Port Antonio Jamaica Part 2

Left:  Star apple.  Right: Jackfruit

Monday 27 January began with a selection of the tropical fruits Nicky had purchased at the fruit and veg stalls the previous day, on our return from the Blue Mountains.  We’d not eaten either star-apple or jack fruit before so this was very much a new experience.  The former is very soft and squidgy, with quite a subtle flavour, the latter more like pineapple in texture but less sweet and juicy. 

We had decided to use our final day with the hire car to drive up to Moore Town, towards the eastern end of the Blue Mountains National Park, and had asked Jared if he wished to join us.  It was about a half hour drive on, mostly better roads than we had driven over the weekend, so we arrived rather sooner than we had expected.

The Maroons are descendants of slaves who escaped the plantations and disappeared into the relative safety of the John Crow and Blue Mountains.  By 1739, after about 80 years of warfare with the British (the First Maroon War), they controlled a sizeable portion of eastern Jamaica.  One of their leaders Cudjoe, signed a peace treaty recognising the independence of Cudjoe’s Town (now Trelawny Town) and Accompong, and allowing them numerous benefits, including tax-free lands throughout the island, which are still home to succeeding generations.

Nanny Bump (allegedly the location of Nanny’s grave), with its monument to Nanny of the Maroons

Moore Town was founded by Nanny, another of the Maroon Leaders and sister to Cudjoe.  She refused to sign the 1740 Peace Treaty but acquiesced in the truce that followed.  Nanny’s people split into 2 groups, one following another of her brothers, the remainder staying with her and relocating to New Nanny Town (now Moore Town).  By 1760, Nanny’s successors had lost control of Moore Town to the white superintendents, who were supposed to be diplomats, acting as liaison between the Maroons and the British authorities, and who commanded Maroon warriors in fighting other Maroon revolts.  In 1850 the British authorities abolished the role of the superintendents and the Maroon Towns were once again fully controlled by the Maroons.  Since Jamaica’s independence, the government has recognised the sovereignty of the Maroons and their right to self-government in local affairs.  Moore Town’s head of state is called the Colonel and the community is governed by him/her assisted by a 24-strong Maroon Council.

Monument to Colonel Harris the previous Colonel.
He was well-loved, well-respected and
an effective colonel of Moore Town

The system for electing the Colonel is unique in that an individual does not pursue the position; instead, they are approached by their public and elected through acclamation.  The current Colonel of Moore Town is Wallace Sterling, elected to the position in 1995.  Before him Colonel Harris served for the period 1964-1995. Colonel Harris was a well-respected figure, a teacher and a member of the Jamaican Senate.  So influential was he that he was buried on Nanny Bump, close to the alleged grave of the National Hero.  Which is rather appropriate, given that Colonel Harris was instrumental in the campaign to have her added to the register of National Heroes.

Jared, on Nanny Bump, next to the monument to Colonel Harris, surveying the sports pitch which the villagers of Moore Town are in the process of levelling

We were fortunate enough to meet Wallace Sterling, current leader of the Moore Town Maroons, during our visit.  He was clearly busy, on his way out to his fields, and his phones rang several times whilst we spoke with him.  We asked about Moore Town and his post and he explained that his main role was to try to ensure improvements for the people in the town.  His prime concern at the time was water.  He explained that the whilst all homes now have electricity, not all homes had running water.  He was working to have a new cistern built further up the hill which would provide an appropriate head of pressure and sufficient volume to enable this.  Amongst, his other ongoing, lower-level projects, was one to level the town’s playing field (previously on a crazy slope) to make it more suitable for its intended use.

