I am pretty sure I have driven a higher percentage of the paved motorways of Jamaica than the paved motorways of any other nation of the world.
In an attempt to make the transition from Kingston airport to the beaches of Negril painless and fun, we rented a Toyota Yaris at the airport in Kingston. This was, and is, a good move.
Since we had wheels and a destination, we informed our pal Joe (flying into Kingston a few hours after us) that we had the wheels and asked if he'd be willing to navigate the way to Negril. (a couple details: 1. La Flaca is very capable and intelligent, but has almost no motoring experience and roughly the same map-reading experience; 2. The guy who owns the house we were to be staying in in Negril responded with horror when I informed him we would be driving from Kingston to Negril. "You'll never make it at night," I think he said.) Anyway, Joe said, hell yes.
Joe's flight got in at 8:0 something or other, so La Flaca and I rented our cool blue Yaris and headed into Kingston, drove around with a map a homeless guy gave us at a gas station and eventually had lunch, missed the closing time of the Bob Marley museum, bought some Cd's for the trip and did a little sight-seeing in Kingston (there is precious little to see, by the way). We also got some cash to fascilitate all that other stuff. It literally took us an hour driving around to find a working cash machine. When we did, I was very happy, got inside, inserted my Colombian cash card and viola, the system was 100% operational, except for one thing, I had no goddamned idea what the exchange rate was, nothing, not an inkling. I didn't even know what the currency was called, pounds, dollars, drachma, rubles, no fucking idea here.
So, faced with the question of "how much cash you want, mon," and not a single option on the screen, I dialed in 500.00 and waited. Three seconds later, bang, 500 Jamaican bucks. All right. I walked back to the car with a feeling of triumph. Once we were driving again, La flaca asked me, "How much did you get?"
"500 bucks," I replied.
"Wow," she said. "Either I just saw some really expensive flip-flops, or you got basically nothing." I wasn't crushed, but it had been a lot of work for six bucks. To make a short story short, we got some more cash, after talking to a nice woman who worked at a bank and we ate our first jerk chicken, listened to the cd of the guy who's face was on LaFlaca's new tank top, and headed to the airport for the 8:00 Joe pickup.
The drive to the airport was completely uneventful, and then we saw the great news that flights out of Miami/Ft. Lauderdale were all being delayed due to weather. We decided to hang around, and around and around. And, once again, to make a short story short, at around 11:30pm, Joe exited the airport with a guard, and explained that he could leave the airport if we could tell him the name and address of the house we were staying at in Negril. I guess that mattered to them.
At 11:58 pm, we hit the road, and we got the hell out of Kingston. At Spanishtown, thirty minutes later, we wondered what the hell all the caution was about, the roads were big, well-lit, fast, and very clear. At Sandy Bay, thirty minutes later, we were both sure we were lost, having mysteriously left the main road. However, with the aid of our new, trusty Shell road-map and the map light of the trusty Yaris, and our two Cd's (Buju Banton's Rasta Got Soul, and Derrick Harriott's Checkin' Out the Hits), we discerned that the itty-bitty, windey, unlit, sometimes single-lane piece of blacktop was indeed the main southern route from Kingston to Negril. Holy Hell. Luckily for LaFlaca, she slept, or feigned sleep, 80% of the five hours we were on the road.
Finally, to, for the last time, make a short story short, we got to our house in Negril as the sun rose, although a policeman had to call the owner of the house and take us there, as we had NO idea where in Negril we were staying.
Thus, the first leg of our trek around Jamaica ended, and we slept, for a couple hours, in the dewy dawn of Negril, thankful that we were done driving, giving no consideration to the return trip.
ttfn,
fpp
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