This is our last morning on vacation. The house is quiet and all I hear are the waves crashing on the beach close by. It has been such a amazing trip! Here are a few images & people who helped us on this adventure. :)
This is Keith, he has been our driver for 4 of the days here and we rode in his air conditioned (thankfully) van around. He was a very nice man...but would I recommend him to someone else to use? Ummm, probably not. He was a bit scary with his driving a few times. The driving and roads here are ridiculously scary, we had thought about possibly driving on our own and am so thankful we went with someone driving us.
This is Mavis, she is as sweet as she looks in this picture. :) She has been our cook and housekeeper while at the cottage. There are not any restaurants or really anything within walking distance, so she took us shopping at the little market here and has prepared all our food...which has been 2 of our favorite meals while on the island. The others, well...you'll have to keep reading to see the few meals we didn't care for. :)The picture above is me writing down the recipe for the 2 dishes we liked.
This is her buying our fruit and veggies out of the trunk of a car that just randomly pulled up in front of our house. He had a scale for weighing on top of his car and everything. :) Random.
This is Ackee. It is the national fruit, it is prepared with a fish and eaten for breakfast. The black part is a seed that is removed and if the fruit is closed like the one at the top of picture is is poisonous and will kill you if you eat the fruit, it has to be opened naturally (not pried open) like the 2nd whole fruit and then it is perfectly fine to eat. She asked if we wanted to try and we said, "sure, why not". :)
Here it is prepared for our breakfast yesterday. We should have just stuck with eggs...it was not to our liking. The texture is something between a scrambled egg and very ripe avocado...not good. Mark ate a bunch even though he didn't like it because he didn't want Mavis to know we didn't like it, we didn't want to hurt her feelings. He took one for the team. :)
This dish was for dinner. Again we went out on a limb and said we would try a local dish that is served in all traditional Jamaican restaurants. Curried goat...yep, goat! She spent all afternoon preparing the meat, I happened to walk in while she was cutting up the goat in the sink and if you know me at all I am pretty picky with the meat I eat. It was nasty.
The dish was bright green with a yellow residue on the side...scary but I was committed to give it a try. Mark was first and he said it was "gamey" tasting. I then was 2nd to try and I put the bite in took one chew and it came right back out again. It was not good...Israel and Kati didn't even give it a try if I wasn't willing to eat it. :)
So again, we didn't want to hurt Mavis' feelings by not eating the food, so we bagged up the food and threw it away at a trash near the market so she wouldn't know. :) Her other meals were so amazing, we kept saying how we should have had her prepare one of those again...oh well, now Mark and I can say we have tried goat! :)
This is a almond tree. They are beautiful and all around the island. I had no idea that is how they looked. The inside is fleshy and bright red with a citrus smell, then there is a shell and then the almond is inside the shell.
Some pictures of "critters" that were around. As soon as the sun went down a very loud noise would rise, it sounded like a squeeky swing set. It was so loud, I slept with the pillow over my head the first night. The little frog in the picture above is the reason....well, maybe him and like 100 more. It was incredible that such a small creature could make such a big noise.
We all had fears on this trip. Israel's were bats, Mark was the dark of the cave, mine is being in the water where I can't see (and ok, maybe cliff jumping also :). But Kati made me laugh so much because her biggest fear was the sand crabs! They were cute little guys, the same color as the sand, the picture above you can just barely make out his black eyes, if you make the picture larger you can see it. She would be afraid of them crawling on her...but they would scuttle away as soon as there was a movement.
And a snail from the cliffs. We went snorkeling (except Kati, she would get sea sick every time we went) in a area on the other side of the jetty yesterday. It was so incredible. There were conch shells all over, I picked one up and under were two wirey starfish. We saw all kinds of sea urchins/puffy & spiney things. Schools of little & medium sized fish. Some bright blue and yellow, manta rays and the highlight for me was a set of around 8 little squid. The just sat there looking at us in a row and then swam off. :)All great things must come to a end.
It was such a great trip.
I am not excited about leaving but I am excited about seeing the kids...I miss them!
Jamaica, you will be missed!
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