Moore Town Primary and Junior High Schoo

Terrible out of focus picture of Nicky and
Jared with the current Colonel of
Moore Town, Wallace Sterling

He talked about schooling: after the age of about 12 the children go to schools in Port Antonio and Bluff Bay, but the town now has a Basic School (early years school) to feed the Primary and Junior High.  One thing that came out from our conversations with Colonel Sterling and, later, with Theodore Wallace who took us to Nanny Falls, was that the Maroons do not pay tax, either to the State government or to the town.  Nicky wondered where the money for projects comes from and this, it seems, is the main source of the Colonel’s work – fundraising.  There is a Jamaican Government fund for the Maroon Towns to which the Maroon leaders can apply for funding.  Similarly there are international programmes, including UN programmes, to which they can apply for funds.  It seemed rather as if the townspeople were entirely dependent on handouts to maintain their life in the town, with land for housing and agriculture being free and the only people allowed to live in the town being Maroons, but then it was also not clear to us how much work for monetary recompense there is in the area.

However, one person who definitely does work for monetary recompense is Theodore Wallace, who acts as a local guide (for a fee which, apparently goes to the community fund).  He also runs a farm.  He showed us around Nanny Bump and gave us a brief overview of her and Colonel Harris and then took us up to Nanny Falls, a popular waterfall close to the town.  Another of Colonel Sterling’s projects is to improve the access to Nanny Falls and he has a further project to build a walking trail in the hills around the town.  Both, doubtless, spurred by an increase in tourist numbers to see the town and to enjoy the surrounding mountain scenery.

We had a delightful short stroll through the forest, talking about the various trees and other plants we saw en route.  We saw akee, pears, breadfruit and jackfruit and also found a ripe nutmeg, complete with bright red mace.  The stony track ended at a locked gate blocking the entrance to the path onwards to the Falls.  But the padlock on the chain securing the gate had seized (most likely a year ago or more) so Theodore pushed on one of the gate posts to open up a hole large enough for us to scramble through.  Task one on the jobs list for one of Colonel Sterling’s minions:  buy a hacksaw, a new padlock and some WD40.

Nanny Falls

The Falls are delightful and, had we thought harder before setting off, we’d have packed swimsuits and towels.  But we hadn’t, so we hadn’t, so we just paddled instead.

The grounds of Likkle Porti

Theodore talked about a traditional Jamaican dish – run-down – essentially a stew based on coconut milk and took us to a local shack where they serve it.  But it was closed.  So we bade him good-bye and headed back to the coast.  With several hours still to run on the hire car, we decided to head out to Likkle Porti, a restaurant recommended by Birgid and Richard to Karl and Conner and by the latter 2 to us.

The kitchen at Likkle Porti

It’s a lovely place, right on the coast but with a fresh water river running through the grounds to the sea.  We arrived shortly after the restaurant had opened for the day and the smell of the kitchen’s wood fire was enough to get us salivating!

Left: Lunch – Fried fish, festival (a sort of fried dough in a sausage shape), fried yam, some salad and a local beer.  Right: the fresh nutmeg we found on the trail up to Nanny Falls.  The bright red is mace and the nutmeg is inside the brown nut

We had a delicious lunch, albeit with lots of fried foodstuffs, partly because we had been recommended by Conner to ask to try festival – a sort of fried dough. 

Views around the area at Likkle Porti

And then we enjoyed the surroundings for a while before, reluctantly, heading back to Port Antonio.  We made good use of the final couple of hours of our hire car by doing a beer run to one of the supermarkets before returning to BV for a well-earned quiet evening after a busy few days.

Port Antonio, Jamaica

Blue Mountains Jamaica

The Blue Mountains – designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in July 2015, the Blue and John Crow Mountains National Park is one of only 32 ‘mixed’ WHS and the first in the Caribbean.  “The rugged landscape, lush forests, and cascading streams with rich biodiversity provided all the Windward Maroons needed to establish their culture and wage a successful guerrilla campaign to secure their freedom and sovereignty.”

We made an 0800hrs departure on Saturday 25 January, with warnings about the quality of the road from Buff Bay into the Blue Mountains ringing in our ears from all the people we had spoken to about our trip.  Karl and Conner had driven the first part, past the coffee plantation and on to Holywell, previously so we were pretty certain that the drive to the plantation would take a couple of hours.  But they hadn’t found the driveway to the plantation itself so we wondered how long that would take, even having spoken to the owner, David, in advance.  The drive alone made the trip worthwhile.  The views across the mountains were spectacular – definitely worthy of UNESCO World Heritage Site status.

