in the back of a car, but that it would be in a box in the back, so no worries.

He headed out after a beer or two and said he would return about 6pm so we could head out to Bentley’s. We continued at Canoe drinking rum punch and this night Melo even had a Caesar. Those things are yummy!!!



Somehow we got on a kick to take a picture of our bill at Canoe, here is the one from that night



Here is a picture of the expanded bar area at Canoe, they have really done a good job with the place and that is the lovely Carla behind the bar, pouring me a rum punch!!!



Pretty soon it was time to head off to Bentleys….