Birthday Parties!

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This trip to Jamaica was Chelly's long-time dream for her 40th birthday and she got like 5 birthday parties in a row! 😊 The first party was Thursday night in Miami (technically her birthday after midnight), when we went wandering around Wynwood, checking out music spots, dancing, eating tacos, looking at graffiti, and all that. I wrote about it in a previous blog. The second party was on Friday night (still her birthday), when we went out dancing in Ocho Rios. But, we're not there yet.

Getting to Ochi

This was absolutely the hardest day of the trip. We were wrecked from the thing, and all the other things (the first flight getting canceled, airport hassles, then the layover in Miami, getting very little sleep in hotels 2 nights in a row). We'd been through a minor drama at the rental car place, then stopped to check out the Bob Marley Museum. We never stopped for food at any point (other than gas station snacks), and the drive north to Ocho Rios was far from uneventful.

First, I had to get used to driving on the Left side of the road. I've done this a lot, of course, in Thailand and in Kenya. Still, it takes some time to get the muscle-memory activated. Sitting on the other side of the car is weird, and my lane position was kind of sketchy for the first few... hours. I was also dodging plenty of dodgy drivers 😉 and potholes and such. With a $2000 deposit held on this vehicle, my wife was correcting every move I made from the passenger seat (fun!)

And then we got pulled over by police. The police in Jamaica don't really look like the police I'm used to. I didn't even recognize their vehicles or uniforms at first: a lot of colors that I wouldn't normally associate with police, like grey and red and neon yellow. I thought I was doing the right thing, following the speed of traffic. I'd only seen one speed limit sign the entire day (the signage here is very sparse) and it was way, way back there. So, I didn't know if I was going too fast or what. But the cops let me know. I was speeding and they wanted to write me a $60USD ticket. I managed to talk my way out of this (the "speed of traffic" line worked) and they let us off the hook. But it wasn't fun.

Our next road drama came when we got to the end of the toll highway. Google Maps had told me it was a toll road, but not how expensive the toll would be. I was in Mexico recently, and the tolls (if they charged you at all) were paid in coins. Not so in Jamaica. For this toll road, they wanted $2000 Jamaican or $20USD (by the way, that's a terrible exchange rate). We didn't have it. We had only a few loose bills and coins of Jamaican money (change from the gas station) that were way short of the bill. So, what could we do? You'd think maybe they'd have a card reader in there to swipe your credit or debit card. Nope. Or maybe, if you pull over and go into the office, they'd have one there. Nope. An ATM? Nope. They said we were supposed to reverse our car into the moving freeway traffic, pull it over to the side of the road (don't worry, the security guard was there to escort us over), and then flag down other drivers to ask for help (to beg a fare, basically). Oh boy, this is a nightmare. Can you call your manager? No, they can't. They'd just get in trouble. This kind of thing happens every day and here's the process. So, we did as they said and reversed out into traffic (with the escort on foot), and over to the side of the road. As we were mentally preparing ourselves to get out and beg fellow drivers for $20USD, Chelly remembered that she had an UNOPENED BIRTHDAY CARD IN HER SUITCASE!!! 😊 >_< !!! Inside the card, we found a $20 bill that we used to pay the toll. Crisis averted.

Don't get me wrong though, we were having a blast and were super happy to be in Jamaica. Yes, it was a difficult day and we were totally exhausted, but this is one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited in the world. The drive down the highway through the lush mountains and valleys of central Jamaica was well worth the $20. It would have been worth a lot more than that, in fact. I wish I'd had a camera running--if a camera could even do it justice--because the visual splendor of the green mountainsides, blues skies, golden sunlight, and white wisps of cloud was spectacular.

Getting a Room

Onto the next crisis. We found our hotel pretty easily. The Mystic Ridge Resort was up a small hill just adjacent to the Ocho Rios downtown area. We parked the tiny car in the tiny, crowded parking lot and went looking for the office. In the office, I got a surprise. They told me that this was not a normal hotel and that I wouldn't be checking-in there. In fact, the building I was staying in had its own private owner and all I needed was the code from my hotel booking email. Ok. So, it's basically an AirBnB? I didn't know that. I advised Chelly to take a nap in the car while I figured this stuff out.

The room was easy enough to find, and I tried the code, but I couldn't figure out how to open the box. Downstairs, I found some of the folks who clean the rooms chatting with some of the longer-term residents. They helped me locate the owner, who was just upstairs talking to another guest. He took me over to the room again and showed me how to get the box open (it worked by reading a different row of numbers than I would have), but inside the box was empty. There was no key. He being the landlord, he had a key on hand anyway, so he opened the room up to let me in. There were other people's bags in there. Apparently they'd rented our room to someone else. Not only that, but one of the bags had a beaded Kenyan flag hanging off the zipper. We never met these people, but apparently they'd also been to Kenya recently.