The Old Tavern Coffee Plantation (red arrow marks the house)

We arrived spot on 1000hrs but couldn’t find the driveway to the plantation so instead parked in an open area, marked as belonging to the plantation.  David had talked about a couple of old Land Rovers acting as a reference point.  We’d passed these a short distance back but hadn’t spotted the driveway.  A moment on the phone explained why.  The Land Rovers marked the position of the house, which is almost directly below the road – there is no driveway.  We backtracked on foot and were welcomed at the gate by 5-year-old Ava, who led us down to her home where we met David, her 2 younger brothers and her mother, Heidi.

It was a fabulous tour of the plantation, which started with a cup of excellent coffee in their living room whilst David talked a bit about the history of the plantation and about coffee and growing coffee in Jamaica.

Left to right:  Karl, Conner (partly hidden), Nicky and Jared at the Old Tavern Coffee Plantation

Spectacular views across the estate from the living room balcony

David’s parents moved to the house about 60 years previously, looking to escape the heat and crowds of Kingston.  They bought the house and about 3 acres of land with no intention of becoming coffee growers.  However, that’s what they became and over time they purchased more and more of the land they could see from the house, to try to make the plantation big enough to be viable as a single plantation coffee producer.

David talking about coffee beans.  Right:  beans with varying amounts of layers removed.  The yellowish beans are fully skinned and ready to roast

That in itself was difficult as, at the time, all coffee growers were expected to sell their produce to the Jamaican Coffee Board.  David’s parents, like others wanted to maintain the ‘value added’ of having grown, dried, roasted and packaged their own produce rather than have to sell at a reduced rate to an organisation which would blend their delicious raw product with someone-else’s.  It was only in the mid 1990s that they obtained the permissions they needed to produce and market independently.  Even so, David and other independent growers/producers still spend significant time and energy discussing the best ways forward for Jamaican coffee production with the Jamaican Coffee Board.

Refreshed after our coffee, it was time to walk down to where the coffee beans are grown on the terraces below us.  David has a team of about 20 who plant, tend, prune and pick, with the vast majority of the labour being done by hand.  It seems that the only things that are no longer done by hand is moving ‘stuff’ – fertiliser out and coffee beans back etc.  These move from the road to stockpiling areas (or vice versa) in 4-wheel drive vehicles and do the final (or first) stretch of the journey between the plants and the stockpiling area on someone’s back.

We thoroughly enjoyed our walk around part of the estate with David, a chatty and energetic Ava and group of half a dozen Croatians who arrived unexpectedly just as we were walking out of the house.  We tasted raw coffee beans, picked fresh oranges and ate them with the juice running sweet and sticky over our hands and chins.  We cleaned up under the irrigation water taps that David’s team has installed; no longer is the entry job on the estate that of ‘water boy’, carrying 5 gallon jerry cans to the coffee plants from the watercourses above and below the working area of the plantation.

Coffee beans at various stages of ripeness all on one plant.  The red beans are ready to be picked

The coffee harvest generally seems to go on through the whole year with the bushes holding beans at all stages of development on them.  Keeping up with the bean production over what seems a fairly large estate for 20 workers must be quite some job…..and then add in all the other tasks – spraying, fertilising, maintaining the tracks, etc – it’s an impressive workload.

David’s house high up above us

There was no charge for the tour but of course
we couldn’t go away without buying some of
Old Tavern Coffee Estate’s excellent coffee, which
we’re looking forward to drinking in a beautiful
anchorage somewhere, perhaps in the Bay Islands

Once picked, Old Tavern Coffee Estate beans are trucked to the Estate’s premisies in Kingston for peeling and drying before returning to the mountains for roasting and packaging.  We had hoped to see the processing area but we ended up walking much further across the plantation than we had expected and with time ticking on we needed to move on too.  When Nicky had spoken to David whilst she was planning the trip she had asked how long the tour would take.  “About and hour” had been the reply.  Not a bit of it.  We were therenearly 3 hours and could easily have stayed longer.  David has plans for a small visitors’ centre, probably run by one of his long-term employees, as he says that more and more people are wanting to visit to see the estate and try the coffee.  It’ll be a lot of work to put in the appropriate infrastructure but will doubtless prove hugely beneficial, if only by keeping interested parties (like us) out of their home, where, quite soon, 3 children will be being home-schooled.

