06 October 2004 15:20
Friday 21 MayK and i finished up some painting that we'd done the day before. if i make it back for a visit, i'll make sure to take some pictures for you. i forget the name of the yellow, but let me assure you, there was no question about it being yellow. the name of the brown was "coffee brown," which, while being descriptive, wasn't entirely accurate. the brown went on the bottom third of the wall and the yellow went on top. we were painting over a 10yo dirty cream and dark brown. i was pleased to see that the new paint brightened the dorms considerably (after all, it was yellow, which had had a somewhat dismal decrepit air. now they have a decidedly bright and decrepit air :). since we're on the subject of colors, take a look at this and see what you think.
we finished with the second coat around ten and hit the road soon after. we were headed for YS Falls in the rover, which was fun to drive (i happen to enjoy driving manuals, especially on the wrong side of curvy mountain roads). on the way there we headed through "bamboo avenue", which was about hte only place to pass on the entire trip. ys falls is a long series of falls, more than just hte three that are in the above picture. however water was at a high stage, which meant deep fast and muddy. it also meant fewer tourists (it was threatening to rain). after we'd been there twenty minutes, it turned out to be a valid threat. while everybody else huddled under the gazebos and pavilions, philip k and i went meandering through the flooded lawn (stopping to enjoy an impromptu water slide across the grass) over to a playground to mess around. we even managed to garner applause for a few of our slides (two inches of standing water going everywhere).
Saturday 22 May
five of us headed up towards the center of the island to visit omar's mother. the cockpit country is up that way, and quite fascinating. here are some pics from the somewhat populated outskirts, pic1, and pic2. it was a varied trip, everything from the outskirts of mandeville, which is fairly large, to little one store towns. we also drove through christiana, which was at a crawl with people in the street everywhere (it was probably market day, though if it wasn't, market day would have been impressive to see). we drove over two hours getting there.. turns out just his sister sally was there. we hung out there for a while (including a rainshower). she was an interesting charachter. if memory serves me right, 17 and already a nursing assistant in mobay (which was two or three hours away). philip and i had fun studying the charachteristics of a local lizard, trying to get him to change colors by switching him from one tshirt to another. green and brown were about the extent of his capabilities, but that was still really cool to watch :).
we eventually piled back in and headed south to gut river. here's the road headed to it. it's a crystal clear spring fed river that's less than a quarter mile long. you can dive off the rocks into water where it first comes out, it's probably 12 feet across and 18 feet long, probably close to 12' deep in spots (i didn't go that far, i was too busy trying to look as if i halfway knew what i was doing on the dive to bother with exploring). there were a bunch of locals there cutting up. after a while we swam out to the ocean (philip swam, k and i attempted to swim...likta kilt me). jamaicans are usually pretty leery about getting rained on, so we had the place pretty much to ourselves (see it was threatening to rain again). it eventually did rain, and it was pretty cool to be out in the ocean with that going on, you could duck under and hear the drops pinging the surface. it was a little annoying because the water would sping back up in your face, but it looked really really cool.
ha. this is cool.. i was looking back through my journal to see what was next, and i happened to read my original account of gut river (which i haven't read since writing it, i wrote the above in the past few minutes entirely from memory), and this is what it said. ...did a dozen dives before swimming to the beach--rather trying. likta drowned me. i love the psychologistics of how our brains work, and how i'll say a very similar thing in two different places without realizing it.
"psychologistics". i have to say i'm proud of htat one :).
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