Iced coconut water on the street

We left Port Antonio Saturday morning after a 5 day stay. This was our first visit to Jamaica, and was quite different from the more tourist saturated areas of the Eastern Caribbean.
The Errol Flynn Marina was nice and checking in was easy– very friendly people. The health, customs and immigration officials were super professional and as opposed to many other places it was free to clear in and have a cruising permit issued. I can’t count how many times we were welcomed to the Island and wished a good stay.
The 6 -7 boats at the docks were pretty much all European, long term cruisers except the 130’ Dutch superyacht waiting for charter guests. We spend time with some Dutch folks and did an inland tour with Andrea and Andres from Germany to the Blue Mountains. They have been going at it for 15 years non stop and been just about everywhere in the world.
As soon as you step out of the Marina Gates, it is a different world. ‘Downtown’ Port Antonio is right there with wall to wall people. Loud music, 3 legged dogs, cars with speakers making political announcements, total gridlock traffic of trucks, taxis, scooters and bicycles.
A big outdoor market dominate the town – this is where it seems like most people are doing their shopping for everything from produce to pot, not that you can’t get pot from helpful, smiling dudes right at the Marina Gate ( as well as coffee, sandals, lemongrass, a tour with my cousin to the waterfalls or an opportunity to donate the shirt your are wearing!) Everyone seems to be smiling and friendly, but it is pretty poor and there is constantly a feeling of having to be on your toes to avoid being hustled. The smells are a mix of ganja, jerk chicken, smoking garbage and sweaty body parts.
Everything you do takes patience. We did a ‘supermarket run’ for some beer - the local one is Red Stripe – and that took about 45 minutes for the checkout. We stood in line at the ATM for local currency for 30 minutes, only to have the machine eat my bank card! So, add another hour go get someone inside the bank to call security and dispatch a couple of dudes to extract the card.
Fortunately, fellow cruisers recommended George – a cop at the local station – as a free lance tour guide on his days off. So, one day we piled into the Toyota Corolla with the bald tires together with the German Couple for a Mountain tour.
The Blue Mountains are beautiful and home to some of the best coffee in the world. We could have gone on an organized tour to a brand name coffee maker, but instead George introduced us the Rasta the coffee man where we got a tour of his plot. Quite primitive, but a walk around the area and seeing how 3 or maybe 4 generations of farmers live with their coffee and plants was fun. Rasta only sells out the back door and seems to make it work. We also got to do a little hike to the top of the Blue Mountain Ridge with a view to Kingston in the South and the Caribbean Sea to the west.
On leaving we slid down the N side of the Island for a 100 NM sail to Montego Bay. Stopover was Discovery Bay, first stop of Columbus in Jamaica. We arrived in Montego Bay Sunday PM.