Jamaica - Boston Bay/Port Antonio (3/4)

The drive on the north coast was blissfully easy compared to all the roads to the south with the exception of a stretch just outside of Port Antonio where they decided that they could build the road at the same time as have traffic on it. Besides that interruption, we made it to our third accommodation in good time: Great Huts. This was the place we were most excited about and it was special indeed.

We parked and entered through a gate into a tropical theme park. There were tropical flowers, wooden huts with a lot of bamboo in the construction and many pieces of African art. We were greeted with "welcome juice" which was on that day a wonderful mix of ginger and tropical fruit juices and taken to our treehouse.

This is one of the buildings at "Great Huts" though not the one we stayed in. I thought this the most impressive though. 

Our room was called the Almond Treehouse and it was a bamboo structure incorporating an almond tree in the middle. The ground was just natural rock and tree roots. On this ground floor was a bed, shower (with hot water) and toilet with some small degree of privacy afforded to the toilet with garish curtains but none around the shower making this the second place with some awkwardness in sending one person out of the room so the other could use the facilities. But this time there was a second room up some way-too-steep stairs (more like a ladder) with a bed and some more space which we used as a shared area (for the evening game of cards).

Elsewhere on the site, which I guess could be termed an eco resort or maybe a mad man's vision of an African jungle village, there were more huts, a boardwalk along the cliff and a private beach down some steps. There was also a central building for the kitchen, reception, lounge area, dining room and bar. 

In the dining room, there was a lot of African art and indeed a large giraffe with its long neck and head disappearing into a raised bit of the ceiling.

We ended up eating here every night and of course for breakfast (which was included in the room price). On our first morning, we had the Jamaican breakfast which was fine but more akin to an evening meal for us so we moved onto the "American" breakfast for subsequent days which was toast and tropical fruit and also eggs (for me). There was also always juice which we loved so much with every meal (though I switched to cocktails for two nights). With the evening food, we asked for their off-menu garlic bread too, freshly made and divine. All the meals were very tasty and full of fresh ingredients. We loved it there and were super-spoilt.

One thing that helped spoil us also was that we ate with the designer-owner each night. Dr Paul was eager to introduce himself to all the guests but somehow he latched in particular onto us and it was great to have a third party to share the conversation or indeed carry the brunt of it as we got quite tired in the evenings. This mad visionary that put together this bizarre holiday place is a doctor specialising in geriatric medicine hailing from Brooklyn originally but now in Baltimore. I may look him up in a few weeks when he is back in Maryland. He brought us up to speed with the history of Jamaica and the Ethiopian background to Rastafarianism.

Our first night there was poor due to it being a Friday night again- party night. It seemed like a rave was going on at the public beach so I didn't sleep until 3am. I still got up for the sunrise though which I did each morning we were there as this was the only east-facing place we stayed at. All the other nights was blissful as I was lulled to sleep with a combination of frog-song and the sound of the waves.

The boardwalk at Great Huts as the sun was rising around 6am.

Our first day was a chill day, spent just at the Great Huts private beach. We didn't go far for lunch, just popping outside the resort to the "jerk center" where Tyrone fed us with divine fruit juices and someone else specifically cooked a vegan dish that was not on their menu whilst I had jerk chicken. 

The private beach had plenty of shade which was appreciated by us... and Paula who arrived from the UK at 11pm one night with her partner and a toddler called Leo who then couldn't sleep and she was left trying to entertain him in a dark jungle she had never seen in the daylight. I ran into her when I was out at dawn- she was pleading for water. We saw her then at breakfast down a pina colada and then go for this nap on the beach.

The second day, we travelled to Reach Falls where we were compelled to have a guide though I am not sure one was needed. Hustling happened a fair amount in Jamaica and we never really knew how to deal with it. Mostly it was people on the road outside of official places that tried to detour us to their local spots or back entrances but in this case he wore an official lifeguard t-shirt and we assumed his guidance was required. He took us wading across the plunge pool and up a dirt track by the side of the falls there and then across the top to a staircase. I am somewhat grateful as I am not sure I would have been happy with the depths we waded through without him incentivising me on.

The Reach Falls were beautiful- of course! Everywhere was beautiful. The water flow in this area wasn't very high but they were flowing a decent amount and being able to photograph them at some different and unique angles due to this wading expedition was fantastic. 

