The water was clear enough that you could see the trail of silt that boats stirred up as they traveled through the bay.
I loved the sign on the way to the gangway.
One of the coolest things to see in Jamaica is Dunn's River Falls near Ocho Rios, which is a waterfall with pools on the way down formed by mineral deposits. However, that was 2 hours away, and we didn't want to spend all day just getting there and back, so we instead decided to visit a plantation home and the beach.
We hired a guy named Chester (chestertours@yahoo.com) to drive us around for the day. He told us, "I'm not perfect, but you're in good hands." (They drive on the left side of the road there, so the steering wheel is on the right, which is starting to seem less strange to me now).
He talked to a guy out his window at one point, and kept saying, "Ya, mon," which I thought was awesome. In Jamaica, they speak both English and Patwa, a kind of Creole that is a mix of English and languages from the places where the slaves had come from. As an example, they will greet with "Wah gwaan", which I suspect is derived from "What's going on?"
The bougainvillea was pretty as we drove along.
Chester drove us to the Greenwood Great House, about 35 minutes from the port, up a hill along a funny little road.
The Barrett family came to Jamaica in the 1660s and amassed great wealth from their sugar plantation. They built Greenwood in 1790 mostly for a guest house and entertaining. It was one of the few such buildings to escape destruction during the slave revolts. Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), the famous poet, was the cousin of Richard Barrett, the original owner of the house. (Elizabeth wrote the sonnet, "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways..." She also campaigned for the abolition of slavery, even though her relatives' money derived from it).
Here is the Greenwood Great House as we approached it through the foliage.
A nice local gal took us on a tour of the house and explained all of the wonderful antiques found in it.
Here is a music box that plays records that have holes in them to pluck the notes.
A similar contraption held a disc vertically, and the gal demonstrated it playing a song. In this video you can hear what it sounded like, and see the box of additional discs with other songs. The sound reminded me of Grandma Merrill's music boxes.
A far worse-sounding instrument is this piano roll player. It's like a "player piano" but without a keyboard. The gal sang "Bicycle Built for Two" (Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer true...), but I couldn't hear any resemblance to the sounds coming out of this contraption. It was so out of tune that it sounded haunted, like ghost children were just pounding on the nonexistent keyboard. (Click to watch the video for a short sample.)
Here the gal shows us a fold-down desk that has secret compartments in the sides and backs of the drawers, where people used to hide their jewelry and gold. (Maybe Grandpa C. B. Wilson's fold-down desk has one of those...! :)
She also showed us this chair that flips around into steps, so you can climb up and get a book off a top shelf, then have a seat and read it.
This photo is said to have a ghost in it! The lady on the right apparently died two years before the photo was taken. The gal explaining this said that someone suspected it was a double exposure, but then they realized the photo was taken on metal plates that couldn't be double-exposed. She says she doesn't believe it's a ghost, but that they're not sure how to explain it.
I liked that the house was still lived in, in addition to being used as a museum. Behind the antique cabinet doors lay a modern Sony TV.
This chair was used for courting, because it kept the couple's legs from touching.
There was a wonderful view of the town and the ocean from the balcony.
After the tour, we wandered around the property for a few minutes.
Someone FaceTimed Shaylee to welcome her home from Spain, which was fun, though Internet was a bit rough from there for that.
We had a surprisingly nice time at the Greenwood Great House.
This mode of transportation reminded me of Guatemala.
I had our driver pull over at a random little market where we got ice cream bars.
Then we had Chester take us to a place to do some shopping. I told Jared that this shirt probably wouldn't fit.
After buying some shirts and stuff, our last stop was Doctor's Cave Beach. It was crowded, but that was no problem (mon). The sand was nice there, and the water was pretty clear and very pleasant, so we had fun swimming around there for a couple of hours.
There was a huge trampoline you could swim out to and push each other off of and stuff.
I brought our snorkel gear, so two of us at a time could snorkel around. (I also had a waterproof camera, which came in handy on this trip).
I liked the yellow tails on these fish.
I was surprised to find out that none of our kids had been snorkeling before. Oops, I guess we forgot to take them on any of our trips where that came up...
But they did great. Here's Jared.
And Sienna.
And Kelsi.
And Erika.
Here's a big brain coral.
And a random fish.
We found a spot in the shade of a palm tree to hang out.
Finally we all showered and changed so we would be dry for the van ride back (Chester had insisted on that), and then we shopped just a little bit more near the ship.
I traded one of the vendors a U.S. $1 bill for a Jamaican $100 bill (exchange rate is 134 to 1, so they made a few cents on the deal).
Back on the ship, we ate some barbeque for lunch and then visited the Clue characters to get some more clues. Here is Mrs. Peacock with Sienna.
Miss Scarlet denied any wrongdoing.
Adam and I got obnoxious Jamaican tourist shirts there. You never know when you might need to whip one of those out.
And there were many Jamaican T-shirts as well (you can see the Jamaican flag on Jared's shoulder there).
That night we played games and had ice creams and stuff.
In our next episode, we swim with stingrays at Grand Cayman Island.
No comments:
Post a Comment