More Blue Mountain views, this time taken from a very poor road!

Both David and John, the owner of Whitfield Hall Refuge where we were staying for the night, had warned us that from Section, close to Old Tavern Coffee Estate, the B1 road becomes very, very poor and that we should budget at least 2 hours to cover the 21km (approx 13miles) to Mavis Bank where we would meet one of John’s staff.  And they weren’t wrong.  Very shortly after leaving Section, we found the road unpaved and hugely potholed and at almost every turn we gave thanks that we had turned down the lower-slung saloon hire car we had been offered and had paid a fraction more for the SUV.  There wasn’t that much traffic on the road but that which there was was clearly far more used to the conditions than us and hurtled around the bends and twists, swerving furiously to avoid the potholes.  In one particularly memorable moment we came head to head with a 5T truck which was doing about 30 mph around a blind bend.  Thankfully we weren’t doing a similar speed and the brakes on both vehicles were working well.  Disaster averted – at the loss of a few heartbeats! Finding the route was generally fairly straightforward, though less so than we had been made to believe.  We took a couple of wrong turns, despite in one case having asked some locals who were sitting by the side of the road.  It became apparent fairly quickly that we were on the wrong route when the road became even worse than dreadful – one wonders what vehicle they would drive up that particular track.  Perhaps they just do it on foot or on donkey.

Mavis Bank is not much of a town.  We wanted to buy something to eat as we had missed lunch but the only place where we could get food at 1430 was a small ‘convenience’ store.  That in itself was quite eye-opening, with all the stock and the people working in the store well hidden behind large Perspex screens overlaid with thick wire mesh.  It put a slightly different perspective on the comment on the Whitfield Hall website that “private vehicles can be left safely at the Mavis Bank Police Station”.  Happily, the police appear to be used to this arrangement and our vehicle was, indeed, still there and in one piece when we returned the next morning.

View from the back seat of Whitfield Hall’s Toyota 4WD truck

We had originally expected to walk up to Whitfield Hall from Mavis Bank, a walk that the Blue Mountain Peak websites all advertise as being about 6km.  However, John had told Nicky that the walking track was badly cut up and difficult to follow, so we had elected to be driven to and from Mavis Bank in one of the refuge’s 4WD vehicles along the long route.  Wow!  What a journey.  I am so glad that we didn’t try to drive that road ourselves, not without a decent Land Rover anyway!  The picture painted by the film above doesn’t tell half the story – more unmade roads, even more huge potholes, incredible inclines (up and down), hairpin bends (with incredible inclines), and road junctions with no markings which weren’t shown on our electronic maps.  Worth every penny of the 6000JMD (US$40) each way [Ed: particularly when split between 5 of us!].  Jared and Karl had the fun of sitting (or standing) in the pick-up’s load bed whilst Conner had the front passenger seat and the only seatbelt.  Nicky and I sat in the back and braced ourselves against the front seats.  Great fun!

Whitfield Hall – perhaps the name overstates the place a fraction

It took an hour to cover the 12km (approx 7.5 miles) from Mavis Bank to Whitfield Hall which, at 4000ft AMSL, is at about the same elevation as Old Tavern Coffee Estate but several valleys over.  We arrived, a little before 1600hrs with the cloud coming down on the cloudforest and the hostel somewhat empty of guests – clearly, we were the first to arrive.

Conner, Nicky and Karl in our room in the lodge.  There’s
no electricity or hot running water. Note the solar powered Luci lights, which we brought from BV, providing light in the room

We were shown our room (2 bunk beds and something that looked like an old hospital bed) and the ablutions (no hot water and not that much cold running water in one).  It seemed sensible to take advantage of what little light there was to prep rucksacks for the morning and to dig out our solar powered Luci lights for when it got really dark as there’s no electricity at Whitfield Hall.  It was still full light outside but inside it was surprisingly dark, a very definite reminder of how things used to be.  Nicky and I explored briefly and then wished we’d brought books with us…..

