Jamaican Experience

Posting from the hotel-room in Jamaica, this is Edda and Sophie. We are now totally relaxed, sipping coffee in our hotel-room and getting ready for the painful and tremendously unfortunate ride home. This is our last day in Jamaica, tomorrow we`re going home. We can say it has been wonderful here and we`re not, absolutely NOT happy or ready to go home in the morning. We’re dreading it, that’s why were still up at 3 am.

When we first met each other at the Montego Bay Airport we hadn`t seen each other for 6 months so we kind of had a surreal movie moment. We ran towards each other in slow motion and once we met, we dropped our suitcases and surrounded each other in a gracefully huge hug. We rented a car and had so much catching up to do, so we went out in Montego Bay to have some fun. A bit later we got in the car and drove to Kingston. We used two weeks on the road trip though; we stopped in like 5 places. We stopped in Maggotty, Santa Cruz, Alligator Pond, May Pen and Spanish Town before we reached our destination; Kingston.

After 11 hours of driving all night and keeping each other awake we reached the first stop; Maggotty. At first we were very skeptic to Maggotty since maggot means or are a despicable person. It did turn out to be kind of boring like we thought. The only thing we managed to do was to hike in the mountains to see the beautiful falls since we only had one day. We wouldn`t want to stay another anyways cause it was nothing to do there. We went out to eat but we couldn`t find any place and ended up walking for hours, in a circle, hungry and tired after driving. When we realized we wouldn`t find a place we just went back to the hotel and eat a nice fat dinner. The next day we rented a guide to take us to the falls. She was very funny and allowed us to take a bath in the water. It was a complete idyll bathing in something that looked like a rainforest/jungle.

Santa Cruz was far more exciting than Maggotty, something in which wasn’t that difficult to be honest. We arrived late at night after 4 hours of driving, so we went to sleep right away and woke up 10 am in the morning. After a real American breakfast with pancakes, eggs and bacon, butter and cupcakes, we went to the museum of art and history. It was mostly funny for me because Sophie doesn't like art that much, but agreed to join because she didn't really have a choice. It was so cool to see Jamaican art, it is so much more colorful than American. The picture I fancied the most was of a man with dreadlocks, it was so well composed and this man just looks so hopeless and like he was longing for something.

I, Sophie personally liked the café we went to afterwards better. It’s called Gigi’s Bakery and they served delicious sandwiches and this really good Jamaican coffee.

We’d only been inside all day so we wanted to hit the beach for some tanning. Sophie met this guy. He didn’t talk much English and wanted to be alone with her the whole time, which I think was kind of creepy. She escaped by surfing the waves with me. Only we’d never surfed before, so we kind of sucked at it.

This is our coach failing :P

Next destination: Alligator Pond after 4 hours of driving. At this point we were getting pretty tired of driving so much. So we stayed at Alligator Pond for 3 days. The name comes from its founder Columbus. He named it after an alligator shaped mountain, although there`s no Alligators in Jamaica only crocodiles. The mountain stands in the sea, that`s where the word pond is taken from. While there, we went to this crocodile farm and hugged real life crocodiles. It was scary to pet the huge ones but they were bred in captivity so they were sweet. In Alligator Pond we also went outdoors clubbing. We were surrounded by the sea and Jamaican dreadlock people who were great. They kept asking us to dance and so we did. It was a complete different experience than in Puerto Rico. In Alligator Pond they weren’t so open and did not want to buy us drinks. They tried to flirt and be kind of cool and superior, but some of them actually were quite nice. We went out two nights in a row and let me tell you, the third day was the worst hangover day ever; we had to drive 7 hours to May Pen. Neither of us wanted to so we switched every half an hour something which made the ride even longer. We also drove with sunglasses to see BETTER. 

Crocodile farm 

In May Pen we stayed 4 days cause we just had to be there on a Sunday to see the Hazarz Ball game. It’s a football match held every Sunday and a thousand people show up every time. While we were there Sophie and I bought ourselves some popcorn but when we were walking down the stairs a man fell and pushed us so all the popcorn was spilled. The worst part is that he refused to buy us some more and we didn’t bother to either, so no popcorn for us then.

