Jamaica - Day 5 - Kingston/Montego Bay

We awoke at 5am to make sure we had packed everything and could meet our taxi driver by 5:30am.  Our Knutsford Express bus was scheduled to leave at 6am for Montego Bay.  

Something I have forgotten to mention about Kingston… Since the entire country is on a small island everything is a lot closer together than most of us are used to.  While in Kingston you can see the Caribbean as well as the Blue Mountains (to the east).  Plus, we aren’t used to seeing mountains all the time, so for us it was extra neat.  This early in the morning that mountains looked so beautiful from the city.

Everything went smoothly on our bus ride.  We got to see more of the city as we drove out of it and up through the edge of the mountains.  David read his second book of the three he brought, and I read some of the one that I brought and then fell asleep.  The roads were bumpier than we were used to and our entire ride the bus driver had music playing - often there was an accompanying music video.

Our driver was taking a path north toward the city of Ocho Rios, where we made a first stop, and then continued west to Montego Bay.

Map Key:

Green dot = Kingston

Dark Blue dot = Port Royal

Yellow dot = May Pen (where we went to church on Sunday)

Teal dot = Ocho Rios

Red dot = Montego Bay

We arrived in Montego Bay and were bombarded by taxi drivers who wanted to get our business.  I ignored them because I wanted to get our suitcases while David found one who could give us a ride to our hotel.  He charged us probably twice as much as he should have, but at the time we really didn’t know any better.  Then we got to our hotel, the Grandiosa.  On arriving both David and myself were a little disappointed.  The hotel was NOT close to a beach, which Expedia said it was, and after seeing a room found that it wasn’t the cleanest place either.  The doors didn’t have seals around them so the little ants could come right inside!  BUT, the staff at the hotel was excellent.  We told them our disappointment about distance from the beach and they helped us arrange new reservations at a hotel that was closer.  Although, we did keep our reservation there for the evening because that afternoon and the next morning we had two “adventure tours” scheduled to pick us up from that location.

While making all of our reservation changes David was able to talk to some of the receptionists about the translation project.  She had asked him what brought us to Jamaica and then was really interested to hear about everything.  The translators had given us two bookmarks and brochures to take home as souvenirs but we felt like we should give them away if we could while were still in Jamaica.  So David gave one to the ladies at the hotel.

For lunch we ate some leftover jerk chicken and pork and then started getting ready for our first adventure tour.  Our bus driver’s name was Charlie and we made one other stop to pick up passengers before heading to the location of our Horse Ride & Swim tour.  We had been told that it might rain today, but we were convinced that it wouldn’t.  Then, when we got there it all began.  It rained A LOT, but the tour continued!  First, after a short briefing, they matched everyone up with a horse.  I got to ride Scrumby, and David had Red Man (the horse I thought I would get because our hair matched!).  Then we went on a trail ride up through some hills.  The terrain was pretty rough and because it was raining the horses would occasionally slide on the mud as they were walking.  I felt kind of bad for them!  Plus, while we were riding the horses were extremely close together.  They didn’t have any personal space.  I kept trying to slow Scrumby down so that he could have a view other that the horses backside in front of him, but he was used to being that close that he didn’t want to listen to me. 

We had a very friendly guide who would point out different plants for us and make sure that we stayed in line.  We were also riding with a couple who used to live in France (the husband was French, the wife was American).  Both of them lacked confidence while riding so as soon as we found out we had France in common with them David was able to talk to the wife enough to keep her from thinking about riding.

After our trail ride we dismounted and had a break before the swimming part of the tour.  They took off the saddle and left a cushion on the horses’ backs.  Then they rematched everyone up with a horse (typically a different one than the first time) for the swimming experience.  They took a smaller group of riders into the water.  The horses bodies (below the neck) were submerged in the water so we were getting wet almost all the way up to our waists.  It was really neat, but didn’t last nearly as long as I had expected, and the horses seemed to have to work so hard to move through the water.  I felt sorry for them again.  We didn’t bring our camera and we weren’t willing to buy any of the pictures that they took for us because they were too expensive, but it was really neat.  It stopped raining as we were finishing our trail ride too, so after the swim we were able to dry off and stay dry.

On our ride back to the hotel we decided we really like Charlie (our driver).  So we made arrangements to have him drive us all the way to Negril (far west coast) on Friday to see Mayfield Falls and a popular restaurant called Rick’s Café to watch the sunset.

Then we ate dinner at the hotel.  David had a delicious coconut pasta:

And I had a chicken breast stuffed with callaloo and ackee (the fruit of Jamaica):

We went to bed early because our second adventure tour was the next morning.  In the middle of the night David began to feel sick…