Negril, Jamaica

Friday, 8. December 2023

Negril – we are coming!

• We find our fancy resort hotel straight away and are happy because it’s right on the beach.
• However, our room is on the ground floor and the terrace almost merges with the terrace of the restaurant which makes it less cozy than I would wish for.
• Instead, I see a really nice-looking balcony with hanging chairs one floor above us – so I ask the receptionist how much an upgrade would cost.
• After doing some maths he quotes a price that I find surprisingly low. When he shows me the room, which is about twice as big as the other one and has such a nice balcony, I say enthusiastically, “Yes, we’ll take it!” – whereupon he gives me another discount – nice!

• Later, Matthäus finds out: “With your absolutely unerringly good taste, you managed to choose the suite”. This means we got a really cheap upgrade from the room we originally booked to the much more expensive suite – very nice.

• Although there are signs everywhere saying “No outside food or drinks”, we decide to buy some water, beer and snacks in case we don’t want to go out to eat, which is likely to happen at some point.
• We get to the supermarket following the beach and then turing into a sketchy-looking street. This street we follow to the large road that runs parallel to the beach, on which the supermarket is located.
• To reward the hotel for the great upgrade, we have dinner in the hotel’s own restaurant, which turns out to be expensive but not outstandingly good. (Which makes us even happier about the snacks we bought.)
• To round off the evening, we sit in our hanging chairs on the balcony and chat for a while. In the background the waves are running onto the beach and in the distance one hears the sound of some beach bar reggea music – nice vibes all in all.

Saturday and Sunday, 9. and 10. December

Slothdom

• I’ve learned a new word: “Slothdom” (according to Urban Dictionary: “When one has reached the laziest lifestyle (closest to that of a sloth in human terms). – Typically worse than senioritis” )- in short: a lot of doing nothing. And this is what we do today.

• Otherwise a bit of PhD organizational stuff, Skyping, writing my blog, reading in a hanging chair, swimming in the sea, enjoying long breakfasts right at the beach.

• Ah, on both evenings there are concerts with live music, one in our restaurant and one in the neighboring bar – reggae and dancehall, that goes without saying.

Monday, 11. December

Wien Mitte, Landstraße and sailing boat light anarchy

• Today we walk along Seven Mile Beach to the end, that is, until we reach the town of Negril.
• Along the way, we see lots of fishing boats and a tree on which lots of white egrets have gathered, which reminds us of the Everglades National Park.

• We walk to a supermarket, which is a bit bigger than the small one we visited the other day, and buy some food and drink supplies before walking back along the road.
• It’s not as uncomfortable as I first thought, because a really wide footpath and cycle path has been built next to the road here, which is great for walking along undisturbed by cabs.

• Even if you are undisturbed by cabs, you are not undisturbed by people who want to sell you everything from homemade necklaces to tours of the island – there are lots of them all along the beach, by the way, which is why we always flee back to our balcony quite quickly after swimming in the sea to have some peace and quiet.
• After a few meters, a guy starts chatting to us and we try to get rid of him, but first we answer his question “Where are you from?” with “Austria”, assuming that he doesn’t know it and we thereby end the conversation quickly.
• Instead, he lets out a delighted cry and says enthusiastically: “Really Austria? I lived in Vienna a couple of years!” Yes, of course, I think, but to my surprise he continues: “My daugther, she still lives in Austria, in Wolkersdorf.” No way! He tells me that he used to live in the 3rd district, Landstraße – Julian would be happy about that.
• For dinner, we go back to our restaurant, which is beautifully situated right by the sea, and watch sailing catamarans.

• The boats obviously don’t all have working lights – one is motoring under anchor light, another is anchored and has no lights at all and one has a sail up and for safety’s sake anchor light, engine light and position light all switched on – it’s truly sailboat light anarchy.

Tuesday, 12.December

Slothdom again

• Lots of doing nothing again.

• Reading, writing, swimming in the sea, having breakfast, skyping.

• We get a free concert because there’s a band playing in our restaurant, which we can listen to from the comfort of our hanging chairs on the balcony.

Wednesday, 13. December

Crocodiles, Rums and Americans

• We have booked an organized tour for today that will take us to the southwest of Jamaica.
• The tour bus picks us up directly from the resort hotel and is full of American tourists, except for a couple from Canada.
• Apparently they all crave 24/7 entertainment, because while I thought to myself – nice, I’ll take a power nap during the bus ride, our tour guide, Elliott, talks non-stop through the microphone.
• He points out a few villas to us – “Look, the Canadian Prime Minister stayed in this super fancy resort – guess how expensive a room in it is.” (about 10,000$ per night)
• He also asks us: “Did you try the flavored red stripe? It is much better than the pure red stripe.” Me: “Ah, that speaks for beer quality.” Matthäus: “Just like Gösser.” (check out the Radler though!)
• Our first stop on the tour is the Black River, a river on which we take a boat tour.

