02 January 2007 16:27
in one sense you could say that our objective was to see if negril was worth the hype. negril gets a lot of hype for a strip of sand bordering a very large swamp. none of the four of us were particularly interested in coming across as tourists. we were well resigned to the fact that four white people in negril equals four tourists in negril; but by coming pre-tourist season, staying at a low-key resort, and claiming to be jamaican we were able to rationalize to our consciences that we weren't really tourists, merely locals on a weekend fling. (flimsyness of those arguments aside, it was a lot of fun to answer the question "where are you from" with a confused expression and "Kingston" in a well-duh-you-should-know-that tone of voice. after being asked twelve or thirteen times one gets tired of giving a straight answer).there actually were some bonafide tourists there (it was very weird seeing so many whities in jamaica), but there were also a good number of vacationing jamaicans. and the locals seemed to accept us living in kingston and mandeville as a matter of course--they were more interested in selling us stuff than finding out where we were from anyway. regardless, we weren't staying at a big name all-inclusive resort. while i can certaintly see and understand the atractiveness of the all-inclusive concept, i am offended by anyone who claims to have visited jamaica when they really only stayed at an all-inclusive. i know i'm splitting hairs on my semantics here, but "seeing the real jamaica" and "staying at an all-inclusive resort" are two mutually exclusive concepts. to be fair, most of my conversations on the subject stateside go like this:
friend: this is brendan, he lives in jamaica. (apparently this is the most noteworthy thing about me).at any rate, our place of lodging was Roots Bamboo (if it helps you visualize, their advertising includes the slogan "The LOWEST PRICES in NEGRIL!"). as third-world lodging goes it was absolutely first-class. as lodging where i was paying $20US/night for half a room goes, it ranked right up there as one of the most overpriced places i've ever slept in. thank you, supply and demand. but hey; it was a 20 second walk from the beach, there were screens on the windows, the ceiling fan worked, and the beds were wildlife free. ah yes, i meant that the ceiling fan worked after the power came back on.
new person: oh really?! i've been to jamaica--we had a great time.
me: oh really?! [3] where at in jamaica?
new person: oh it was negril/mobay/ochi. we went there on a cruise/for our honeymoon.
me: oh okay, so you spent most of your time at a resort then?
new person: yeah, we didn't actually leave the resort much. one time we rented scooters and drove around for half a day but that was about it. i'd love to go back sometime though and see more.
(then a slight pause in the conversation is my friend's cue to launch into:)
friend: well, you'll never believe what brendan does there... (apparently this is the second most noteworthy thing about me).
fortunately, it did come back on eventually (a couple hours after we'd arrived). i am simultaneously impressed and depressed at how much i'm at lose ends to occupy myself when the power's out. i need to work on that. after a survey of our rooms (a thirty second task), we took a tour of the facility (a sixty second task)--eventually finding the restrooms/showers (communal. how's that for $40 a room?). we bought a late supper at a jerk stand across the road and brought it back to the bar/dining area at roots bamboo. the evening progressed by candlelight with chicken, cards, and conversation. at one point we walked out to the water and looked up and down the beach. a few of the upscale resorts had generators so there were splotches of lights here and there where everything appeared normal. there was some talk of a night swim, which i motioned to table until the next evening when we'd had a chance to see what lurked in the water. i won't deny that spending a lot of time in north river back home has made me somewhat paranoid since rusted tin cans and lengths of barbed wire weren't exactly all that likely along long bay, negril--but on the other hand jamaica's waters have their fair share of sea urchins that i'd rather not step on.
===
the idea was to get up fairly early and hit the beach before there were many tourists out. after getting in the water it was a relatively simple affair to deduce why there was nobody else in it. although i'm sure the early hour was a factor, i do believe that the number of people in the water is directly proportional to water temperature. since part of our mission in visiting negril was to see if it was all that, i will take a moment to analyze the beach. it wasn't all that. okay, so that's the rather biased opinion of a self-professed beach hater. sure it's seven miles of white sand beach with palm trees and all that rot, but all that seven miles of sand means differently than one mile of sand is that it's got seven times as much sand!
alright, i told myself before this little trip to negril that i wasn't to be negative about it. and i wasn't. i really truly had a good time. but i still just shake my head in unfathomable wonder at the people who shell out however many thousands of dollars to fly to jamaica to spend a week on the beach. this beach didn't even have any waves. it's on the west end of the island and there is absolutely zero wave action. it's like swimming in a swimming pool, except it's salty. which for me, i'm afraid, means there's nothing to do. sure, i can swim around for ten minutes, but then i'm done. if there's good waves, then i can play in those for thirty minutes to an hour then i'm done. i'm afraid its just not my cup of tea. so while i had a good time, i also found it nigh impossible to avoid sarcastic comments regarding negrils supposed good qualities while we were there, just as i am now finding it nigh on impossible to avoid similar sarcastic comments now in writing about it. i will do my best, but no promises.
after spending thirty seconds in the caribbean sea first thing in the morning (the sun hadn't even risen yet), i became convinced that it was either keep moving or sink. after Drew and i had thrown a frisbee around in the water of twenty minutes or so, i was quite surprised to realize that the water was still too cold to really enjoy. about this time the sun finally made it above the horizon and we gravitated towards patches of water that weren't in the shadows of the mango trees. one of the things that i actually like to do on beaches is run, so after a while i tore off up the beach. that lasted for all of eight minutes until the fact caught up to me that being barefoot means all shock is transmitted directly to my bones--sand or no sand. the twenty minutes it took me to walk back helped me realize something very useful. one way to avoid being hustled in negril is to run instead of walk. (the other, more sure way to avoid being hustled in negril is to never visit negril in the first place. but there i go again, making sarcastic comments when really i did enjoy myself ;) ).
at that time of the morning (it was around 0730) there really weren't all that many people out. there were some people in the water, but most of them were actually either locals or vacationing jamaicans. the only foreign tourists out at that time were the ones interested in early morning excercise in the form of a jog or walk along the beach. it was still quite cool and pleasant since most of the beach is shaded from the east side. as mid-morning came on we all decided it was high time to find something to eat. after getting directions at the front desk we headed back down to negril proper to find a grocery store (it's a strip town, really, how hard can it be?). now burdened with 10L of drinking water and an assortment of food that probably wasn't very healthy, we made our way back to roots. during the course of the weekend we actually did a shameful amount of driving around, but since we were playing at tourists, it was okay. i say that because it wasn't very long before we were back on the road again to see what there was to see in negril west end.
(our pad [the little orange roofs])
16:27 email me permalink / commentary (0)
