Ready to board!
The assignment : Spend a week at a local Jamaican owned resort up in the mountains, in a village, away from the tourist areas, up a (kinda scary at first!!) windy mountain road about a half an hour from Negril. Why, yes!!! We can do that!!!
It was a cold winter where we live on Hamilton Mountain in Canada - so I Said a big yesssssss, told my husband and son (my daughter In first year university was kinda upset my client hadn’t put her on the list too) and started packing up three suitcases three whole weeks before the date we were to leave...
I had never been to the Caribbean before so I was asking everyone what I should bring - I was right to assume that consumer goods would not be easily accessible but I was wrong to listen to all the random worst case scenario advice! That bottle of pepto Bismal stilll sits unopened in my cupboard months later - but damn- if I had listened just a little more to those folks who reminded me how important sunscreen was
More on that later ...
So we packed our bags and started researching where we would be going. We read about the history - the pirates and the slavery days and colonialism and the history of cannabis on the island and the food and the music and learned about the proud national character. We learned about the place we were going to be staying at - a local Jamaican owner hotel that a respected community leader named Wabba and his family had built with his own hands in the middle of their village in the mountains of Jamaica.
To me it looked in pictures like the great mansion built in Florence, Italy in the 1500s -now a youth hostel believe it or not- that I had the pleasure of staying in way back when I was 21 in the early 90s. When we got there I found out ..It kinda looked like that in real life too!
But before I take you there...
I should tell you this was the very first plane ride - ever - for both my 15 year old son and my 49 year old husband.
“Shirley you can’t be serious!”
“I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley.”
(If you are of a certain age - old enough to remember the 70s movie Airplane - you’ll get that joke - and understand why my husband can’t resist it when on a plane - that first time or since!
(He is quite the comedian... the video he posted on our last flight home - this time from Washington DC - was HIGHlarious - watch for that link in an upcoming post about the Washington DC trip - and probably again when I post about flights!
Anyway we packed woke up and our ride - my friend and client author and elementalist (google it!) Andre Blissett arrived to pick us up around 530 am as promised and we piled ourselves and our bleary eyed but excited selves into his car for the ride to the airport!
We got ourselves checked in, cleared security, and then spent a couple hours in the waiting game that is international air travel... but our flight was not delayed... it was boarding time - we went through the long hallway that takes you from the inside of the airport and delivers you inside the plane.
My husband took this video of the hallway walk and the view of the waiting plane.
Only a week or two after the news of the tragic 737 plane crash, my husband like probably most of those on the plane - had researched in advance to make sure we weren’t on one of those!
Dave got this video of us boarding the plane to Jamaica.
/
I was a little disappointed that this flight didn’t have the navigation screen in front of every seat the way the flight I took in 2018 to Los Angeles did. That was really cool where it showed you as you were flying exactly which state you were above - how far you had flown and how far you still had to fly. I had told my husband and son how cool that was and was hoping my son would get to track our trip in real time as we flew to Jamaica.
Now that I think of it - that one was clearly a new plane so maybe last year I flew on one of those 737s?!?!
This one to Jamaica without those spiffy tracking screens was clearly an older plane built in the 70s or early 80s (first clue : the ashtrays. Obviously there is no smoking or vaping of any kind on flights these days - but clearly that was a thing at one time. Wow that’s hard to imagine! Pretty close quarters and a long time stuck in an airtight tube to expect others to be ok with smoking! I’m old enough to remember ashtrays - and people using them - in workplaces and in banks and - who remembers those little McDonald’s ashtrays lol?? - but I didn’t know they allowed smoking in airplanes back in the day.
But, clearly, I digress.
A lot.
Right now we are supposed to be talking about March 14, 2019. And the Lamourie - Parkinson family are high up in the sky, on their way to Jamaica.
And it's my husband's first AIRPLANE ride...
Watch this video!
My 15 year old got the window seat!
To see what he was looking at out the window, watch this video!
And since we don’t have that screen to tell us where we are that I had been hoping for, we are looking down and trying to guess - as best we can - whenever land or ocean is visible through the clouds.
Of course we all leaned over into Cassidy’s window seat to take the necessary “Hey ! We’re in the fluffy clouds!” Picture. That feeling never really gets old. Come on - admit it. It’s pretty amazing.
After a pretty uneventful flight - a few hours of me watching downloads from crave tv, husband listening to music on his headset and my son looking out the window and eating snacks, we got pretty excited as we started to fly over the Caribbean towards Jamaica -
Our first view of the Caribbean from the window of the plane
and finally came in for a landing on Jamaican land in the city of Montego Bay and were pretty excited to get out of the airport....but first we took this selfie before we even left the airport... YEP we're in Jamaica!
Our first family selfie on Jamaican soil! in the airport!
ready to immerse ourselves enthusiastically in a culture that in many ways was so familiar— my husband and I grew up in the Toronto suburb of Canada where Jamaican beef patties were out most common lunch sold for 99 cents at every corner store and payout almost as familiar in my high school as the English I spoke. I told a lot of the people I met during our trip that when I was inside stores talking to people it just felt like I was at home 🙂 and it wasn’t til I went outside to hot sun and palm trees that I was reminded I was actually not in Scarborough amount friends but in a tropical country! I did meet a lot of people with family in Toronto though - one older lady described how shockingly bonechillingly cold she felt waiting for a family member to pick her up when she arrived in Toronto airport in winter!!! I told her to come back in July or August next time 🙂
But back to the very beginning of our trip - exciting the airport in Montego Bay, Jamaica! I forgot to mention that our family of three was accompanied on this trip by two others - a couple from Muskoka that my client was also paying for to join us on this trip. After gathering our bags from the luggage carousel - everyone found theirs - we went out to the front of the airport to wait for our ride a young Rasta man named Lion.
The awesome LION of LION TOURS Jamaica.
Do yourself a favour, call this guy when you're in the country!
And there he was - waiting for us with a bright welcoming smile. He packed our bags into the car - then right there in the airport parking lot pulled out a couple of fine - and giant - joints. Welcome to the land of ganja!!!
We adults sampled some after our long flight - and we were not only grateful - but impressed with the quality - and the welcome!!
When a rasta man hands you some ganja, you don't wanna be rude, after all...
With smiles on our faces - we piled into the car and prepared for the two hour or so drive through a quarter of Jamaica - that would take us through several small towns and villages - on our way through Negril and then to our destination of Blue Hole Mineral Springs just outside of Brighton.
but... this is all too much to tell in just one episode...
So you'll have to come back for the next entry...
(In which we learn the driving in Jamaica isn't like the driving back home... ) and more!
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