Thursday, 15 March 2007

Last two clips before we leave for St Kitts....

View from a lookout in Fort Charles


Yummy Goat on the side of the road heading down from Strawberry hill


Jamon, We're at the airport now, and are boarding in about 15mins...
See you in St Kitts!!!!

Irie!

Pictures of Port Royal and Fort Charles


Beautiful 3rd world Kingston beach

Fort Charles, all the land between me and the fort used to be underwater before the 1692 quake.

Giddy House, named by the local because it makes you giddy! The house used to store all the shells for the cannons that were installed in 1888 and was tipped at an angle in the 1907 quake

The view from inside to outside

The entrance to Victoria Battery. This also sank in the 1907 quake, the cannon it housed weight 22 tonnes and had a range of 3 miles

A side gate into Fort Charles

a plaque on the wall, you guessed it, above a bolt in the ground!

A map of Port Royal

A plaque dedicated to Horatio Nelson, it reads: " you who tread in his footsteps remember his glory" no such plaque for the Pirate Morgan!

The view from the Admirals tower where he could watch all sea traffic coming and going from the port. All the land outside the fort used to be underwater.

St Peters Church

a humbling experience

Buffalo, right hand, calling it!


What a fantastic experience!

More images from Kingston...

A peanut guy at the cricket...


This guy wasn't interested in waiting in traffic after the cricket

A ship just wasting away next to the road out to Port Royal
James and Henry Morgan's Goblet at St Peters!
A goat on the side of the road up to Strawberry Hill
View from Strawberry Hill on the Blue Mountain

Wednesday, 14 March 2007

Bye Bye Kingston

Well tomorrow we are winging our way to St Kitts! We will arrive at about 7pm our time and will have the first SA game the next day. We have no idea if the hotel has Internet so we have no idea when next we will be able to post, sorry guys!

Keep an eye out for us on the TV!

PS the concert is going strong again tonight!

To drive or not to drive.... to Port Royal

Today was the day of Port Royal... We had organised to get a rent-a-car to head out to Port Royal for to see PIRATE HISTORY, more importantly - to see where Captain Henry Morgan lived and ruled etc.

We decided to get a taxi to the rent-a-car place since we couldn't find it on the map. This was a good decision since - it was MILES away. If anyone ever is on Knutsford road, and wants to get to Robert Plaza on Redhill - DON'T even think about walking - it would take forever!

Upon getting to the rent-a-car place, it looked like something out of what you would find in the lower end of Woodstock back in Cape Town. The place looked dodgy - so we got our taxi driver to wait for a bit. The lady there was really disorganised and took forever to do anything. Luckily the Inspector from some Governing body was there, who drew us a map to get to Port Royal, and she sort of helped us communicate with the rent-a-car people. When the Owner rocked up, she then went off and spoke to her... so we continued with the signing of the contracts.. The lady (rent-a-car lady) then said that we had to pay an extra 50 US dollars to drop the car at the airport. We threw our toys out, and the owner guy then stepped in cos the Inspector was there, and that was waived - WOHOO. We also got the car for a reduced rate. The car we got was a Mazda Demlio or something. Its not that great, but it does the job!!

So we headed out - with James behind the wheel since he had his drivers license with him, and my ones expired! Traffic was interesting - we have a LOT of video footage of that, so I'll spare the gory details. We also put in $500 in petrol (Jamaican) which was about 8litres!

The road to Port Royal goes passed the airport, and we stopped on the side to look at a ship wreck - just lying there. If this was Cape Town - it would have been salvaged quickly! This ship was just rusting and rotting away.... quite sad to see. The beach it was lying on was filthy - no one interested to do any form of clean up...

James here, just a bit of Indiana Jones style history about the Port and Captain Henry Morgan :)

