Thanks for joining me on the second instalment of The Lamourie-Parkinsons go to Jamaica....
in which we have just left the airport at Montego Bay, and my husband Dave, son Cassidy and I along with another couple we were travelling on the plane with and one more who sat elsewhere on the plane but now was joining us for the trip to our Jamaica destination - Blue Hole Mineral Springs, about a two and a half hour drive from the airport at Montego Bay ... and it was QUITE a trip!!!
If you don't know what driving is like in Jamaica... well...lol! It's an experience, let me tell you that -and you better hope you have an excellent driver. Thankfully, Lion from Lion Tours was AMAZING - the very best we could have asked for. Driving along the bigger roads wasn't a big deal..but you literally feel like you're taking your life in your hands on those mountain roads... ! I certainly wouldn't recommend renting a car in Jamaica unless you are not only an amazing driver - on the other side of the road like the UK - but you better be able to navigate things like a kid on a video game if you don't want to go SPLAT... lol.
This pic is from later in the trip, but you'll also be driving down a road and come upon someone like this looking into your car window :
Cow walking beside us alone looks into our van as we drive down the road
But we're not even on the mountain road yet.... we've just left the airport and our eyes and hearts are full of wonder at actually being here and seeing real Jamaica!
We drive through Montego Bay, and then through several smaller town and villages and along the coast on the way to the Negril area... taking pictures through the van windows as we do...
Thanks to my husband Dave Parkinson for the pics above!
Dave also took a lot of video, on this day and throughout our trip, of everything we were seeing out the car window. Check out video of Jamaican villages and mountains we drove through here.
and also here.
It was a windy March day - and our first taste of real Jamaica was when we stopped about 40 mins into our drive at a roadside “bar” of the kind that you see almost every few feet in Jamaica .. the hand painted sign that said BEER JOINT (I am pretty sure that meant that it was a beer joint but husband thought they were also advertising joints.).... He might have been right, because the lady did offer some ganja. So we got our second taste of Jamaican Ganja here...
......and husband Dave tried his very first Red Stripe, the classic beer of the island...
Meanwhile our fifteen year old happily posed for some Jamaica pics :
(he's never this accommodating when I try to take pics at home!)
After our little break we got back into the van and continued on our journey into the unknown. None in our party had any experience with where we were going and had no real idea of what the place we would be spending the next week was like.
It was kind of heartstoppimg to get there! Heading up that narrow mountain road was an experience all right. I soon learned what Lion meant when he smiled at us tourists and said “This is a two way road but you think it’s a one way road….”.
What did he mean by that? Yeah - we are driving up this tiny narrow mountain road alongside cows looking in our window walking next to us - and I’m telling you a few minutes in I was really questioning my parenting wisdom in bringing my 15 year old here driving up this crazy ass mountain road as cars zipping down the narrow road from the other direction literally come straight for you with both cars doing an expert swerve at what looks like the very last second avoiding a headon crash. Our hearts were racing and at first I was literally telling myself that if we were lucky enough to get where we were going I would stay there with my son for the entire week - beach or no beach. I just wasn’t sure it was wise to put my son - and myself - through that risk again!! But again… after noticing halfway through the ride that both Lion (and, apparantely all those other expertly swerving mountain drivers!) were super skilled and that this was normal for them - well I just took a deep breath and like the others laughed hysterically and made appropriate omg! noises ..
And then we were approaching it…
Blue Hole Mineral Springs, near Brighton, Jamaica
There at the top of the hill was that big bright yellow and blue building that except for the bright Caribbean colors reminded me so much of that 1500s era castle in Florence Italy now converted into a youth travelers hostel that I stayed in back in my early twenties when I did the Euro tour….
(I’ll pull out those golden oldie early 90s memories and pics in a later FLASHBACK edition of my travel blog….)
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Welcome to Jamaica! These little critters are cute - and quick!
Saw them all the time, and not one of them tried to sell me insurance!
I'd done a lot of reading online about the Blue Hole Mineral Springs - famous for a (kinda frightening, really fascinating, but I wasn't brave enough to check it out) 35 foot deep hole - a cave really, of natural mineral water - in which people just JUMPED from 25 feet above... the owners sons and the locals did it laughingly like it was nothing every day to freak out the tourists and for tips...this momma could barely watch!
(Later in the week our travel companion Heather proved how brave she was by jumping!
You can see that video here!
That was all to come later tho... for now, we just snapped a few pics of the sign at the Hole....
