Hello everyone!
It’s quite a long time ago since my last post but you know things get busy to the end of the term.
All in all I found some time to write about my Caribbean experience from February 13th to 20th in the country of Reggae – JAMAICA.
A few friends of mine joined me on this trip: Stefan, Victor, Daniel, Jaana and Jana which came all the way from Austria 😀
We have chosen Jamaica because it was the cheapest way to the Caribbean from Canada. We also considered to go to Kuba as well but there you have to have a Visa, especially for Victor that was a problem.
After all our preparations including booking a whole house for ourselves (including an own cook) we were ready to go.
On Friday 13th – a very good day to take a flight – I already put on my summer clothes and headed to the univesity for our taxi to Toronto Airport.
When we tried to Check-In Jaana had problems with her vaccination-pass but after all she finally got her boarding pass and we were able to pass the security point.
Both in Toronto and Jamaica we saw interesting signs:
Our flight was at 4PM and took almost 5 hours. I got a window seat and took some pictures of clouds and the sunset above Kuba:
We arrived around 9pm in Jamaica. We were really hungry and didn’t want to wait for two hours to get home – our house was that far away – therefore our host picked us up and we went to a jerk chicken grill. That is not a official place, it was more a home grill where all the neighbours went for some food. Jerk chicken itself is the Jamaican food you can get everywhere, it is common chicken with a special sauce. As a sidedish we got a chicken feet soup and there was really one foot in there!
After my experience with food in Jamaica I can tell that everything is spicy, or more likely hot and there is no way around it if you will ever go there!
After 2 hours drive we realized it was friday night and the party was going on on the other side of the street only one minute away from our door. The music was too loud to go to bed so we decided to join them. As you can imagine they also served jerk chicken. The DJ was built up on the street and I guess it was a kind of a homeparty where the owners got free drinks for providing there place. The bar was selfmade out of a table and boxes. We drank a lot of coke rum but after 5 drinks we asked for it to know which good rum they served us. We were shocked after we saw the most famous Jamaican rum has 63% and they drink it like water xD
We also tried their beer Red Stripes which is not bad, actually quite good.
After a long night I decided to take some pictures of our nice home, unfortunately the weather was not perfect, it was raining but it became better during the week:
Our host Marline prepared us breakfast and we really enjoyed the fresh bread and fried bananas as you can see:
Our first trip in Jamaica started this day on Saturday. In the afternoon the weather got better and Marline took us to her own coconut farm. She picked up Jaana because it was still raining a little bit but there was already sunshine at the beach.
On the way to the farm we stopped by her brother’s home who is an candy producer. He makes coconut candy out of coconut meat. I also bought one :D. We decided to make a picture in front of the lovely house:
As we hiked more and more into the island the weather became worse again but it didn’t bother us because it was so warm there. Compared to Canada it was 50 degrees Celcius warmer.
There were also some cows in the middle of nowhere and fresh bananas on our way but unfortunately not ready to eat 😦
As we reached the farm Marline chopped a coconut for everyone and we enjoyed the refreshing water:
On our way back we visited Marlines former grade school principal and found a nice flower which perfectly matched with our coconut, Daniel really enjoyed that 😉
In the late afternoon we went to Port Anonio – the next bigger town – to buy water supply for the whole week. 15 Liters of water for everyone was quite a lot of work :O
The town itself is a little bit crowded in the centre where the market is. You can buy every fruit which grows in Jamaica there. We specially enjoyed the pineapples, they were so sweet I didn’t believe it. The best part was Marlines comment: „They are sour, brrr.“ She should try one in Canada or Austria, they are really sour there xD
By the way this is not the city center, I didn’t want to take out my camera in the crowd so I took a picture further away from a small food place:
It was the 14th of February and as you can imagine, we also celebrated valentines day but in the jamaican way: Dress red white as possible and party hard. Unfortunately after that exhausting day we all decided to take a „short“ nap at 8pm. We woke up at midnight but Marline was aware of that and called us a taxi. She also joined us!!
Marline was really nice, the whole week she joined all our trips, called us taxis and discussed with people about the price because if you’re a tourist they will charge you more money for transportation etc.
To come back to the party, we had already a lot of fun on our way – probably because we drank the rum we bought in Port Antonio, remember 64% 😀
The party was really awesome. They had 2 DJs which were directly on the dancefloor. All people were dressed in red and white and dancing hard. During the whole party one was going through the crowd with a camcorder and a really bright light. We were dancing, drinking, eating (ok only Victor) and having fun:
The day after was horrible for me. I became sick and had fever. I guess it was because of the ice cubes in the drinks, I forgot to take them out 😦
But the day itself was really nice at all, we went to the beach and looked around in the town. There were a lot of nice houses.
I don’t know why kids do that but it have to be fun to throw shoes on the high voltage cables :O
Also Europe is involved in Jamaica: they provide containers to store drinking water.
A picture of us (Daniel was taking it) on the street up to Rural Hill where our house was:
It took about 45 minutes to walk to the big beach, there were also 2 smaller ones before but we wanted to have the real Jamaican experience. It took not long for Victor to find new friends, they really followed him all the way to and from the beach 😀
Stefan had also fun with them digging holes deep into the sand xD He was the only one who went swimming, I would have gone too but I had fewer and were afraid to sink :O
The view was amazing, like in movies. As you can imagine we also did typical beach pictures:
Stefan wanted to know it, jumped into the waves and tried to dive them 😀
We got a bit worried after he went far out where the waves got bigger but he managed to come back after half an hour.
And of course some group pictures with palm trees. Daniel’s pose in the first jump picture is hilarious 😀
That were our three first days in Jamaica, I hope you enjoyed it and the second part will follow soon.
See you fellows #1
An Experience for life 