In the days before Pirates, Port Royal was like any other Port in the Caribbean, not doing so well for itself with the occasional merchant ship coming in and regularly be plundered by Buccaneers of enemy nations. Buccaneers were basically Pirates operating under a blessing from their King and country and ransacked other countries ships and ports.
The then Governor of Port Royal took it upon himself to invite Buccaneers into the port without prejudice from the law under the condition that they help protect the port, this agreement worked well and the town flourished with the added protection of the buccaneers.
Eventually the buccaneers became to numerous and the town was over run with brothels, taverns and generally bad folk, and yep you guessed it the main man was Captain Henry Morgan! At the same time Port Royal was also home to Edward "Black Beard" Teach and at some stage in its history, Lord Horatio Nelson.
Eventually in the 1600's England and Spain signed a treaty and ordered their buccaneers to cease all hostillities. The bucaneers, now jobless, were unimpressed and the lead bucaneer, Henry Morgan, took no heed of the new treaty and in true Pirate fashion raided and flattened the Spanish port of Panama City in one of his most famous conquests, and so were born the new buccaneers, Pirates!
Shortly after Morgans Panama City raid the English arrested him and brought him back to England for trial. Here the story gets sketchy as soon he is back in Port Royal and is made Governor of the Port by the English King!
Henry Morgan died before the 1692 earth quake that sunk Port Royal and is buried in the old city of Port Royal that was swallowed but the waves.
Before he died Henry Morgan donated three of his personal possessions to St Peters Anglican Church in Port Royal, a Silver Tray, Silver Wine Goblet and a Silver Beer Tankard that he plundered from his raid on Panama.
In the years leading up to the earthquake Port Royal became know as "The wickedest city in the new world" and was over run by lawless Pirates who answered to no one!

Back to Richard

Now - more importantly - when we eventually got to Port Royal, we sort of just followed the one road and ended up at Fort Charles, the main defences of the Port which in its heyday bristled with 104 cannons!. This was cool. We parked right there, and joined a tour immediately. We heard all about the Fort, and the history of Port Royal, and about the two earth quakes. The first one in 1692, and then the second one in 1907. Both of these changed Port royal dramatically by reclaiming new land from the sea and sinking half the town into the sea. Also - some of the buildings were either raised or sunk a few feet into the ground. Eg. - Giddy house (buit in 1888 and where they stored the ammo prior to 1907) - was tipped at about a 30degree angle!

James here again, I have edited the next paragraph to be more dramatic :)

After the Official Tour, we got our Tour Guide to give us a rundown of who Henry Morgan was, and what he did while he was the head honcho at Fort Charles, We then enquired about St Peters Church - where Henry Morgans Goblet was used for communions. She told us that the church was closed and only open on Sundays but if we go down the road and look for a lady named Patty who lived next to the Church she might open the church for us. Needless to say, we did, and found patty sitting in her yard. She took us to the Church and opened the door with the biggest key we have ever seen! Inside the church was amazing. There were plaques on the wall for several old sailors that had passed away. We looked for a glass display cabinet that might still hold the possessions of Henry Morgan, but alas we could not see one.
We asked Patty about the goblets etc and we were not prepared for what happened next. She took us to the side Rectory office, opened a cupboard and removed all three items! The tray, goblet and tankard that were pillaged from Panama City by Captain Henry Morgan and used as his personal utensils until donated to the church, were right there in front of us! (insert suitable "holy grail" music here) The man must have been a serious drinker, (well he was a Pirate!) as I have never seen such a massive tankard in mt life! 2Litres easy! Needless to say we had pictures taken and paid our respects to The Captain and Patty before leaving.

Back to Rich :)

When we left the church and drove around for a bit, but there wasn't much else to see. We stopped in at the Morgans Warf Hotel and that seemed nice and had an Appletons VX Jamaican Rum on the rocks. VERY SMOOTH!!!!

Now - one of the reasons we went there was to find Pirate stuff and in particular - a PIRATE FLAG! There were no shops there let alone PIRATE shops! We were directed to go to the Harbour in downtown Kingston to the Craft Market... So off we went!

Now the craft market was basically just into stuff that said Jamaica on it. We bought a bottle opener and some playing cards. This was after walking around the whole thing, and going through almost every stall. I started to get tired of this - since every store sold basically the same stuff! We were there for a little while, then headed off.

Next we took a drive into the Blue Mountains in search of world famous coffee and a look out over Kingston, but you will get that story next time along with the pics of Port Royal and Strawberry hill in the Blue Mountains.

Post Match report

Firstly I have to say - it was a good game - Windies posted a good score and then kept the Pakkies down nicely! The fact that the pakkies were were "resting" some of their players probably didnt help much...

So - after waking up fairly early - around 7:30ish, we left for the game on foot and followed what we thought were the right directions. We got to the game in good time, and found our seats fairly easily. The only problem was - they were in the sun, and weren't getting any shade till at least 4ish - so we were COOKING!!! After re-applying sunscreen - we looked right to see an empty block of seats with some free ones that would be in the shade in the next little while, so we moved - BRILLIANT! Now everything was good.. James tied the SA flag around some fencing... and we got settled!

A guy came round with some sugar cane, and we decided to get a bag. This was a very special experience - not terribly pleasant - cos you have to suck and chew sugar cane to get the juice, then you are left with what feels like a tree in your mouth! YUMMY!!! I will just say - there is no substiture for beer and BILTONG!