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...And headed up the stairs, following the young teenage boys that we later found out were family members of the owner including his son, who brought us up to our rooms.
Our 15 year old was pretty impressed at the luxe (Caribbean style, not cookie cutter Western style hotel room but a lovely heavy wood canopy bed that we later found was built like all the other beds in the ten or twelve room hotel - and like the hotel itself! by the owner, a community leader named Wabba) and his family....with no building experience. WOW.
ANYway, we were pretty impressed with the accommodations, too...
but our son couldn't believe he was getting his own room!
This is the first time he's ever had his own room in a hotel - ya, I'm a little overprotective - normally we get two Queen size beds, my hubby and I sleep in one and our son in the other...and we assumed that was going to be the case here too... Turns out there was actually a room they had planned to put us in, that had a room with another adjoining room - but it was already taken by someone else in our business party that had arrived before us - the awesome daughter of the business client that had flown me to Jamiaca on this project... and so the teenage son of the hotel owner, said, "Come here, young man, Come here, white boy... "(in a friendly manner!) "You deserve your own room!" And that is how our fifteen year old got his very own luxury hotel room with his own giant king size comfy luxury bed and his own amazing stone shower in a striking handpainted bathroom... yeah, now I understood why the reviews mentioned how lovely the bathrooms were!
In the shower stall
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They shaped the towels into swans to greet us on the bed
We found out later that the stonework in the bathroom was done by the brother of the owner - and his proud elderly mom - more about that amazing lady later!! on a different day pointed out other amazing stone work he had done outside around the village, speaking proudly about how all of her children had made something of themselves and none of them were "idle boys."
The mother of the owner, the awesome lady who treated us like family, oversaw the kitchen, refused to let us help :) and sang to us at breakfast ,,,
Momma Wabba - real name Norah Jones, an awesome singer who serenaded us...
Speaking of food... Let me tell you about our first dinner in Jamaica!
(As you can see, I told everyone about it in real time on Instagram!)
There was lobster and chicken, coleslaw, rice and beans and pumpkin soup...MMMMMM!
ALL fresh, all real, nothing processed...
Real life.
We have never eaten as well as we did that week!
Here my husband and I pose (later in the trip) along with two other members of our party, with the awesome friends we made who worked so hard to make all that amazing food we ate all week!
Me with Elaine who works really hard and makes magic in the kitchen always with a smile and hug!
...But back to that first night, where we are greeted and treated just like family from the very beginning, we learned we had arrived on LION's birthday! And of course they invited us to join in on the after dinner celebration. Lion received a backgammon game from my clients wife - later everyone was playing it down in the bar, a big bottle of some kind of alcohol he offered to share with everyone but my client demurred and said it was for HIS birthday, and I gave him a bottle of NOGGIN OIL, an awesome product made for dreads and extensions and braids invented by one of my clients, Karen Wallington and her business partner. I had brought along a bottle in case I wanted to show it to anyone.. and then I realised it was meant for Lion! He was sitting with a hairstylist friend when I gave it to him, and she said she would try it out too.
Lion's birthday party on our first night in Jamaica
My client that brought us on the trip n the white hat
The party went late into the night and the little ones made friends, too.
In this pic, the Canadian granddaughter of my client made fast friends with this little Jamaican girl
her same age while we adults did the same!
One of the locals handed us some of this.
And I tried out the hammock (I neeeeeeed one of these at home!) on the amazing balcony just outside of our room. The hotel at Blue Hole Mineral Springs is something else. The bedrooms and bathrooms are super luxe Carib style and everything else - the dining room, the hallways, are covered but outside.
In the outdoor dining area
Dave on the balcony outside our room
In the outdoor dining area
Dave on the balcony outside our room
Another view of Dave on the balcony showing the view!
Husband Dave and I decided to do a little Facebook livestreaming to check in with everyone!
Then it was time to go to bed! A lot to process already... and looking forward to more tomorrow.
I'm a bit of a social media addict, and the internet in Jamaica isn't what it isn't in North America (there definitely isn't the same kind of infrastructure there, more on that later) ...I did not want to deal with roaming charges with my cell phone provider - they didn't have any good options...There was wifi in the hotel but you could really only count on it for sure down in the outdoor dining area and in front of the pool when you were lucky, so I left my room alone when husband and son were asleep to go tell my social media friends how I was feeling... pointing out how rare it was - in fact i don't ever remember it before - to be outside under the moon without a million beacons of unnatural light...
Goodnight, Moon.
Goodnight, Jamaica....
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