Going back to Kingston

I gave DB~ carte blanche to select whatever she wanted to eat. She wanted to reminisce over our trip to Jamaica we took back in March 2010, so she went with Jamaican night.

I bought a jerk chicken marinade that was just spicy enough to get your attention, but not ridiculous. I marinated some chicken tenderloins at the start of the morning so they were good and marinated by dinner time. For the side dishes, I went with a simple box of herb roasted chicken rice. Technically, it should have been white rice I guess, but that can get boring.

I wanted an island-feeling side dish, so I saw some plantains at Giant Eagle. I took the peels off of the them, cut them in half width wise and then cut each half LENGTH wise (twice) to get plaintain "planks". I fried them in some oil for 1-1/2 minutes each side, until they get just a little brown, then I dusted them with cinnamon to give some taste to the kind of plain taste.

The finishing touch was serving it all with Red Stripe. Swim up bars + Red Stripe in Jamaica = one stumbling good time on vacation. We toned it down considerably, of course, only having 2 each.

Big ups to Tony, who made the fish for us, and Geraldine who braided DB~'s hair. One love. Respec'.

Ocho Rios, Jamaica - more touristy-type post

So we didn't go down just to observe the locals and sympathize with their plight, as I may have portrayed in the last post. We went for sand in our toes, unlimited drinks at a swim up pool bar(s), and to see some natural beauty. (Besides the natural beauty of DB~, of course).

We stayed at the Riu Ocho Rios, a mega-resort of 864 rooms spread over 3 towers. And of those 864 rooms, it felt like we were checked into half of them thanks to a series of goofs by the front desk. The first room we got was in the standard Tower 3...normal room. When we used the key (not a keycard, a key, oddly enough) and opened the door...there were a man and a woman in various states of undress. But at least they were both wearing something.

After dragging our luggage allllll the way to the front desk, we got another room in Tower 3 from a different front desk guy. I asked him to ring the room to make sure no one was there this time. No answer. So we caravan back to the new room and have a good laugh about the first room on our way there. When I open the door to the new room, we are both greeted by the site of a swarthy naked man running out of the shower, crank bobbing in the breeze, coming to slam the door in my face or punch me...whichever comes first.

This time, I had DB~ hang out with the luggage and I quietly complained about the unacceptable nature of this situation. For my efforts, we got upgraded to a junior suite in Tower 1.

That was the last bad thing that happened...the rest of the time at the Riu was fantastic. The food was great at the 5 restaurants you could make reservations for, plus the buffet restaurant and the Italian restaurant.

The first picture above is a shot from our kayak out on the Caribbean Sea looking back towards the Riu. We were staying on the very far right.

The second picture is a shot of Dunn River Falls, a must-do if you are in Jamaica. Dunn River Falls are a series of cascading waterfalls that descend over 300 feet into the Caribbean Sea. You are given a tour, one in which you will definitely get wet, by forming a human chain of people and then ascending the falls by climbing up the rocks. It's an idea that you would never do back in Pittsburgh, but it seems perfectly acceptable in Jamaica. It was a ton of fun and we got a lot of great pictures of us in the falls themselves, thanks to tipping our guide $5 to keep our camera dry and take shots of us periodically.

The one picture that I wish I could show you was that of Glistening Waters. This was another off-site tour we did to a lagoon that has micro-organisms in it that absorb sunlight during the day. At night, these micro-organisms emit bioluminescence when disturbed. The boat ride you take at night causes the boat's wake to glow a neon blue. And then you can get in the lagoon and swim around too -- this causes the water around you to glow as well as the hair on your arms. The bottom of the lagoon is this bizarre gelatinous mud type of mixture that feels super weird when you walk on it (you're only in 4 feet of water at this point). It's even harder when you are carrying your girlfriend who doesn't want to touch it with her feet!!

All in all, Jamaica was a great place to visit and there is plenty to do over the course of a week. It's not a place we will rush back, as both of us love to explore different places, but I do recommend Jamaica. Yea mon.

Ocho Rios, Jamaica - observing the local artisans

DB~ and I got back on Saturday from a well-deserved, week-long vacation to Ocho Rios, Jamaica. There will be some more posts about more "tropical resort-ish" aspects of our trip and the other places we went, but I thought I would lead off with a gritty, grindy post about our trip to downtown Ocho Rios.

First things first...if you are going to Jamaica, you have to know that if you step 1 foot off of your resort, you will be haggled by someone trying to sell you something. DB~ and I were well aware of this going into the trip, but it still seemed to take aback some others that we met on the trip.