We were lucky enough to be seated close-ishly behind some Pakkies who seemed cool and festive, except for the fact that they wanted to do the mexican wave ALL the time. At first the crowd wasnt interested, but then they caught on.. and after the 503rd time - they got tired of it, but the Pakkies insisted on trying again and again and again... - eventually - they lost interest - and we could continue watching the game.

Now behind us were some Windies people - who had other ideas. Aside from having the super cool accent, EVERYTIME the Pakkies tipped the ball, they shouted "RUN RUN MON, COM'ON RUN!!!" even though their was no chance of them being able to make it. Of course - the Pakkies weren't listening to them. Would have been good if they were...

At the game there were 2 potential hat-tricks while the Windies were bowling - they crowd went off at this. The Jamaican people sure know how to cheer!!! This is something everyone should see...

We also chatted to 2 UK guys, the one guy out here staying with his buddy who workd for the British Consulate, so he was staying here for next to nothing. We thought they were normal people until - in true Pommie style - they only put on sunscreen AFTER they had turned pink! James and I just smiled.... THey also left the game before it ended, and missed some awesome overs....

Anyways, when the game had ended, and we were packing up, we stopped at the concession stand to get some RED STRIPE cups (which we wanted to use in our hotel room) - they looked at us funny. I then told them we wanted to keep them as souvenirs... they then giggled and laughed, probably thinking "Those damn tourists!!!" It was cool though - we got our cups!

The walk back to our hotel seemed long. And I kept getting dust and stuff in my eyes which wasnt too pleasant. There were definately a lot more tourists on the "strip"on Knutsford road. We decided to go to Wendys for dinner - was rather good, and I was stuffed! I think I passed out shortly after that. The music from the celebrations DEFINATELY didnt keep me awake. I think if it was back home - I'd probably have been upset as I would have had work today. BUT NO - I'M ON HOLIDAY!!!!! :) WOHOOOOOO
Sabina Park before the start of the Windies / Pakistan game


Windies score a six!!


The winners doing a victory lap!

Tuesday, 13 March 2007

Windies Vs Pakkies

Well my prediction was correct, the Windies won! After all THEY had a good nights sleep, unlike the poor Pakkies who, like us, had to deal with a full volume concert in the park until midnight! It wouldn't surprise me if they lodged a formal complaint to the ICC about the concert, it looks as tho its going to be going all week.
Its blasting away again tonight, celebrating the win!

Its late now I'm going to hit the sack, its been a long hot day at the cricket and we have another busy day tomorrow at the old haunt of Captain Morgan, Port Royal!

Till then.

Sights of Kingston



Our home in Kingston, The Liguanea Club (lig-an-ee) a hybrid of Kelvin Grove and a Hotel
SA wine at the local supermarket

A street vendor selling coconuts and sugarcane

The CWC Head Quarters


Hmmm.... not to sure what to say here!

I wonder what he is smiling about!

Soup anyone?

Im not so sure what to make of these Jamaicans anymore, Cok for life, Cock Soup, and condom ads during the CWC opening Ceremony!!

Opening Ceremony

Watching the ceremony with a few cold Red Stripes
We are not alone!



An on-screen add during the ceremony, look carefully in the bottom left corner....

SLAM CONDOMS!!

The local newspaper the next day

Bob Marley Museum

So as you know we went to the Bob Marley Museum yesterday, we decided to walk there and take in some sights on Kingston instead of zooming past them in a taxi. On our way we stopped in at a few car hire places to enquire about renting a car for our trip to Port Royal tomorrow, we were unsuccessfully as they were either too expensive or had no cars! Incidentally since then we have found a place and will be picking to up tomorrow. We also walked past Devon House which I will write about in a separate post.

The outside of Bobs Museum


We arrived and got in the Q to get tickets for the tour, there were only 2 people ahead of us so we ended up in a small group of four. We also bumped into two South African hanging out with the enemy, Australia! We were told we were not allowed to take any photographic or recording equipment inside to to various trademarked and copyrighted items we would see.

The outside of Marley's house and Recording Studio

We started our tour on the outside and were introduced to Bobs old Land Rover that he purchased "out the box" in 1975.

