27 July 2004 22:18
Friday 14 Maynow since i kind of missed my flight back in la, kyle had already been two days in jamaica. on one of those he'd gone flying with roland, and now it was my turn. each grid covers a quarter of the island, and that morning we did the sw quarter. so i got a good ariel view of the black river valley and the santa cruz mountains, where we'd be spending the second week. actually, the way it worked out, we spent half a week in kingston, a week at maranatha, then another half week in kingston.
we were there for a whiles. besides the two three hour flights, we spent an hour sitting in the shade under the tail of the plane waiting for the fuel truck to show up. things are a little more relaxed at times there. then we worked on some maintenence til sunset, before finally coming home. this was my first experience driving in ja, i followed roland home as he drove another company car. this was soley to gain me experience, because i was to fly with him in the morning. it was fun, one because his toyota was sportier than my car, two because it was a new driving experience/challenge. i was surprised though, at how nervous i was about the experience beforehand and during. 50% of that fear was due simply to the knowledge that in an instinctive situation i would revert to the wrong side of the road. the rest was a mixture of not being familiar with local laws, and being nervous about getting hijacked or whatever. whatever. in the long run, it was a blast.
as soon as we got home, we changed clothes and headed to dinner, for which we were already late. dinner was with some members of the local church that gdad had recommended roland get to know, esp since their daughter is a commercial pilot. there we had some superb jerked chicken and spent an hour swapping jokes (many of which were humourous, but not really laugh out loud funny to the non-jamaican).
Saturday 15 May
our day started off bright and early at 0400. roland had been advised when he first moved down here not to sit very long at red lights in the middle of kingston at 0430 in the morning. so here i am following roland on rolling stops through redlights, not a car in sight for the majority of our 20 min drive to the airport. halfway there, doing 120k through a 60 zone, i "happen" to notice blue lights behind me. fortunately, roland turned around and came back, looking all spiffy in his pilot's uniform, and htey let us right off. so my one and only expierence with the police force of kingston was a positive one.
that day we had a lot of fun dodging thunderstorms out towards negril. there's very little air traffic (compared to la) and there's not much controlled airspace below 6000, so we were pretty much on our own. the weather was very pretty, but still a hassle to avoid. when we got back from flt #2, roland discovered that he had to make a third flight, so he went on that while i headed home to keep kyle company. he'd been living it up in roland's apartment reading books the whole time on both days.
my drive home was uneventful, and kyle and i headed out for a hike up the road behind roland's apartment. ostensibly, we were hiking up to a water tower on top of the hill, but we never quite made it. we hiked for about 45 minutes along the road, workign up a good sweat and catching up from what all we'd been up to since we were last together in early march. it was lovely to get out of the city and to get some excercise. i'd been sitting in airplanes for the past three days. roland's apartment is literally at the extreme edge of the urbanization of kingston. across the road from him is nothing but jungle and the occasional rural dwelling. it was also nice to meet some people that were friendly (as friendly as a jamaican can get. they generally don't wave to strangers, but will wave back if you wave at them in the country. in the city they just stare). that kind of took the edge off my feeling oppressed by the whole city business.
we got back to the apartment and showered, then lazed around for the rest of the evening. when roland got back we discussed what to do about blue mountain. we had really little clue what we were getting into. rumour had it from a friend of rolands that you needed eight hours and a guide to get to the top. we managed to get ahold of philip over at maranatha, he'd been up it before, but it'd been before sunrise so he couldn't give us directions. but for him he road jeep trail and then it was about a three hour hike. so we were thinking we'd probably have to walk five hours on jeep trail before three on foot trail. we weren't really interested in paying two grand jamaican to hire a guide (over 30 bucks US). kyle and i weren't really sure though, whether hiking for 16 hours would be possible in the first place. it seemed kind of a stretch. in the long run though, we decided to give it a go and see how far we could get.
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