Gathered around the fire in the gloaming.  Left to right: Karl, Nicky, Jared, Conner, Birgid, another guest and Gale (the latter 2 guests of Birgid)

…..but as the afternoon drew on Karl and Conner requested a fire in the living area.  Several large sacks of eucalyptus logs were produced and suddenly there was warmth and cheery light and a focal point for our group and other arriving guests around which to gather and talk.

Left:  Cooling recently roasted coffee beans.  Right:  Roasting those beans.  Birgid says that this is a very dark roast, not for drinking but for making into coffee essence or similar for baking

Amazingly, the other guests at Whitfield Hall included the Belgian crew of one of the other yachts in the marina and Richard and Birgid, who run a B&B and with whom Karl and Conner had stayed a couple of weeks before, along with their current guests.  We all talked long and hard around the fire, over a hearty Jamaican dinner and later whilst we watched locally grown coffee beans being roasted.  But we had a very early start to make so we made the most of the lack of electric light and hit the sack early.

The following morning [Ed: only just!] our alarms went off at 0230hrs and half an hour later, after a cup of coffee and a breakfast of ginger cake, we hit the trail in order to be on the summit in time for dawn.  Our guide, Charlie, set a very brisk pace, too brisk as it turned out, but our group matched him and we made fast progress through the darkness, our headtorches lighting the way – and Charlie’s falling to pieces at each stop.

One of several great views down over Kingston

In places the track wound steeply upwards, in other places we had great views down across Kingston.  Presumably, there were other great views too, but it was very early in the morning and the sun wasn’t up and there were few lights on view.

Nicky, Karl and Conner and Charlie, our guide

We arrived at the summit shortly before dawn and, of course, took obligatory summit pictures.  The sky was clear and we were hopeful of a spectacular sunrise and, perhaps, views as far north as Cuba.

Charlie showed us to a small ledge from where we would be able to see the sun appear above the horizon…….

Summit photo

……..but as the actual moment of sunrise approached, the cloud rolled in.  We waited until 0641 (the time of sunrise that day) and beyond and were rewarded by a few, ever so brief, glimpses of sun through orange cloud but not the spectacular sunrise for which we had been hoping.  So maybe we’ll just have to do it again in the future.

Meanwhile, the wind was rising, we were getting chilly, Charlie was positively frozen and breakfast was calling, so we started off back down the mountain and were rewarded with more great views as we went down.

And now we could actually see the track we could appreciate how well maintained and litter-free it is as well.

Blue Mountain Peak is the highest point in Jamaica (7,402 feet, 2,256m) and the trail we walked was, apparently, first established by the Maroons travelling from the south coast to their capital in Portland, the parish in which Port Antonio is located.

The Maroons abandoned the trail during their war with the British who eventually used it to gain access to Nanny Town, where the Maroons had their primary stronghold.

Of the tropical forests in the Americas only about 1% are cloud forests and the Blue Mountain cloud forest is unique in the Caribbean in terms of the number and type of plants and the sheer size of the forest – over 26,000 hectares (64,247acres).

5.5km (3.5miles) from the peak, we arrived once again at the Portland Gap Ranger station where we paid our park fees (JMD2500, approx US$20 pp), before continuing downwards towards Whitfield Hall.

Going down was harder going than the ascent and it was with some relief that we recognised the final landmarks on our run-in to the hostel.  Charlie had set a blistering pace down as well as up and we were the first party back to the hostel that morning.  In fact we got back so fast that we were asked if we had actually made the summit at all!  The hardier members of our party (Karl and Conner) took advantage of the slight pause before breakfast to enjoy cold showers whilst the rest of us elected to smell.  And when everyone was back there was a huge Jamaican breakfast – akee, boiled green banana, scrambled egg and peas, fried yams, bread and butter.  Lots of carbohydrate to replen after a 13km hike and it didn’t last long as the picture above attests!

After which it was time to say our goodbyes to Everton (the hostel manager) and to the other members of staff and to take the Toyota 4WD back to Mavis Bank where, happily, our SUV awaited us exactly where, and how, we had left it.

