Caching and Jamaica, Part One

When we learned in January of 2011 that our daughter and her fiancé had decided to get married in Jamaica Terry and I faced a bit of a dilemma; neither one of us had any desire to go south. We’re both fair-skinned, blue-eyed and hate the heat. We both burn badly, one of us gets hives that itch like crazy and one of us gets grumpy. The thought of spending a week on the beach in the tropics was truly not all that appealing to us but we couldn’t not go. There was no question about that. So, we starting researching and learning about Jamaica, checked out the caches all over the island (all 22 of them!) and started making our plans.

We’re staying at an all-inclusive resort, which means everything is included; the room, all meals including room service, all drinks all day and night and all the entertainment and some water sports. Which is wonderful if all you want to do is eat, drink, sunbathe and drink and eat some more. The resort is beautiful, the beach and water are amazing, the food is great, the drinks are good and the service is excellent. But when you stay in an all-inclusive you see the Jamaica they want you to see and it sure isn’t the real Jamaica. All you see is the beach and the resort unless you take an excursion to one of the tourist attractions.

We got the name of a driver/guide from Moshera, a cacher from St. Stephen who had used his services a year ago, and made plans to have 2 days of caching while we were here. Boy, are we ever glad we did!

Phillip picked us up at 8:30 am for our first day of caching. Montego Bay, where we’re staying, is on the northern side of the island so we headed east, toward Ocho Rios and Dunn’s River Falls. If you’ve never driven on the left hand side of the road before, it is an experience! And in Jamaica they’re crazy. The highway we’re on is a divided 4-lane with a speed limit of 80 kph, which very few adhere to. Phillip is weaving in and out of traffic as buses, taxis and cars stop in the outside lane to pick up passengers. There are goats eating at the roads edge, with one occasionally venturing too far into the traffic. We speed by home after home made of cinder blocks, most just half completed with rebar poking high in the air, waiting for their second floors to be added. Phillip informs us that people build until they run out of money, then live there and add on as funds are available, adding metal sheeting or plywood to cover empty windows and doorways. Others are completed and painted every shade of the pastel rainbow. There are people everywhere along the highways; workers waiting for rides into town, vendors hawking their wares, old women tending fires, school children in their coloured uniforms, men gathering and talking in the shade.  It’s obvious that Jamaica is a very poor country, yet you don’t get a sense of hopelessness or defeat. People do what they need to do to survive and get on with life.

Dunn’s River Falls is one of the top tourist attractions in Jamaica and it’s not hard to see why. The falls are beautiful. They’re about 900 feet in height and you climb from the gorgeous beach at the bottom all the way up to the top. The water cascades down over numerous small steps and has many pools where you can swim or sit under the falls. Unfortunately, you are herded up the falls at a fairly quick pace so do not get to spend much time exploring or truly enjoying them, which is a shame. It also takes a bit of time to get used to the aggressiveness of the vendors here in Jamaica. In most places you are jumped on the second you enter and can be hounded until you buy or leave. It’s a bit disconcerting at first, but once you realize it’s their way of life and how they survive it’s a bit easier to deal with. The market at the top of the falls is notorious for this so we rushed through it, stating we had no money on us, which was true.  None the less, Dunn’s River Falls is definitely a must see (or do) when in Jamaica, doubly so since there is an amazing Earthcache GC18WG8 there.

We stopped for a lunch of jerk chicken with rice and peas, traditional Jamaican fare, at a roadside eatery Phillip recommended. It was fairly large for a roadside cafe but we were happy to see local businessmen amongst the customers. It was a bit surreal to wait for our meal and watch the men and women in the kitchen working, mainly in conditions that would not be allowed here in Canada. The place was very clean but the food, like in most places, was cooked over a wood-burning fire. Indoors! We watched the men add wood and stir the embers way back in the kitchen while the women prepared and served the food up front. The food was spicy but good!

After lunch, we headed back toward Montego Bay to see some sights and pick up the other 7 or 8 caches along the way. All of the caches in Jamaica have been hidden by folks who are visiting but they all have a local who will look after maintenance, etc. Many are in places that bring a little extra business their way so they are more than willing to be cache guardians. We stopped at a beautiful small private villa, Sea Rose Villa, for a cache GC3A2B and at a beautiful little beach near another cache, Over the Wall GC1P813 .

Jacob Taylor Beach is small and gorgeous but empty except for some local fishing boats and a few shacks where vendors sell their crafts. Phillip mentioned that the beach used to be very busy and popular, before the all-inclusive resorts were built. He, and everyone we spoke to, was very careful not to criticize the tourist industry because without it Jamaica would be devastated but it was now obvious to us that some of that industry also hurt the locals and their small businesses. It’s a catch 22 because these big international companies come in and build these palatial resorts that bring in thousands of visitors and employ thousands of Jamaicans but whose very existence keeps those visitors inside the resorts’ walls, not out spending money in the local economy. I guess it’s just like everywhere else; the rich get richer at the expense of the poor.

One of our favourite caches and probably the most unique we found was “RastaMon” GC2GQZ9 , a living carved tree at the entrance to a private villa, with the cache hidden in his “hair”. We finished the day off with a few more caches, most of them hidden at or near resorts that took us into Montego Bay and around the downtown area. We cringed at the people wandering in the middle of the busy four-lane streets selling newspapers, nuts, sugar cane and other stuff while cars zoomed by. It’s amazing we didn’t see any accidents but Phillip said they do happen regularly. I can see why.

 

 

Our final cache of the day was Mo Bay Cruisers GC3E27R near one of the ports the cruise ships dock at and we were FTF on it. How cool is that? We had read the cache page when we noticed a new one had been published a couple of weeks ago so knew to take a hanger with us as you definitely needed some help getting the container out. Our driver, Phillip, was determined that we would get the FTF once he knew what it meant. I think he was more excited about it than we were! A great way to end our first day of caching.