One of the days was like a dream. We woke up with room-service eating a big breakfast with cereal, fruits, toasts, strawberries, garlic baguettes and juice. Then we went to mineral spa with only natural ingredients. The massages and the full body wax lasted 4 hours. After, we got champagne brought to us in the bubble bath we were in. It was separated from the rest of the spa so we were all alone and it overlooked the sea. Later we wanted to dress up and go out to a nice restaurant so we ate at the Pentagon. I ate a Pepperpot soup which was really hot but still good and drank a nice red wine. Sophie ate a pumpkin soup which she fell in love with. She ate every bit of that bowl, I thought she`d lick it. She drank white wine so that we could taste from one another. I actually think the waitresses thought we were a couple since we shared our food and gave each other sips from the wine. We both had Pone for desert which is a kind of pudding that tastes like raspberries and chocolate.

Pepperpot soup

Pumpkin soup

The car trip from May Pen to Spanish town was the most fun one, since none of us where hangover and we had been sleeping a lot last night. It was a rainy day so it was a good day for driving 6 hours or so. Both Edda and I had this real hunger for candy, so we ate about three bags of Jamaican candy on our way, but I have to admit that American candy’s better.

We also stopped at a junk food place to eat dinner, not the healthiest day of our life. Edda was so dumb that she forgot to pee every time we had to stop driving to get candy or water, so we stopped like a billion times in every single parking place we could find. I must admit that driving a car in Jamaica isn’t that much fun, especially when it’s like 36C outside and inside the car is even hotter. Luckily today it was only 20C outside, beautiful rainy weather, just like home in New York.

Jamaican candy

When we arrived in Spanish town it was late at night, so we checked into the hotel and went to sleep in less than ten minutes.

The next morning we decided to skip breakfast and go for a jog. It was really warm to jog in almost 30 C so the trip didn’t take long, after twenty minutes we were already at the hotel eating an early lunch, so much for trying to be healthy.

Spanish Town is the next biggest city of Jamaica, and it was the capital until 1872.  It lives about 148 845 people there, so we were really excited to see the city. Saturday morning we decided to the marked. In Spanish Town there is a special day called marked day and it’s every Saturday.  The marked opens as early as 5:30 am and you can buy everything from clothes to food. We hadn’t been shopping much so a whole day spent on this marked was good for our mood, but not as good for our wallets. We bought a bunch of different things that we really didn’t need but I guess that’s what you do when you are on vacation in Jamaica. After we`d walked around in the marked forever we decided to eat something. We sat down at this cute little restaurant and ordered a really good pizza; we’d never tasted a pizza like that before.

Finally, just finally we arrived in Kingston. After 41 hours of driving we reached our final destination. And let me tell you, we were HAPPY. On our first day we noticed that the Jamaican flag was to see everywhere. It seemed like it was a special holiday or something but when we asked the locals if something special was happening they said it wasn’t. It was really hard to understand what they were saying, so when they started to talk about a completely different subject we just stood there nodding like the dumb people we are.

The flag of Jamaica is very nice and it’s nothing like the American flag at all. The colors are green, yellow and black. A diagonal yellow cross divides the flag into four triangles: green (top and bottom) and black (the sides). The colors represent different things. Green is the symbol for the land and hope for the future, yellow the symbol for sunshine and natural resources and black symbolizes the burdens borne by the people. The flag came to use on the 6th of august 1962 because on that day Jamaica became independent form Britain.

The second day of our stay in Kingston didn’t start that well. Really close to our hotel there was a car accident, and three people were rushed to hospital. We woke up around 7 am from the noise of an ambulance. We went to the window to see what had happened and what we saw was a crushed car in front of a truck that had some minor injuries.

We turned on the TV and it was all over the news. Apparently a teacher and two students had hit a truck and were sent to the hospital. I`m still not sure if they died or not. I’m really not surprised that there was a car accident near us because they don`t exactly drive like angles here and it happens all the time. It’s almost life threatening crossing the street, you have to be really careful.

Another museum… This time we visited the Bob Marley museum devoted to his memory. We saw pictures from the time he was born till his death in May 1981. Sophie was so happy strutting about telling me all this stuff about him.

So here we are, sitting in our hotel room, finished with our coffee and wishing this night will never end. Puerto Rico, Barbados, St. Lucia and Jamaica have been a true adventure for both of us. I think it will be nice to get back to America to our real life. It`s time to go and let everything be another perfect memory only the two of us will share.


 - Edda and Sophie <3