Our third day in this area was the most expensive day of the holiday. We first of all stopped off at a roadside shack that sold pieces of carved wood. I was initially attracted by rather elegant egret statues (which I later found also in the art collection at Great Huts in the reception area) but my eyes were swiftly grabbed by the mahogany wood carvings. Charlie Brown was the proprietor and artist and upon hearing that we were staying at Great Huts effused about the place and said that he had carved some doors there.

Charlie being rather happy to have made two decent sales out of us that day. In general, everything was priced to inflation-ridden US dollars. They knew the value of their goods to American sensibilities whether ticket prices or souvenirs. I am fairly certain that places like the fruit vendors and minimarts adjusted their prices for tourists too. It was a pretty expensive trip. But I really got the sense that they needed this- there wasn't much tourism outside of Ocho Rios and I was happy to support the economy. But saying that, I wasn't too proud not to accept the "friend of Dr Paul' discount when it was offered.

This is the Fig Treehouse at Great Huts and I think this is a door Charlie carved.

We also went rafting up the river. We read that people tended to go to the up-river location and take a raft down to "Rafter's Rest" at the end and they paid someone to drive their car there. But we were uneasy about that and decided to go to Rafter's Rest and get a taxi up to the start instead. But when we arrived at Rafter's Rest, we were waylaid, in that way we often were on approaching tourist spots. The person that flagged us down told us that it was prettiest there at the end and he'd take us up river a bit and then down rather than do the full journey and it would take about an hour and a half. For some reason, we let him change our plans and suddenly he was in the back seat directing us to a place to leave our car. I am not sure why we both were okay with this except that he just seemed incredibly friendly and nice. And part of us did wonder if he was official as he wore a t-shirt that seemed to indicate he was part of an organisation, matching those of other people hustling for business. Added onto this the lack of anything that looked like a ticket kiosk or official building and the lack of any taxis and we just shrugged and thought that this was as good as any other offer and went along with it.

The guy introduced himself as Captain Trevor though we just called him Captain 57 as that was the number on his t-shirt. He didn't ask us for money which worried us a little and he told us to wait on the bridge until he came by with his raft. This was peculiar and we did check in with each other that we were okay with this. We were. (Later I found mention of Captain Trevor in Amy's Lonely Planet guidebook and it is realistically the same Trevor as he did say that he had been doing it for decades. I think we did actually do this in the manner it was meant to be done - it just is a rather casual and unofficial looking operation despite being regulated by the government).

Captain 57 came by with his raft and we got on and he was friendly and chatting but most animated when discussing how much he needed a tip because he only got to take tourists up the river once every 20 days as there were hundreds of raftsmen and they took it in turns. Thing is, we believed him. There were clearly other people hoping for clients and clearly not enough tourists in the area for them all to get business that day. Jamaica is hugely dependent on tourism and it's hard to see how people could survive on it outside of the areas where the cruise ships and resorts existed (Ocho Rios and Montego Bay).

We had a nice time. The rafting was peaceful and of course we didn't have to do anything but sit back. We admired the flowers and Captain 57 went ashore to grab us some exotic kind that we hadn't seen before. It was only half the length it should have been and most was time wasted on struggling upstream only to do this portion again heading back... but after the short amount of time, my back really hurt from the lack of movement and the sun was getting to Amy. So it was fortunate that we took the short option.

He called this a duck flower. Looking online, it's big in the detox-wellness world. 

We went to an ATM to get more money out and tipped him generously. The Captain seemed happy and we were relieved to have navigated that right. 

We capped our outing for the day at a roadside shack called Aya Naturals which advertised itself as serving vegan food. I later learnt from Dr Paul that the owner's name was Eileen. Eileen whipped us up some tasty tofu-curry and cucumber juice. We chatted with her for a while- it really is the done thing to talk to everyone and make friends. She used to do fashion design and put on shows at Great Huts but since the pandemic opened up her kitchen as the tourism in the area dried up. Eileen told us to berate Dr Paul for not coming by to see her (which I later did). Dr Paul confirmed our suspicion that Great Huts had seen better days (Amy noted privately that there was a sense of decay about the place) and had been struggling to recover from the lack of business during the travel restrictions. 

After four nights at Great Huts, we left for the north coast. On the way, we stocked up with food at Port Antonio as our final place would again be self-catering.

There was a good fruit and veg selection at Port Antonio. We bought a lot including some fruits we had never had before such as custard apple, june plums and star apple (my favourite). This was on top of the standard purchase of papaya and pineapple.