May 11th

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We almost had a dry day but….

As it was quite cloudy, we put on our suits but really didn’t think we’d swim. We headed up to the top of the “West Side,” first stopping in the crazy upscale Camana area, for a French pastry, parking right outside – that’s how quiet it is here. Next stop: Hell. Jess wanted to mail her postcards from there. And we did see the strange limestone formations for which the area was named. We bought a coconut from the vender there too – young coconut meat and very nice coconut “milk.”

And then further north to drive slowly thru the national park – not really much to see really. We understand that that mosquitos lay their eggs there and then the govt treats the ponds and hopefully diminishes the number. We saw 2 people doing kiteboarding on the north coast – very very shallow there. Then we drove slightly south to Tukka’s – where David and I had been already. Time for another lion fish taco!! In fact, all three of us got them. Fortunately we arrived just before a large number of tourists who had all come off one of the 2 cruise ships in town, who had then gone to Stingray City, and came to have jerk chicken, mahi mahi, beans and rice and salad buffet there. If only they had known about the tacos! It was amazing how pink some of them were – what were they thinking!!??

We stopped at a local type grocery store/bakery and came out with famous Jamaican “bulla” which is a dark solid “biscuit” kind of thing. The salesladies were very friendly, and said they couldn’t really describe it – it just had to be experienced. One agreed that toasted with butter would work, the other grimaced and said, no she eats it with cheese or avocado.

We drove to the Western most road to show Jess 7 Mile Beach, and we just decided to jump in at Cemetery Beach. We hadn’t been impressed with it years ago when we came, but we had been reminded that we should swim out 5-10 minutes to hit the coral and fish. So, David timed 7 mins, and I counted 300 kicks, and we found a good bunch of coral heads. One small sting ray and -AT LAST, THE PIECE DE RESISTANCE! – a nurse shark!! Spotted first by Jess, it had headed out before we could identify it - she just said “it was huge.” And fortunately it headed back towards shore and we were able to follow it quite a ways – see the video. As usual, I'm trying to name all the photos, but just realized 2 were not this time - the cute Porcupine fish we found hiding. This was about 18"

Home for the leftover grouper curry in front of the TV to watch Jeopardy and bedtime!!!

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