• There are crocodiles in it – causing the bamboo rafting tours to have been cancelled a few years ago. (ooh :()
• In terms of the landscape and vegetation, the whole boat tour and the river landscape reminds us very much of the Everglades.

• We learn that crocodiles hunt at night and usually digest in the sun during the day – and they often open their mouths to cool down.
• The Black River gets its name from indigo: the color comes from the logs of the “logwood” tree, which was transported from here to Great Britain and has dyed the water completely black.

• In addition, methane leaks from the riverbed in some places, causing wildfires/big fires, especially in July and August when there are lots of thunderstorms.
• Crocodiles, as we already know from the Everglades, are territorial – so our boat tour guide knows exactly where each one is and they have actually developed a kind of call system with which he can summon the crocodiles (and then they come because they think there’s food?! I wonder…).
• So we see Jerry, a handsome specimen, and finally Freddie in the harbor basin.

• And finally, we see lots of baby crocodiles in their crocodile sanctuary.

• Next stop are waterfalls, the YS Falls.
• There we put on our bathing suits, because we’re going on a ‘hike’ over the waterfall steps.

• The whole bus immediately runs to the nearest tourist store to get water shoes – Matthäus and I decide that our feet will have to do as they are.
• Great idea: a short time later, Matthäus has a splinter in his foot – great.
• I can’t resist anyway and when I see the first pool of water, it doesn’t take 30 seconds before I’ve already jumped in and am swimming around inside.

• We are “led” from water basin to water basin by a local guide, or rather we are shooed along a little so that the masses of tourists can be processed.
• Speaking of the guides: they take great photos of us.

• There are caves behind the waterfall that I find out one can dive through, which I enjoy immensily.
• Another highlight is a huge swing that they have hung up and from which you can swing out several meters and then jump into one of the deep pools – mega!

• There, at the largest of the waterfalls, you can really feel the current and we have fun trying to swim against it – it’s very difficult, but it works.
• Then it’s back again, where we have a bit of time to swim in a shallow pool or visit one of the countless tourist stores before continuing on.
• Off to the Appelton Rum Distillery!

• There we first have lunch, during which we try – somewhat in vain – to talk to fellow travelers – they are from the USA and often spend their vacations here in Jamaica.

• So we are really surprised to hear that this trip is the first time they have moved out of their resort in all the years they have been vacationing here! Normally, they say, they just stay in the resort.
• Then the conversation dribbles on rather moderately and we are quite happy when the tour starts.
• We learn how rum is distilled, from pressing the sugar cane to storage.

• John the donkey was originally responsible for operating the presses – today, of course, the process is automated and the huge press is driven by a motor.

• We get to try sugar cane, which we already know from Uganda – Vicky gave us a piece when we were visiting there – but back then it wasn’t already cut into bite-sized pieces and packed in airtight packets.
• Nevertheless, it is super tasty – almost pure sugar – not like the molasses, the kind of syrup that is present after pressing – that tastes rather horrible.

• The trickiest thing with rum, as with whiskey, is the storage: this is mainly done in port wine barrels. Here, they present the ageing process of the rum very well in barrels with transparent lids.
• You can see how the color changes and the rum gets darker, but you can also see – and I wasn’t aware of this – how much less rum you have after 30 years of storage, for example – which at least explains why the prices rise so much in proportion to the age.

• The tour ends with a rum tasting, during which we get to try three different Appleton rums: The Signature Rum, the 8 year aged Reserve Rum and the 12 year aged Rare Cask Rum.

• Of course, the 12-year-old rum totally outshines the others – it’s really impressive how much difference it makes.
• In a good mood and slightly tipsy, we drive back to the resorts, where everyone is unloaded and we end the day comfortably on our terrace.

Thursday, 14.December

All day breakfast

• We get up at around noon and of course I think it would be the perfect time for breakfast.
• However, the restaurants on the beach think differently and don’t even want to serve us a fried egg.
• So we look away from the beach and towards the road, along which there are a few restaurants that promise “all-day breakfast”.

• Scherzkekse beyond compare, because half of them are closed and the other half tell us “No, breakfast is only served until 11am” – great.
• So we give in and eat pizza instead as a hearty breakfast lunch – also very tasty.
• Walking back, we discover a bull chilling in the grass with a bird sitting comfortably on top?!
• We also desperately try to find the ATM in a “shopping center”. The shopping center we discover consists of tourist shops only and an ATM which is “out of service”.

• For dinner, we get a delicious soup (with a not-so-tasty chicken foot inside) from a guy selling street food right outside the resort and a very tasty pork jerk, which is a local specialty and tastes really delicious – we smuggle the food into the resort in our huge beach bag.
• The rest of the day is once again dominated by Slothdom and after we’ve packed up, as we’ll be heading back to MoBay tomorrow, we round off the evening with rum punch and one last fantastic sunset from the terrace.