We took a shuttle, along with 12 other people from our resort, to downtown Ocho Rios's shopping district on Monday (3/29). This was mainly our chance to get some souvenirs at better prices than on the resort, but I always want to really get a feel for the local flavor when I visit somewhere, too. When we got off the shuttle, we were dropped in the heart of the area and told we would be picked up in 2 hours.

We instantly went into this "gated community" of sorts for shopping called Soni's. It was where all the hagglers on the street are kept out by a gate and there is security patrolling inside. This was a good way for us to get our feet wet before what would come later. While inside this Soni's complex, we were stunned to see that it was run and primarily staffed by a large amount of Indians. When you go to a place like Jamaica, it's just a little jarring to be bartering a piece of jewelry for your girlfriend with an Indian. We got the majority of our souvenirs here, and only had to go into a few stores to do it, so we had lots of time left to walk the town and get a feel for the pulse of a town that rises and swells like the tides with every cruise ship that comes into port. Once we left the semi-protected area of Soni's is when things got more real.

This area had the energy and street feel of a place like the Strip District on a Saturday in the summer, but amplified by a power of 10. At no point, walking by ourselves through this stretch, did we feel in danger but there is this element of unknowing that hangs in the air. There is such desperation to earn a dollar from everyone you meet. It will really alter my view of shopping, in general, and in the Strip District in particular from now on. It will be tough to not try and barter in the Strip!

I love grocery shopping so I wanted to see what one was like in Jamaica. We went into a place called General Foods to do a little price shopping. Earlier in the week, I had overheard from a person on the resort that the minimum wage here was 14 cents an hour. That's why when you tip someone on the resort $1 or $2 dollars, they will usually go out of their way for you. Think of your hourly wage or salary by the hour and then imagine if someone gave you a tip of 7 or 15 times that rate. The prices in the grocery store (using some quick goat math to convert 90 Jamaican into 1 US) were usually half of what we pay here. But then factor in the much larger wage scale and you can see that most groceries could be luxuries here. Case in point - the ground meat was roughly the same price there as it is here -- that's a huge deal for someone that may be earning $1.40 a day.

We had been souvenir shopping, wandered the streets taking photos of the hub-bub and the people, went grocery shopping, so now it was time to get gritty and grindy and go into the Craft Market.

This is where the local artisans congregate in this tight labyrinth of rows and pathways, all asking to come look at their store with open arms but flat tones in their voices. They know that most of the time they will be ignored or shooed away. In this area, at first, DB~ and I did feel slightly edgy. It's very tight and there are locals right on top of you at every turn. But then we had an epiphany, of sorts...this was a tight-knit community within Ocho Rios's own community. Nothing bad was going to happen to you here (aside from overpaying for something!), especially if you stayed aware of your surroundings.

And then we found our oasis in the form of a man named Tony. He is the picture at the top of the post and may have been our favorite Jamaican that we met on our trip. His area was all the way at the back and when we approached him, he was sitting on a concrete ledge carving a wooden fish out of a piece of cedar. He did not give us any high-pressure sales pitch, just asked us to look at his stuff and we could do a deal. Without saying anything, DB~ and I just felt...relaxed...wholly relaxed for the first time in downtown Ocho Rios. We could have been anywhere in Pittsburgh watching a man carve a fish out of cedar, but we were here in Jamaica.

Before the trip, we wanted to get some type of local art for the two of us to remember the trip by. This was it. We negotiated the price for this fish to $8 and then asked Tony if he could stain it for us while we finished walking through the market, a period of 20 minutes. He said sure. We perused the rest of the market and DB~ bartered a good deal for some wooden bracelets, but we returned to Tony's area in 10 minutes. It was our comfort zone.

When we got back earlier than expected, I told Tony we just wanted to hang out and watch him work. We asked him questions periodically about himself and his life, but mostly it was just really satisfying to know that the wooden fish on my mantle right now was made right in front of us and not in some factory in China (like many souvenirs in Jamaica). Tony had been carving for 15 years and his hands proved it -- there were many "uh-oh's" on his hands from stray awl and chisel misses. Tony gathers his own wood up in the hills outside Ocho Rios. He lived close by to the market and walked to his stand, which he pays the equivalent of $16 US/month to rent.

In a typical day, Tony makes 8 wooden pieces of art, whether it is fish, birds, or an elaborate barracuda and stains them. It is hard, manual work that he does. Most of them he sells wholesale to a friend who then distributes them all over Jamaica. You see a lot of similar looking fish at various souvenir places throughout the country. But ours was made right in front of us. And for that, I thank you Tony. Yeah, it was only $8, but you gave DB~ and I our lasting memory of Jamaica.

One love, Tony. Respec'.