Feb 21 the Transfer and Feb 22 - a day on the beach

Today was a day of disruption, having to check out of one hotel early, but having to wait to check into the new one. It was a nice steady pace though, and as we were in no hurry with no major agenda, we took it easy. I woke early and grabbed one of the first cups of coffee, and sat on the balcony to work on my blog entry. D wanted to do one last jump off the cliffs before leaving, so he set up the Canon camera on video mode, walked around to the cliff, and got a video this time - I'll figure a way to upload the videos soon!


D, G and Tensing at breakfast.


One of the garden paths - this leads around the inside of the cove to our room - without having to take the bridge!

In the mean time, I was sitting on a garden path, sipping coffee and waiting. I'd seen a humming bird on one of the paths, it is the doctor bird, the national bird of Jamaica. On our last trip I managed to catch one on film that had landed on a branch, but I thought getting one in flight would be fantastic. Unfortunately, the little guy did not return to the lower flowers while I was there. I tried to stay somewhat hidden, and I could hear them calling above my head, and I could see them zip around the higher flowers... but they simply did not want to come back to my path. Still, it was a quiet morning, I talked to a few people that passed by.
One of the men who works there (I believe his name was Cedric, but I'm so bad with names I could be wrong) quietly approached and asked if he could ask me a few questions. He was curious why I was walking around with a camera so much. More than a few guests asked me the same thing - so I suppose I stood out... though to me the question is silly. How could you come to such a beautiful paradise and NOT be taking pictures almost constantly? But then again... I'm one who will lay in the mud in my own yard to shoot unusual looking fungi, so my perspective is probably not "the norm". I talked with him for a while about what I've been shooting, G joined us and chatted with him for a bit - he was pretty amused by her chatterboxness.


Gayle and Cedric, at the base of our staircase.

And you know, on the online travel forums a lot of people were saying that kids shouldn't be staying at the hotels on the cliffs. I'll say that it's not as entertaining for kids as the beach is (and that's partially why we only stay for a couple days, and the rest of the time on the beach) but at least at this hotel most of the pathways are in the gardens on solid ground, and she's only in the ocean with us, with a floaty on. We were apprehensive as to how the guests would deal with seeing a kid at the resort, but everyone who talked to G really seemed to like her a lot. She did a great job of keeping her volume down so as not to disturb anyone, and the other guests delighted in watching her pet the dogs, and told her tricks to getting them to follow her, and talked to her about the flowers and the lizards. I think if you have kids that like to run wild and scream a lot, the cliffs isn't the right place for them - but as much as G likes to play, she also enjoys calm time, and she really does travel well and is polite. We heard no complaints while staying there, and the staff all seemed to enjoy her being there (and even played dominoes with her)

After D's leap and shower we met up in the restaurant for the continental breakfast, then back to the room for packing up. I wandered the grounds with G for a bit, shooting with my Holga, waiting for Tyrone to pick us up.

The drive from the west end is pretty short, and as we started off D mentioned that we'd like to find some soursap (both to eat, and I really need to get a picture of this stuff!) Tyrone said he'd bring us to some markets - which it turns out are people sitting on the side of the main road with stands of fruit here and there. He'd slow down and ask for soursop, none at this stand, and we'd move on. He pulled off down a bit of an alley and asked one lady. I coudn't understand much of the patoi between them, but Tyrone negotiated the price for us, and for roughly 4 US dollars we got a couple of "good eating size" fruits.

Pulling into Idle Awhile was like a relaxing breath of fresh air. I recognize the tiny turn around, the breadfruit tree, and the front office like I was just here yesterday, not 10 months ago. Check in isn't until roughly 3-4 here (Island Time) so Tyrone piled our bags in the lobby and we headed out to the bar.

Needle, one of the bartenders, recognized us immediately, and started giving D a hard time about playing dominoes.

"I've been trainin all year mon! I'm ready for ya dis time!"


Needle and I behind the bar... he was trying to crouch down because I'm so short.

We received our welcome drinks - a strong rum punch for me, and coconut rum/pineapple juice for D, and settled in just as the lunch rush started.

I was feeling a bit warm, and tired, and in need of a shower... so we opted to just stay here for lunch and get snacky food off the menu. I ended up with a pineapple pizza, which was decent enough to fill me up. After lunch and a bit more sitting back at the table, we went to check to see if the room was ready yet. They were just finishing up the cleaning, so we brought our bags in and sunblocked up to hit the water.

