Cruise, Part 2

Wednesday, we woke up docked at Montego Bay, Jamaica. Immediately once you dock, there's not much to do because you're basically in a compound. There's a couple of stores, and places to line up for buses out of the terminal.

We docked at 9am and didn't have our excursion scheduled until 1:30pm, so we had plenty of time to get a hop on and hop off bus ticket and ride around town. The craft market was the first stop, and it was full of really pushy vendors who took it personally when you didn't want to see their stuff. We got an ironwood mortar and pestle from one guy, and from another we got a mahogany carved pig and a really touristy packable straw hat for husband with a band that says Jamaica.

While I was trying to pull him toward the van we got suckered into one more stall by a woman who called us over by saying "Grandma won't spank you if you don't buy, but looking is free." He bought two little keychains she'd made, and I was finally able to herd him back onto the bus. We then headed to somewhere more touristy, Margaritaville, and had a couple of drinks and conch fritters which were only okay, but it was relatively inexpensive and we just wanted to sit around.

We hopped back on the bus and went back to the terminal to get onto our 4x4 trucks for the excursion at 1:30. Our driver, Christopher, was really informative and also entertaining. We rode in the back of the truck (with seatbelts, don't worry, mom!) through some roads and up a hill into an area where there was new construction going in. There was an overlook from which the whole bay was visible, we could see our ship and took some good selfies.

We talked about plants, there was the touch-me-not, which closes when you tap it like in the video below, a plant they called the blood plant which is used to make a tea for erectile disfunction, and a plant called the life plant that's used as a base for a lot of herbal teas they use for medicinal purposes.

After this, we drank some rum punch and water and headed up to St Mary's Anglican Church that was built in 1847 to be used as a slave hospital for Old Montpelier estate, a plantation that was later burned. The original part of the floor, painted red, was made of ballast stones from slave ships. There were several of the original pews in the back.

On our way to the next stop, we passed a huge tree that was used to hang slaves, that had a huge strangler fig tree, a parasitic plant, all over it. It was very haunting, and it felt wrong to take pictures. We passed several different kinds of food bearing trees, breadfruit, almond, and ackee. Our next stop was the waterfall, we had to take a huge winding path past a lot of areas of non-touristy parts of the area. We learned that 45% of Jamaica's population is squatting on the land where they live, living out of makeshift huts, shipping containers, and structures of varying levels of security and stability.Some people who could afford land and could afford to build houses have been starting to squat recently, so there are some who are trying to make squatting illegal. There were a lot of little shops and little kitchens set up on the roadside, including one place the driver said were called "shoe stores" because once you go inside, that's all they're wearing. We turned into an unpaved road and it started to rain, on our way from the main road to the private entrance to the river leading to the waterfall. This cow wasn't having any of our shenanigans.

We parked at the top of a hill with the other trucks, and made our way down a slippery stone half-formed staircase to a river that was moving quickly because it had been raining for a while.

Back beyond the bridge, there was a really hard to navigate, slippery path full of fuzzy trees, mosquitos, ginger flowers, bamboo, huge spiderwebs, ferns, and complex above ground root systems. Once we got back to the actual waterfalls, the water was very cool and about waist deep, and nearly clear.

After the waterfall, we made our way back up the hill and trucked out to another little stream behind a store and cafe where they served amazing jerk chicken. We were a little behind schedule at this point so the driver hurried back down to the docks, telling us about his work, he had done his university studies in Jamaican history, and he know a ton about the ethnic makeup of the island, about the Maroons and their stealing of slaves, how they'd set up ambushes for the British forces and plantation owners.

Everything we did this day was really such a fascinating and full visit, I'd love to go back to Jamaica and do a real, in-depth historical visit and learn so much more, but doing it as a cruise destination again would also be welcome.