At this point, I can understand if the story is getting pretty boring to you. I'll race through the next part. Mystic Ridge went out of business a couple years ago, maybe during COVID, and they sold their buildings piecemeal to private owners who now rent them as AirBnBs. When we booked through Priceline, they gave us a building belonging to one set of owners, but the phone number provided by the website was for a different set of owners. So, when we called to inform the "hotel" of our delayed flights, the person on the other end was the wrong person to help us. Even though she assured us it was all good, it wasn't. The real owners of our unit thought we were a no-show and gave the room to someone else. Luckily, the other owners who got our phone call the day before (and repeated missed calls this day) were on the grounds trying to figure out who we were. The one man introduced me to the other man and he got me into an upgraded room right there on the spot. Mystery solved. No extra charges. World travel is all about solving problems.

Now it was time for a nap. We carried our bags to the room, drew our curtains, strapped on our sleep masks from the plane, and conked-out for a good 4 hours or so.

Getting Out on the Dance Floor

Waking up after dark, not having eaten all day, and wanting to celebrate Chelly's birthday properly while it was still the 24th, we got dressed really quick and walked into town.

Ocho Rios proper was just a short walk down the hill from our hotel. We were loving the warm, tropical weather, and we could hear some great music booming up from the town. We walked along the main street, checking out the lay of the land, though almost all of the businesses were closed for the night. It was kind of funny to get our first look at Ocho Rios after dark when everything was closed, but honestly it already seemed comfortable to us. I'd been to Jamaica before, of course, and for the most part everything looked and felt a lot like Kenya--where Chelly is from--so it was instantly familiar to her as well.

Now we needed some food; our first meal in Jamaica, and really our first meal since the noodle shop in the Miami airport in the morning (which already felt like days ago). We saw that the KFC and the Burger King were packed, but that's not what we were here for. Honestly, I wouldn't set foot in one of these places at home and I don't think I've eaten at either since I was a teenager. It's kind of surprising to see how popular those places have gotten in Jamaica. I hear about it all the time from more health-conscious Jamaicans lamenting their country's slide towards American junk food culture, but it must be explainable as stemming from some form of inferiority complex and fascination with the mainland pop culture.

We asked a couple of security guards for a decent, sit-down, Jamaican restaurant recommendation and that's how we found out about the Mongoose. Mongoose was a ways down the street, which gave us an opportunity to check out more of the town. There wasn't much going on at this end of the Ocho strip, but we heard a lot of booming soundsystems on our route. Mongoose had a nice, outdoor vibe. A bar and restaurant with a Caribbean menu, there was a live saxophonist performing along to instrumental tracks of classic Reggae tunes. He even sang a few bars every now and then.

We had some nice food there. It was one of the only times you'll catch me eating tofu (because we're in a fasting period and I'm not doing animal products right now), but the tofu was good! They also hooked me up with some ginger juice and boiled garlic, which is my jam. Then we went out dancing.

Ok, so we decided to go home and change our clothes before we went to the next spot, so we could be driving this time. That was a good move in case we didn't like the place and wanted to find somewhere else, or if it turned out to be really far from our hotel. I don't remember who gave us the recommendation, but the place was called 8 Rivas.

8 Rivas was a rooftop club, just like the kind we love to frequent in Bangkok or Mombasa. There was a DJ inside with a dance floor and a bar, and then--just like our favorite spots in those other tropical cities--an outside porch with tables and hookahs. This was the smoking section. Being Jamaica, there was a lot of herb burning and not a lot of tobacco.

Marijuana legalization has come a long way in Jamaica. The last time I was here, in 2012, the marijuana thing was still all hidden and hush-hush, as much as possible. I mean, you'd see a marijuana plant growing wild in the yard, and there were plenty of people burning spliffs around, but you had to hide it from the police. There were no advertisements or legal shops for canabis at that time, like there are now. If you wanted to buy some, you'd have to ask the shopkeeper to dip into his bottom-shelf stash for a little "corn" or "spice". Nowadays it's totally different. We not only saw cannabis for sale at the legal shops, but also at bars and even from vendors on the street.

I'm not burning it these days, so I did not partake, but I found it comforting to see how out in the open Jamaica's well-known cannabis culture has become. Good for you, Jamaica. Don't hide. There's nothing to be ashamed of.

I don't know why we didn't take more pictures that night (my wife looked stunning), but we had a proper date night and birthday celebration for her on her 40th. The DJ went back and forth between Jamaican reggae & dancehall tunes or American hip-hop sounds. As the night went on, the music got a little trashier and sleazier, eventually not able to hold our interest anymore. We were up dancing on that roof until we pretty much started to fall asleep on our feet. It was fun.

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Photos

These are the right words
I love the sentiment of this

Dinner at the Mongoose
One of the rare times I will ever be seen eating tofu.