JAMAICA, MON

So my work (yes, WORK) took me to Kingston, Jamaica for five days the week before last. Not bad, eh?

I had organised a meeting in conjunction with a local organisation, and we had delegates flying in from all across the globe to attend. The meeting was to take place on Wednesday and Thursday, however the limited flight connections available meant that most of us had arrived by Monday evening. That left the whole of Tuesday (and at the other end, half of Friday) free to devote to touristing. Hurrah!

First stop on the tourist trail was the Bob Marley Museum. It's housed within Marley's Kingston home, part of which is a fully equipped recording studio that is still used by his sons when they're in town. Accompanied by a guide, we were paraded through each of the rooms in turn - most of which were empty spaces with walls covered with either albums, gold records, artwork, or newspaper cuttings. There were  two rooms ostensibly left the way they would have been when Marley lived there - the kitchen and the bedroom.

I don't know why, but the whole tour made me feel uncomfortable. It seemed really creepy to be poking around Bob Marley's house, peering at his favourite jacket (now framed and hanging on the wall), standing in the room in which he was shot (not fatally, obviously), and poking our faces into his bedroom (whilst being kept behind a barrier rope).

Maybe my discomfort was because he died so recently - within my lifetime, anyway - so it didn't seem 'historical' enough to justify traipsing around his place like you would a 19th century Australian homestead. His blender was still set up on the kitchen bench, which is an image not sufficiently divorced from my everyday life experience to make poking around feel educational rather than voyeuristic.

Anyway, I wasn't a huge fan of the museum, but in a separate building out the back they'd set up a gallery of photographs and placed some of his guitars on display. That section was cool.

After the Bob Marley museum we went to Jamaica's National Art Gallery for a personalised tour of a retrospective of a significant Jamaican artist. So significant I can't remember his name. (Just googled him - it's Barrington Watson) I didn't like most of his work, but apparently it's very well-regarded and important. Meh.

I was much more excited about our next destination, which was a beautiful colonial property in the hills a short drive from downtown Kingston. Forget the slums where Marley grew up, this was how the other half lived. Fan-cy. The organisation we'd come to meet had arranged a great big party to welcome us to Jamaica. People, wine, food, musicians...it was delightful.

The "Giddy House"

The next two days were taken up with meetings, but after finishing a little earlier than expected on Thursday, we decided to travel out of Kingston and visit Port Royal. It was apparently once known as the most wicked place in all of Christendom, and used to be crammed full of pirates and scoundrels. In an act that was surely ascribed to divine retribution, a major earthquake in 1692 caused more than half the town to sink beneath the Caribbean Sea. Two hundred years later, another earthquake struck, this time leaving a number of buildings at Fort Charles half-swallowed by the earth. The most famous of these is Giddy House, a former artillery store so called because locals say it makes you dizzy to walk along the slanted floors.

We ended the day lounging by the sea with drinks and a not-so-atmospheric backing track of disco music blasting from a nearby cocktail bar.

The rock that looks like a...

I had made plans to stay one day longer than everyone else, and was delighted to be invited by a Jamaican family to join them on a road trip to Ocho Rios on the northern coast of Jamaica. We spent most of the day at the marvellous Dunn's River Falls just outside Ocho Rios. The waterfall cascades straight onto a beach, and the effect was stunning. We avoided the hand-holding, guided climbs up the falls and mapped our own route. I have no idea how long it took us to climb to the top; we were constantly stopping to luxuriate in the calm pools of water on the way up, or draping ourselves onto a rock with the water gushing around us. It was the most fun I've had in ages.

I left Jamaica the next day with a thumping hangover, fond memories, and a mild sense of trepidation about the next stage of my journey. I was returning to London via Miami, so planned to stop off for a few nights and had arranged to collect a hire car from the airport. Which meant I was about to have my first experience driving on the WRONG side of the road. Could I do it? There was nobody else with me to take over if I got scared, so I didn't have much choice. Eeek!!