{"id":4588,"date":"2024-04-21T20:34:58","date_gmt":"2024-04-22T02:34:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/syfrenchkissinglife.com\/?p=4588"},"modified":"2024-04-21T20:34:58","modified_gmt":"2024-04-22T02:34:58","slug":"wecome-to-jamaica-mon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/syfrenchkissinglife.com\/?p=4588","title":{"rendered":"We’come to Jamaica Mon!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Yes, they actually say that. In fact, the patois that we are so familiar with from movies and TV is exactly what you hear in person. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve had to ask someone to repeat what they just said to us, allegedly in our own language! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But before we get ahead of ourselves and start talking about Jamaica we needed to cross the Caribbean Sea. Colombia’s geography of exceedingly tall coastal mountains creates a massive wind wall that follows the coast well out to sea. These compressed airs lead to very high winds up to 150 miles offshore and it tends to blow for weeks at a time with only short breaks. We had to wait for a window to get to Colombia from Panama and then again to leave for Jamaica. So, we took the “best” window we had seen in several weeks, knowing that the first 36 hours would suck. Boy did it ever! The seas were roughly 10′ on average and coming from the front quarter made it both unpleasant and slow. The first night we slowed the boat to just 3+ knots of speed to try to diminish the slamming of the boat. It got much better after that but, with a 3.6 kt counter current, it ended up taking us just shy of five days to cover 500 nautical miles. We were planning on a little over 3 days. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are staying at the Errol Flynn Marina in Port Antonio, Jamaica on the northeast side. Errol Flynn, the biggest movie star of the late 1930’s to early 40’s, was literally shipwrecked during a storm on his luxury yacht right here in 1942. He fell in love with the area and bought Navy Island, just offshore, as well as a lot of property in town, including a 400 room luxury hotel. During his time, he built a huge mansion and hosted everyone from kings and queens to Hollywood royalty over many years. Most of that legacy is now just ruins but the name remains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We decided to rent a car for a week to see the sights. One of the things Errol Flynn is remembered for here is the establishment of bamboo rafting on the local rivers. This area was, and still is, covered with small banana growers who used such bamboo rafts to transport their bananas to the port for export. Errol, quite the ladies man (read that with extreme understatement) was well known for taking a date down the river on one raft with a second carrying lunch and a third carrying the bar. Elizabeth Taylor wrote about such an adventure with him and added that he often did a second run in the afternoon with a different girl! He built a lovely place at the end of the Rio Grande to host his guests so that’s where we went. It is still a going concern and has been imitated on all the navigable rivers of Jamaica. We took a taxi 45 minutes up into the Blue Mountains to the start. The rafts are about 35′ long and seat two. They last about six months and then each captain has to rebuild his own. Our captain said it takes a day to cut the bamboo and three days to construct. They can only do these runs until the water is about 5′ higher, which is much of the rainy season. Including two swim stops we spent a little over three hours on the river having a delightful and relaxing time. No bugs either!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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