Marley

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A few days ago in Discovery Bay we made a discovery of our own—one of our big 8D house batteries was dead. We had thrown in these cheap West Marine batteries the day we left the marina in this new to us boat, so I was happy enough getting a couple of years out of them. I do wish they hadn’t crapped out on us in Jamaica, however. Instead of maybe replacing them with some good batteries this time, we ended up driving to Kingston and picking up two even cheaper 8D batteries. I’m not expecting much at all from these, but they should be able to handle their job for a few months anyway.

The drive to Kingston through the Blue Mountains was way more harrowing than expected. To start with, torrential rain just battered us the whole way. Add in already terrible, and incredibly narrow roads. Throw in a crappy rental with bad tires, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for a stressed out wife.

Blue Mountains Road

But hey, a little Bob Marley will take the stress away.

Bob Marley Museum

The tour of Marley’s house was one of the best tours ever. The girl giving the tour was belting out songs the whole time and clearly knew everything there was to know about the man. Best of all was standing right in the studio where so much good music was made and so many good times were had.

Want to embarrass an eight-year-old boy? Sing and dance with him in public.

Marley and Friends

Want to embarrass him some more? We continued our Jamaican education with a stroll through Emancipation Park to learn a bit about slavery’s history here.

Emancipation Park

It was a quick visit to Kingston and then back to the boat.

Fruit Stand

Ahh, the Roselle Falls, cascading down on soapy heads along the side of the road.

Roselle Falls

We took the coast road home figuring it wouldn’t be as harrowing as the mountains. Turns out it was every bit as bad. The road was so bad—filled with potholes that would bottom out the car, overgrown so badly it would only be one lane wide at times—that the kids, while wearing their Fitbits, reached their steps goal for the day not once, but twice, just by bouncing and sliding around in the backseat.

traffic jamOn the RocksCaribbean

Stumbled across this cool little bar restaurant with a beautiful property above what looked to be an absolutely perfect, and empty, surf break.

Longboard BreakLongboard BarThe bar's stash

Believe me when I say that this building seemed completely out of place in this village along the coast. Nobody can spend money on massive buildings like religion can.

Convent

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14 Comments on “Marley”

  1. I was in Puntas Arenas, Chile, two days before deploying to Palmer Station. Walking around town, not too upper class, shanties here and there, but you could count on opulent, over the top, Catholic Churches every couple blocks.

    1. Yes, we see it all over the world. In Jamaica driving down the dirt/mud roads the old ladies heading off for church in their whitest whites and fancy hats. We have no idea how they keep them so clean.

    1. Hi Maureen, no we didn’t make it to Negril (a very small resort town, an hour from Montego Bay). Sounds like it would have been a good day trip. Have you been?

  2. Love the little fruit shack. Any idea what the fruit peelings in the lower left hand corner were? All I could see was monkey faces!

    1. I think it’s Ackee, technically a fruit but used like a vegetable. It can make you sick if not ripe or cleaned/cooked correctly, but that’s not too hard to do.

  3. A few years ago, I brought my granddaughter and grandson – 12 & 8 at the time – to one of my favorite museums in the the world, Musee D’Orsay in Paris. Bc I’d been several times before, I just led them right in, never giving a thought to the many life sized nudes that are the first thing you see there. They were both flabbergasted that such things were on public display and didn’t know where to look.

    It wasn’t the first museum either had been in. But here in the States, they’d mostly just visited natural history museums to see dinosaurs. In Europe, though, I saw young visiting school groups in almost every museum I went to. From my own upbringing, both my daughters and both grandkids, it seems to me that schools in the US – both public and private – could be doing a lot more of this.

    1. Yes indeed. With all the museums O. and L. have gone through – both tiny island ones and huge NYC and Mexico City ones, they just soak it up. Best education (imho, of course). Would love to get them over to Europe.

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