Friday's sunrise saw me getting ready for a dip in the pool before heading to Port Royal for a visit. After Rob and Lisa got ready, we left....sometime just before 10am. The traffic was horrendous and since none of us had been there, we relied on the rental car map. That was, as you will see, a strangely fateful decision...
So, we are smack in downtown Kingston, and the best I can make out of this crap map is that Port Royal is past the airport on the causeway......so....I look at the map again and see an airport..."Let's go right Rob....." Well, that was in the opposite direction and towards some very small general aviation airport, NOT the international airport! SO, we drive and drive and realize, eventually, that we are smack in the middle of the industrial wharfs and right across the road is Seaview Gardens.....YIKES! We eventually get turned around, but dead end right into the entrance for some petro storage facility. The nice guard had a chuckle when we told him where we wanted to go! At least he pointed us in the right direction. So, we are now back near downtown and we spied a sign that said "Follow The Hummingbirds to the Airport". Where was that fookin sign 1/2 hour ago????
SO, we followed the fookin hummingbirds and sure enough, they got us onto the causeway. We drove and drove and finally made it to the airport and then drove and drove some more and arrived in Port Royal. We pulled up and noticed three large tour buses....and nothing else....odd......
We walk up to the ticket window where I again experience the "locals v. tourist" pricing scheme. Again, a HUGE difference. Rob and Lisa grab their ID cards and try to hand them to the lady working the kiosk. "Mon, we don take dem cards" "These are our JA ID's" replied Rob. "Oh....thought dem were credit cards! We don take dem!" Everyone had a good laugh and I even got the local's pricing!
As we enter Fort James....an eerie feeling comes over us.....I feel very ill.....we are approached by a tour guide who thanks us profusely for coming out to the Fort and looks at us a bit quizzically...and looks at her watch....and then says...."Thank you again for coming, as you know it is a special day and we have a free movie on Port Royal for you to watch and then you can tour the museum and have a walk anywhere you wish!" "You have the timing perfect!" We look at each other and then at the tour guide who then informs us that we have arrived on the 321st anniversary at the exact time of the 1692 Earthquake and that all these schoolchildren are here to spend the anniversary! You could have knocked us over with a stiff breeze!!! I started feeling even more ill and sat to watch the movie...which was HILARIOUS for the fake British and pirate accents! Finally the odd ill feeling passed and we set about to explore the Fort....the Giddy House, the rotary cannon emplacements, the powder magazines...all had sunk from 6 to 16 feet from the Earthquake!!! The grounds are very cool, the whole thing just blew our minds! The museum is very cool as well, and includes a pocket watch recovered from the ocean(1/3 of Port Royal sunk into the ocean!) that they used to determine the exact time of the Earthquake....which we had also figured out, albeit accidentally!!!
Next Installment--"OMG Look at the Size of These Portions!" or "Oh FOOK That Wasn't a Sweet Green Pepper Slice!!"