The drive back to Port Antonio took a further 3 hours even though we elected to take the ‘fast’ road (the A3), which routed us around the outskirts of Kingston before heading back across the Blue Mountains.  Unlike the B1, the A3 is a fully paved road, except in one place where there has been a recent land-slide [Ed: with more to follow by the looks of things!] and it’s also significantly straighter than the B1, with far fewer hairpin bends.  But the disadvantage of using the road more travelled is that it is also the road more policed and we were stopped by the traffic cops about half way back to Port Antonio.  Happily, all my documentation was in order (hire car papers, driving licence, passport) and the policeman was so confused by being told that we live in Guernsey and by being shown a Guernsey driving licence that we were soon waved on our way [Ed: despite Karl providing a Google map of the UK, France and the English Channel, including the Channel Islands].

The A3 ends at Annotto Bay where we hit the north coast and turned right towards Port Antonio.  About 20miles out of Port Antonio we stopped off at a group of fruit and veg stalls that Karl and Conner had found on a previous trip out.  Here Nicky bought a roasted breadfruit, a jackfruit and a couple of star-apples for the princely sum of about US$4.  And the seller threw in a free starfruit so we clearly overpaid!

After which it was back to the marina where we collapsed in a small heap to recover from a fabulous couple of days away and in preparation for a further day of exploration in the Blue Mountains, this time to one of the Maroon villages, Moore Town.

Blue Mountains, Jamaica

Port Antonio Jamaica Part 1

Errol Flynn Marina at Port Antonio.  Left: the excellent dinghy dock

Errol Flynn Marina at Port Antonio

We arrived at Port Antonio at 0910 on Monday 20 January out of a torrential rainstorm.  Even in the rain, the harbour and marina were attractive, lush and green, doubtless as a result of weeks and months of similar downpours.  We were met by the marina manager, George, who was very helpful and efficient and who gave us a huge pile of forms to be completed for quarantine, customs and immigration.

Buying fresh nutmeg and mace

After a couple of hours we’d been cleared as safe for Jamaican soil by all the officials so we wandered into the town to get some local currency (the Jamaican Dollar can only be obtained in Jamaica) and stretch our legs.  When in Jamaica one must eat Jerk meat, so we had jerk chicken with rice and peas for lunch at food place near the town centre and then took a look at the market.  Even though it was after lunch, it was still going reasonably strong and there were some fabulous looking fruit and veg on display.  We still had plenty of food left over from our supermarket run in Road Town so didn’t need to top up the fridge but we did buy a bag of nutmeg, complete with its mace, as our Grenada stocks were beginning to run low (down to our last 3 or 4!).  We also purchased a Jamaican flag to use as a courtesy ensign as the flag we had used on entry was really far too small to keep flying.

Linde at anchor close to the marina

There were several other yachts in Errol Flynn Marina that we had met previously: Linde, with a Dutch couple whom we had met in St Peter’s and then Halifax in Nova Scotia in 2018, was at anchor off the marina and Incentive with Rik and Sanne, friends of Steve and Carol on Innamorata II whom we had we met in Beaufort NC, was in one of the marina berths.  It was good to catch up briefly with both crews, but they had each been here for a week or more and were planning on moving on now that the wind had died down.

Beach just east of the cruise ship dock

We strolled around the marina facilities and out to the small cruise ship complex close north of the marina.  It’s not used that much anymore.  George said that the next ship wasn’t due in until 9 February and the last had visited in mid-January, presumably because so many cruise ships are just too big to use the facilities here.  The passenger complex was closed up but the beach alongside is very attractive, if one ignores the concrete backdrop.  It reminded us rather of the large cruise ship dock on Grand Turk, where too the passengers are expected to use the beach right adjacent to the ship’s berth.  It seems a little odd to us.  Hardly an idyllic tropical island outlook from underneath your idyllic tropical island palm tree.

