{"id":7350,"date":"2013-04-09T21:54:08","date_gmt":"2013-04-10T01:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/?p=7350"},"modified":"2015-01-07T13:33:27","modified_gmt":"2015-01-07T17:33:27","slug":"our-stay-inna-ja","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/?p=7350","title":{"rendered":"Our Stay Inna JA"},"content":{"rendered":"

We had a lovely time in JA. It was especially nice & easy thanks to our local hosts and longtime frens, Sara & Marvin, who in addition to leading our party round the island, convening some great crews of friends & colleagues, carrying us to this party and that beach, and being total sports about hanging with our large fam, opened their home to us — a sweet perch in town, complete with mangoes in the yard!<\/p>\n

\"good<\/a><\/p>\n

Like any Kingston hosts worth their salt, Sara & Marv made sure we made it to Hellshire Beach our first weekend there, where we had our fill of oysters, lobster, and fried fish —<\/p>\n

\"marvy<\/a><\/p>\n

\"fried<\/a><\/p>\n

\"fish,<\/a><\/p>\n

We couldn’t resist a likkle dip, the first of many on the trip —<\/p>\n

\"sunday<\/a><\/p>\n

That night we hit up Rockers Sound Station’s Rock Ur Soul Sundays, a dubwise session held at a spot called the Dub Club way up Jack’s Hill. It was a wild & windy ride, but the payoff was an incredible vista<\/a> and some good, heavy vibes. It was a serious system<\/a>, frequently exploited by the selectors who mostly withheld the massive bass for maximum effect. And when it dropped, bomba…<\/em> While we were there, and this is hardly surprising, we were treated to an Italian guest selector wielding a single turntable (and the mixer & airhorn, of course), playing tracks with lines like “African or British, Italian, Japanese \/ it’s important that we share in love and harmony.” Amazingly, I found the session archived on Ustream<\/a>! —<\/p>\n

\"rastagate\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"kingston<\/a><\/p>\n

But we only got a couple nights in town. Most of our time was spent up in Portland at a far more leisurely pace. When we finally made it to the other side of the island, after threading mountain turns for a few hours, the first thing I saw was some graffiti nodding north & repping the THUG LIFE (G-UNOT!) — <\/p>\n

\"G-UNOT\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We stayed in an amazing place called the Belmount, an exquisite little spot on the San San peninsula, overlooking the Blue Lagoon, Monkey Island, and San San Beach —<\/p>\n

\"monkey<\/a><\/p>\n

Pretty sweet at sunset too —<\/p>\n

\"g'night!\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Here’s from the other side of the house\/peninsula —<\/p>\n

\"MARNIN'\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And don’t get me started on the plantings and flowers<\/a> and such. But I will share one great moment: on one walk around the yard, I noticed a flower that had been choked by a small vine, so I snapped the vine and gently unraveled it and the flower opened right up, as if in some act of magical gratitude —<\/p>\n

\"i<\/a><\/p>\n

\"jamaican<\/a><\/p>\n

Belmount is just down the road from Frenchman’s Cove, so we spent a couple days in the special spot where the cool river meets the warm sea and a swing hangs from an almond tree at just the right height —<\/p>\n

\"charlie<\/a><\/p>\n

\"nico<\/a><\/p>\n

Of course, we also pilgrimaged to Winnifred Beach, maybe the most perfect natural beach I’ve ever seen, so well captured in this epic panorama shot by Sara —<\/p>\n

\"winnifred<\/a><\/p>\n

Of course, we had to stop for some post-beach jellies (& about a dozen other fruits during the week) —<\/p>\n

\"jelly<\/a><\/p>\n

\"jelly<\/a><\/p>\n

Becca had her first otaheite apple in a decade, and the girls their first ever, so that was sweet —<\/p>\n

\"double-fisting<\/a><\/p>\n

If only we could plant one of these things up in Cambridge…<\/p>\n

\"otaheite<\/a><\/p>\n

Of all the delicious and alien fruit<\/a> we sought out and encountered, I discovered I’m a sucker for almonds. Sea almonds<\/a>, I believe. And more the trees than the fruit, which I didn’t get much a chance to try. (I did bite into a freshly fallen one I found on the beach, which had a tart, pear-ish taste and an almost avocado feel. Pretty good, but it wasn’t ripe enough.) I hadn’t noticed before, but almond trees totally proliferate in Jamaica, both as wild beach majesties and squat sculpted lawn ornaments —<\/p>\n

\"almond<\/a><\/p>\n

\"almond<\/a><\/p>\n

They have great teardrop leaves, which turn orange, then red, and drop gently from the trees —<\/p>\n

\"me<\/a><\/p>\n

\"nico<\/a><\/p>\n

This ol’ struggler provided crucial shade at Frenchman’s —<\/p>\n

\"gimme<\/a><\/p>\n

While this one in the Belmount yard has orchids growing out of it! <\/p>\n

\"orchid<\/a><\/p>\n

I was even enamored of the morbid beauty of fallen almonds being dismantled by beetles —<\/p>\n

\"bugs<\/a><\/p>\n

But enough about trees. That’s enough, I’m sure. Thanks for watching! Since I’ve had you here this long, I’ll leave you a couple parting shots I can’t resist leaving out: a herd of goats running the road —<\/p>\n

\"goat<\/a><\/p>\n

\"goat<\/a><\/p>\n

Special thanks to Charlie 1.0, driving above, and Fern, not pictured, for making the whole dang thing possible. It was a Jamaican vacation I’ve always dreamed of — and to be able to introduce Nico and Charlie to the place this way was wonderful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We had a lovely time in JA. It was especially nice & easy thanks to our local hosts and longtime frens, Sara & Marvin, who in addition to leading our party round the island, convening some great crews of friends & colleagues, carrying us to this party and that beach, and being total sports about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[402,403],"class_list":["post-7350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-jamaica","tag-lifey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7350"}],"version-history":[{"count":41,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7392,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7350\/revisions\/7392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}