Cruise Day 5 - Jamaica

We docked at Falmouth, Jamaica on the morning of the fifth day.

Never been to Jamaica before, so we decided to do a bit of a meet the locals tour.

Jamaica is impressively lush and green everywhere you look.

We met up with our tour guide and driver and headed out of Falmouth.

On the way to our first stop, we passed by the high school and running field where Usain Bolt got his start:

You'd want to run away fast from that school too!

Then to the first stop, one of the oldest churches in Jamaica:

It's quite a historic, rather small building, that was been subsequently rebuilt after an earthquake in the 1950s. Lots of interesitng monuments inside from the 1800s, where f was used as s when the s was not the final letter of the word.

Once you get outside the port and resorts you get a sense of the poverty level in Jamaica.   To say people in the area are living in shacks is pretty darn typical. Lots of the houses have unfinished portions still to be completed.

Next we went to a Basic school, which is a school for 3-6 year olds.  It was indeed rather basic.  The two-room school building is still under construction and they were looking for funds to add a computer room and such.

Overall even in a poor area, the kids were all clean and well dressed. Multiple ages were there for the lessons in the two rooms.

 

The school while small, was rather neat and organized and the kids were happy being there.

We did make a donation to the school.

We next went to a proper tourist trap - a plantation for lunch, complete with gift shop.

 

 

We got to sample some coconut water, sugar cane, coffee and other products fresh off the trees/bush etc.

We then took some stairs leading up to the eating area for lunch, the stairs offered translation of the island patois.

For lunch, we got to try a variety of Jamaican foods, including Salted Cod and Ackee, jerk chicken, cole slaw, plantain and other stuff.

I had it with a Sorrel-flavored Red Stripe beer, (in this case Sorrell is Hibiscus, not the leafy green plant everyone else calls Sorrel) which tasted like a sweet combination of beer and red pop, which was not bad.  The food was pretty good.

A peacock of the plantation came by during lunch, expecting a handout, and got some.

There are many KFC restaurants along the way, and per our guide KFC really stands for "Keep From Cookin'", as it makes it easy for people to get fod without having to cook it.  She stated her fried chicken was better. 

We then made a very brief stop at Fort Montego.

A brief stop, because there's not much left of this fort. Built in 1750, the stone gun platform is level with the street, and there's a few stone blocks lying here and there, and a couple mounted 12 pounder guns two more cannons sadly lying on the ground rusting away.

 

 

 Not much to look at, and not much has been preserved. If the guns had not been there you would never guessed that it had been a fort.

After that we headed back to the ship and that was our tour of Jamaica. Not a bad tour, but not nearly as much history as I might have liked, but a decent first look around a part of the island.