View out along the channel between West Harbour (where Errol Flynn Marina is located) and East Harbour towards the entrance to Port Antonio and the Folly Point Lighthouse.  Navy Island, which provides significant shelter to West Harbour, is on the left of the picture

Errol Flynn Marina from the cruise ship dock.  BV is mostly hidden behind the large motoryacht but you can see her mast with the OCC burgee at the masthead

Looking through the planting to the swimming pool at Marybelle’s, the marina bar

From the cruise ship dock we wandered back along the foreshore to the marina complex, ending up at the Marybelle’s, the marina bar.  Here we had arranged to meet Conner and Karl from Contigo, an American flagged Beneteau 423 a couple of berths down the marina from us.

A more conventional view of Marybelle’s, the marina bar

We had a lovely evening with the two of them hearing about how they started sailing, the places they have visited and some of their plans for the rest of this season.  It sounds as if we might well end up meeting them in several places along our route this year, particularly over the next few months where it seems as if we have almost exactly the same plans.  But, like Linde and Incentive, they had been in Port Antonio for an extended period and had plans to move on in a couple of days’ time.  But that would give time enough to meet up again and swap further notes on places to visit both here and further afield.

The West Harbour anchorage from Marybelle’s

The next day (Tuesday 21 January) we moved out of the marina to the anchorage, saving ourselves US$15 a day in the process.  The charge for a marina berth is US$0.95/ft/night, about US$40/night for BV, whereas the charge for the anchorage is US$25/night.  (To these you also need to add an additional US$3 environmental/rubbish disposal fee for each night you are in residence on the boat.)  For every 2 nights spent in the marina, we could have 3 at anchor and have the benefit of a quieter time (no squeaking fenders) and better airflow, albeit at the expense of less convenience in going ashore, though the dinghy dock is excellent.

Shades of a year ago in Cuba…...  We’ve removed the saloon table to expose the top of the aft fuel tank and all its feeds to the various diesel users (engine, generator, heater) as well as the priming pump for the generator

We spent the rest of the day working on the generator to see if we could find the reason why it failed to keep running.  Ironically, the last time we had a problem like this, in Cuba and the Bahamas last year, I spent ages working through all the likely sources of a fuel supply blockage but it turned out to be a couple of faults in the wiring.  This time, with the generator firing up, running for a few minutes but then shutting down, I assumed that we had a loose connection in the control circuit again.  However, after hours of work in the machinery space, it turned out to be a fuel supply problem with a blockage in the fuel line priming pump.  After running various tests we removed the pump (it’s a sealed unit and can’t be opened and cleaned) and the generator ran perfectly once again.  I made a temporary bodge connection in the fuel supply line for the short term, awaiting a proper fix using some copper tubing once I’d sourced some of the right size from a hardware store.  So, a success, albeit a lengthy time in getting there.  On the down-side, we can’t find the replacement plugs for the generator fuel supply relay (the plug that was a problem last time).  Whilst I was busy checking wiring looms etc, Nicky searched high and low for the spare plugs.  Somehow, they’ve not made it onto the spares inventory which, given that they were delivered to us at Phil and Lesley’s home last June, means that they could be almost anywhere on the boat.  Oh, we are so looking forward to pulling BV pieces some more to find them!

Night-time view across the anchorage

We had a peaceful evening at anchor, enjoying the airflow through the boat, despite the very settled conditions.  However, at 0230hrs I was woken by some splashing and talking, and found that 4 locals had paddled out on a bamboo raft and that one of them was trying to climb up onto the back of BV.  Happily, shouting at them and waving a bright torch (flashlight) scared them off.  I tried taking some pictures but, unsurprisingly, nothing came out, though the flash helped to discourage them from returning.  They then paddled across to the other yacht in the anchorage.  Shining the flashlight at them again dissuaded them from going too close, though there were protests of innocence “What’s up, mon?”  We spent the rest of the night holding an anti-burglary anchor watch (which allowed me to sort out some photos for the blog) and moved back into the marina when it was light.  Spend to save!

Looking for hardware stores in Port Antonio

Street vendor

With BV back in the marina we continued our exploration of Port Antonio, primarily its shopping opportunities.  We visited various hardware stores and bought a length of copper pipe to fit in place of the priming pump in the generator fuel supply run.  In the process of finding hardware stores we checked out most of the town’s ‘super’markets, revisited the market and noted the local street vendors.

