For the last few mornings I've made a routine of waking up first and swinging in the hammock on the deck, enjoying a small pot of coffee and watching the birds in the treetops as I work on the laptop. I'm not naturally a morning person, and it's highly unusual for me to be the first to rise without an alarm clock... I suppose my body's idea of "island time" is a little strange.
Once everyone else is up, we head down to Chill Awhile for breakfast. Eric, one of the groundskeepers, has already been busy cleaning up leaves and seaweed from the night before, and setting up chairs for the guests.
Here is our view from the breakfast table.
As we enjoy breakfast, the vendors start walking the beach. The women selling fruit tend to balance their offerings on their heads as they walk.
(sorry for the lighting on these shots - not a lot of editing I can do here to clean them up)
The storm had washed up an enormous amount of seaweed, so we poked through the piles of seaweed on our afternoon walk down the beach to find lunch.
D found a sea cucumber. eeeeeewwwwwwww....
There were several starfish washed up along the shore, and a few craftsmen collecting them to clean them out and dry them to sell. I spoke to one who emphasized the importance of preparing them, not just taking them as-is off the beach, and I said I was just interested in photos anyway, so he stepped back and made space for me to shoot before picking the rest of them up.
There were many conch shells rolling up as well - a couple whole empty ones rolled right up on the shore in front of me! D found a couple shells with the gua'old looking creatures still inside, their claw-like feet stuck out and wiggled around, trying to dig away from D. Super creepy looking. He gave them to the man working on the starfish.
Here is the underside of another starfish.
We walked through a marketplace that had a lot of tables set up more towards the beach. I recalled this area having the more aggressive vendors and I was right - they were the same this year as they were last. As we walked down the beach they would call to us, ushering us in to see their tables, see what they make. As I do a lot of my own beading for fun I'm not generally interested in beaded necklaces, but I've been looking for some kind of crocodile pendant or carving, so I'd stop to look for that. Not seeing one on one table, I'd move on to the next.
What I didn't like about these vendors is that they would try to put things on G - "Let's try it on the baby, see how nice it looks" and I had to continually shake my head. The vendors in the Waves marketplace never pushed more after one "No", but the vendors right on the beach would reach out for her as if they didn't hear me. I finally took her hand and said to D "Let's go... I'm hungry and I need to eat" and walked away.
I'm grumpy when I'm hungry anyway, so that didn't help matters... but in general I'm more inclined to buy something if I'm given the time to look without being hounded, and far more inclined to pass up things that I might even want if I don't like how I feel looking at the tables.
Today we opted for Bourbon Beach for lunch - jerk chicken with super spicy sauce. On the way into the restaurant we noticed a fresh fruit stand on the beach.
Fruit stands with a variety of offerings are fairly typical.
On to the super spicy chicken...
Jerk chicken and sauce, rice and peas, and "festival" - which is a fried bread-like side dish made with cornmeal.
Last year I ate the sauce straight on my chicken, and drank about 3 liters of water through lunch. This year I opted for the wimpy way and mixed a bit of ketchup with the sauce to dilute the spice.
Wandering back down the beach to the hotel we cleaned up and spent the rest of the afternoon playing in the sand and reading. As the sun set I wandered down to the water's edge to shoot some photos.
Dinner Saturday night was not worthy of writing about, but for the sake of the journal I'll make a couple quick notes. D had read about a buffet and live music show going on at the Sea Star on the cliffs (across the street from Tensing Pen, actually) They offered a shuttle and we managed to get in on a ride within 5 minutes of calling. Unfortunately, we shared a ride with an asshole American "tourist" (in quotes because he's actually been living here for a while, so it's not like he's fresh of the boat, but he's still not a citizen) After the ride and listening to his assholishness from Assholeville we decided he must have been on something (crack or something equal) The driver was eternally patient and apologized to me as we got out of the van. The buffet was meh... the customers were so messy that half the offerings were contaminated with an egg-containing sauce, and we were just no into the type of crowd that was there anyway. We ended up turning almost immediately around - and though the shuttles out weren't supposed to leave for another hour, the driver offered to take us back. I supplemented my dinner with some left over pizza - which was fine and actually sounded good that night anyway.
Sunday morning dawned with dark looking clouds, so I settled into the hammock with my coffee and camera card. The wind picked up and I noticed this pigeon-like bird clinging to a palm leaf, riding it like a roller coaster up and down. After some time in the wind he hopped down to the berries on the trunk and began to snack. I've been trying to get a shot of one of these guys since we arrived.
He's a bald something-or-other, I need to look it up when we get back. (Tyrone told me the name of these birds, but I only remember "bald" and he also said they are seasonal)
The dark clouds soon blew out, and by the time we were ready for breakfast the sky had pretty well cleared. It was still a bit on the windy side however, and the waves were too big for me to swim, so we settled into the chairs to let G play in the sand. This morning we opted for chairs under a different tree, closer to the sign, where we could pop forward into the sun when we wanted to.
One of the fruit vendors came by as well, so we picked up some honey bananas and coconut to snack on.
G in her Chiquita Banana pose.
Not only do we have vendors walking by throughout the day, but every so often there are musicians who will come by and sing a few songs.
For lunch we walked up the beach to "Chances", both to check out the vendor booths in that direction, and to add a little variety to our pizza testing on the trip.
Chances has a bobsled out next to the gift shop where you can climb in for a photo op.
Later in the afternoon - after more fun in the sun sand play and book reading, we are visited by the ice cream vendor. G hopped over for some pineapple mango swirl ice cream.
We cleaned up and headed out for dinner prior to the sunset, so that we'd have the time to walk on the beach side. Dinner tonight was at Kuyaba Resort. The front of their place looks fun (similar to Adventureland in Disneyland actually, complete with a tree house look-out spot with a dining table, bamboo ceiling fans, and a couple of resident parrots in gigantic cages) The interior was just as pretty... large gas lanterns lighting the pathways, swinging rattan chairs at the bar... we can tell a lot of time and money has gone into decorating this place to be an island oasis. After ordering dinner we played some with the camera.
(Is it obvious I've been drinking rum punch? A very strong rum punch? *grin*)
D and I ordered the same thing - the snapper with coconut milk calaloo, rice and peas, and vegetables.
The pile at the bottom of the plate is two fillets of grilled snapper smothered in a calaloo made with coconut milk. It was AMAZING - best fish of the trip thus far. Cooking with coconut milk adds an amazing amount of flavor. We discovered that last year when we learned how to make rice and peas, but I hadn't thought about using it in other applications. We have several Jamaican cook books at home that I'm going to need to dig into for the summer. I'm looking forward to trying to imitate some of these recipes when we get home - perhaps I can mix spinach with swiss chard to get a calaloo-like flavor going on.
We walked back to our hotel on the street side. It was a very pleasant night, perhaps 72 or so degrees... the coolest night we've had on the trip, but my light blue shirt has worked as the only "jacket" necessary.
OK at this point we were just being silly... the position of the arrow on the sign really cracked me up. I thought it was just the rum, but I still snicker when I see it.
Only 50 US dollars a day!
(I just need to photoshop out the "car" on the sign)
3 comments:
*snerk* re: the sign!
Sounds lovely, she said wistfully.
OK, now where are all the pics from that beach the sports illustrated models hang out on?
PPG - I giggle every time we walk past that sign :)
Gino - I have yet to see anyone of the sports illustrated persuasion, however D was randomly clicking the camera the other day and captured a topless woman walking by. We had a small computer glitch that kept me offline yesterday, but I'm hoping to update this morning in a short while.
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