Part Eleven: Sugar and Spice

We spent our last night in a hotel in Runaway Bay, so named (I hear) because it is where the last of the Spaniards fled from. Alfred the driver came back to show us around a bit so we drove towards the town of Ocho Rios.

We drove past tourist signs for dolphins and waterfalls, past the huge dome of a bauxite mine and the rusty old tanker that waited to take the load to America, past people sitting on doorsteps and children waiting for the school bus.

As you near the town of Ocho Rios you pass two more factories. The first a sewer treatment plant, the next a sugar refinery and as we passed these we saw a huge cruise boat anchored in the bay. On days when the liners are there the town is totally transformed. The passengers come surging in from the sea in a wave of business, and then retreat to the boat leaving the town to the locals.

In Jamaica, as in many developing countries and unlike at home, electric wires hang in heavy nets over the streets like giant spiders webs. I had forgotten how clotted they look. We asked Alfred to take us to a supermarket. You can learn more about a country from the aisles of a store than the corridors of a hotel. The sweets and cereals are usually the best and most colourful things to contrast with home with their silly characters and ludicrous names.

 

We went to have a look at the pale blue Jamaica Inn, a beautiful hotel not dissimilar to Round Hill, and the guests sat at tables playing card games and back gammon. It rained on and off all day, and back in our shared room and when I had kept Auntie up long enough with my reading, I turned out the light for a last sleep in Jamaica.

In the morning Auntie A donned her goggles and swam out in search of fishes in the shallows. I chose instead to stay beached, and watched a little crab skittering back and forth emptying armfuls of sand out of its tunnel. We surrendered our keys and went for a beer in the sunshine.