The patty cabin at the bus station

Most of the school population of Port Antonio seems
to frequent the bus station’s patty shack

Importantly, we also investigated some of the street food – in this instance the bus station’s patty-shack.  We found the patties here to be excellent and went back several times during our stay in Port Antonio for a quick and easy lunch.

In the evening we invited Karl and Conner from Contigo and Jared from Snoepje (single-handing in a Pacific Seacraft 24) for drinks on board BV.  They were fun company and we talked long and late, in and amongst some of which lots of good information was shared around.

Saying goodbye to Karl and Conner

Sadly, that night was Karl and Conner’s last at Port Antonio so first thing in the morning of Thursday 23 January we waved goodbye to them as they set off for Grand Cayman.  Then we headed ashore to explore transport options for a trip into the Blue Mountains at the weekend.

The park in the marina grounds was very lively with a schools outing

We visited the taxi stand, the local route bus station and the larger coach station to size up all of the options available to us.  It looked as if we would need to take a route bus or a coach to Kingston and then either a taxi or a series of buses from there up into the hills.  After that we expected to walk from the end of the road to the accommodation at Whitfield Hall, from where we would hike to Blue Mountain Peak.

The Errol Flynn marina main building

Returning to the marina we saw that Karl and Conner had returned; they had found a crack developing in their pushpit/davits and so turned back just an hour into their passage towards Grand Cayman.  Happily, the next day a local welder was able to help them to ameliorate the problem until they can have it fixed properly by a specialist marine stainless-steel welder, probably in Grand Cayman.  In the meantime, we discussed our plan for the Blue Mountains with them and Jared and they all said that they’d be interested in joining us.  Cue a bit more detailed planning – but at least the costs suddenly looked a lot more reasonable!  We spent the remainder of the day in a flurry of planning and bookings – car hire (with 5 people a car was more cost effective than buses and it would give us the flexibility to visit a coffee plantation too), accommodation, food and a guide, and a visit to the aforementioned coffee plantation.  It was shaping up to be a good weekend.

(Left) a carpenters’ shop we visited on Titchfield Peninsula.  (Right) Colourful local bar we spotted on the way to picking up the hire car

Friday 24 January dawned overcast but the weather forecast was looking favourable for our dawn hike on Sunday.  We did some baking so that we would have snacks for the hill (flapjack) and something to eat with our coffee at our unfeasibly early wake-up call on Sunday morning (ginger cake).  Neither was a triumph!  I forgot to add the oil to the cake mix so Suzanne’s ginger cake was less cake-like and instead rather rubbery and chewy.  Meanwhile the BBC Good Food testers let us down with their flapjack recipes which turned out more like granola than flapjack.  So, to relax, we took a stroll around the Titchfield Peninsula, the high ground to the north of the marina.

An information board outside the marina informed us that “the Titchfield Hill Peninsula was first settled in the 1720s and was named after the English estate of the Duke of Portland, who was Governor of Jamaica at the time of the formation of the parish of Portland.  The peninsula contains Fort George, the old Military Barracks and a number of houses reflecting various historic styles of architecture from England and America.  Many of the houses were built in the late 1800s as residences for merchants when the banana trade made Portland prosperous.  Captain Lorenzo Baker, one of the pioneers of the banana trade, encouraged Americans to visit the island, travelling on his ships, and the merchant houses on the peninsula housed the few tourists who visited.  As the trips to Jamaica became more popular, Baker built the Titchfield Hotel, giving Portland the distinction of being the birthplace of tourism in Jamaica.  The peninsula remains residential though some of the houses have become guest houses.”

Tourism done for the day, at 1700 we headed across to the hire car company, finished off the paperwork and picked up the car in preparation for a prompt start the next day.  And to ensure that we were all happy with the weekend’s plan of campaign we had a quick team briefing in BV’s cockpit over a couple of beers before final packing and good night’s sleep.

Port Antonio, Jamaica