We decided to just head out without getting any chairs set up - just for a quick swim and then back to the room. After a little bit of practice, G managed to lift her feet off the ground and swim confidently in the water with just her snorkel and mask, and we puttered around in the water a bit. Then we started spotting fish. The fish here off the beach are hard to see - mostly little silver guys that blend in with the light reflections - but I'd spot one or two wandering around... then we turned to our right and saw - in maybe 3 feet of water tops - a superhighway of silver fish streaming by. G squealed and I thought she was freaking out, but it was just a big excited "OHMYGODLOOK!LOOK!LOOK!" squeal. She giggled and threw her arms in the air like Hiro, jumping up and down and saying "did you see? I saw the fish! LOOK AT THE FISH!" We also saw a couple of larger fish - a good foot long - zip past us and she's scream a little, then giggle and point again.

They're in 2 feet of water! Right off the beach!

After a bit more swimming and fish chasing, we hauled it into the room to clean up and go to dinner.

Dinner was meh. We ended up taking a taxi down the road to an Italian restaurant. I ordered marlin, but it was more like marlin jerky (and I can appreciate fish being slightly more done here and there, but seriously... the edges were crunchy, so I ate the parts that weren't overdone) G had some kind of chicken with an orange sauce which turned out to be the better of the meals, D had a lobster linguini which he said "tastes a bit like what manure smells like" and he decided it was the type of herbs they'd sprinkled on top. Eh... meals aren't all going to be fabulous, so we brushed it off and figure we'll find redemption tomorrow. But my stomach wasn't feeling 100%% as we left, so we started walking back to the hotel and found a little market still open. We popped inside for a few bottles of soda water for me, and a couple of tings for G, and continued our walk to the hotel.

I remember feeling intimidated the first time we were here, not wanting to walk down the street much because we clearly stand out as tourists... but this time around we felt at ease walking down the road, even at night. There were a few spots open, with some people hanging out, and along the road there'd be a random grill or two going with guys selling jerk chicken. Nobody hassled us though, and when we looked lost they were quick to jump up and ask us what we were looking for. The walk back wasn't too long at all, maybe 20 or 30 minutes, and the movement and fresh air helped my stomach feel much better. By the time we got back to the room we just flopped into bed.

Monday February 22
The morning dawned clear and bright. I'd forgotton that on the beach we would be lulled to sleep by the distant sound of music, overpowered by the loud cricket-type insects they have on the property. I've been told the insects are about the size of my thumb, but they make a sound a thousand times louder than you could expect from such a small critter.

Most of today was spent on the beach. We began our day with breakfast at Chill Awhile - oat porridge for me, a sampling from the buffet for D, and banana pancakes for G. After that we lathered up our sunblock, D had some beach chairs set up for us, and we went about our morning ritual of feeding the little silver fish just off shore.


G and I snorkeling in about 3 feet of water - no floaties!



G looks like a little frog when she takes off, kicking her legs wildly, but she is absolutely loving the water... we can hardly keep her out of it!

For lunch we walked down to Sonia's for patties - this is a place D had heard a lot about online. Patties look basically like hot pockets. There is the fast food version, which is either Juici Patties or Tastey Beef (similar to McD's vs. BK in the states for burgers) but last year we didn't try any hand made patties from the stands. This year D has a laundry list of places to visit for their "famous patties". Sonias was the first place we saw on the road, so that's the first place we tried.



This is ackee - the national fruit of Jamaica. Yes, it's a fruit.
The thing with ackee is that you can't eat it until it ripens on the tree. It grows in this triangular pod like shape and is not ripe until it opens by itself on the tree, revealing the yellow fruit surrounding black olive-looking seeds. Although it's a fruit, it seems to be treated as a savory food rather than sweet. The look is exactly what you see - it looks like scrambled eggs. The texture is sort of gelatin like - not rubbery, but soft and solid at the same time, like Jell-o. The flavor is quite mild, seems to mostly pick up the flavor of what it is served with. It can't be exported fresh, due to how it has to ripen on the tree - so you can only get ackee in the states via canned imports.

Her patties are huge - more like mini-calzones. We tried lobster, beef, ackee, and Italian. The Italian was alright - basically very calzone flavored. Lobster I wasn't keen on, and the beef seemed super cooked, but I enjoyed the ackee quite a lot. After lunch we walked back to the hotel, stopping for a bag of coffee on the way, then headed back out for swimming and sand castle fun.

As our beach time wound down to a close, we cleaned up and walked out front to find Tyrone. He took us down to the Hi-Lo (local grocery store) for a few supplies, then over to Sweet Spice for dinner. I had curried shrimp, which was done to perfection. G had some bbq chicken, and D had curried goat.

Curried goat is not as gross as it sounds. Flavor wise it tastes similar to beef in a thick gravy sauce, but it is quite boney which is the main reason I prefer not to bother with it.

After some dominoes in the bar and an after dinner drink, we hit the hay.