Bob also had a new '75 BMW there were not many in Jamaica at the time and everyone thought BMW stood for Bob Marley and the Wailers!! The first room we visited was around the back of the house and is called the "Shot Room" this is where Bob Marley had an assassination attempt on his life. Gunmen approached the house from the back through the bush (there was no back neighbour in those days) and opened fire with automatic weapons, Bobs manager wash shot several times in the pelvic area, his wife had a bullet graze her head and it was said that it was her dreads that saved her and caused the bullet to miss! Bob was hit in the elbow and went on to play a live show 2 days later with the bullet still in his arm. I'm sure he smoked enough to cloud the pain! The room still has holes in the walls from the bullets.
After the Shot Room we went into what is now the Awards room that is full of Silver, Gold, Platinum and even Diamond selling record awards! The rest of the tour included his bedroom, kitchen, lobby (with framed clothing, concert tickets, back stage passes and awards) a study, a research library (that is open to the public though appointment) and guest rooms which are now wall to wall in newspaper clippings of Bobs life, one article had photos of a concert in Italy during the 80's with over 100 000 people in attendance! We could not go into Bobs old recording studio because it is now a new recording studio used by his three sons and they are the only ones with keys!
After the house we went out back to what they call The Factory, this is where all his records used to be pressed, they did not say but I'm sure this was before he had Platinum selling albums and was only printing a few hundred! The room is now full of photos documenting his life, his original Gibson electric guitar and his old studio Sound Desk. The tour also included a 20min documentary film of is life highlights. All in all it was very interesting and informative, after the tour we walked around and took Pics.

Bob Marley sitting in his favourite part of the garden under a tree.


James sitting in Bob Marley's favourite part of the garden under the tree.

Richard sitting in Bob Marley's favourite part of the garden under the tree!

James and a statue of Bob Marley, the portrat of the three woman is of his back up singers.

Richard and the statue of Bob Marley

James and a Rasta that was painting murals


How flattering!

or not!!!! (Richard insisted I put this one in!)

Street Art and James

Monday, 12 March 2007

Cricket Tomorrow!

First cricket match tomorrow!!! Windies Vs the Pakkies.
We went to the Bob Marley Museum today which is located in his old recording studio, it was very interesting and we will post some pics and the story soon enough, probably after the cricket.

In the mean time we have to deal with a concert in the park next to out hotel! The flyer said it was starting on Wednesday and continuing on Friday and this coming Sunday, but they were testing the sound rig this past Sunday, and it seems to be in full swing tonight! Line up includes Shaggy and Beanie Man. The oddest thing is that the players hotel is over the road from ours, and we know this cos we went there today to find out if they would have a shuttle to the stadium because it is a much bigger Hotel that this. As soon as we walked into the lobby we found all the cricket players that are based in Kingston for Group D; Zimbabwe, Pakistan and Ireland. So I have a feeling the Pakkies wont be getting much sleep tonight before thier first big game of the tournament! Its 22:33 and the music is still pumping and is actually reverberating in our room!
I have a feeling the Windies are tucked into bed miles away from the concert!

Anyway, you will hear from us again afer the cricket, look out for us on the TV! it starts here at 9:30am so that should be around 1ish for you, i think.

Comments

Hi,
Apparently there was a problem with being able to post comments and you had to be a G-mail user to be able to do this. I have changed the settings so anyone should be able to comment now!

Irie.

Hotel Laundry Service

1 x Pair Socks....US$0.88
1 x Pair Shorts....US$2.65
1 x Pair Trousers....US$3.50
1 x Shirt....US$3.50
1 x Pair underpants....US$1.75

Richard and James' reaction to this.....

Priceless!

Sunday, 11 March 2007

Videos from Ricks Cafe, Negril....

Divers at Ricks Cafe, Negril


Reggae band at Ricks - 1


Reggae at Ricks - 2


Reggae at Ricks - 3

Kingston day two

Firstly in my defence of the overweight bag, I have all the travel books, some of my stuff was damp and richard had most of his stuff taken away by custom officials!

Right....

We are sitting on our beds watching the Opening Ceremony, they have the military band on for the first bit and at the same time we are being attacked by flying Jamaican bugs of various sizes and artillery, the supplied bug coil seems to be rather ineffective!

We got up today and walked to the supermarket, relatively well stocked, meat it really expensive. We don't have self catering unit but we bought some sandwich making stuff. They even had Nederburg 2003 Cabernet Savingion and Two Oceans wine! not a bad price either, +/-R70. We got beer instead, which is going down well while we watch the ceremony. The sound quality is terrible, not our TV but the actual stage sound at the ceremony! Derek you should have been here for some expertise! After experiencing Jamaica there is no way SA can be considered a 3rd world destination!!

The rest of the day we lazed about and decided what to do with our time here in Kingston, we wanted to go to Port Royal tomorrow, the original Pirate hangout and the home port of the main man Captain Henry Morgan!! we have changed our mind because a taxi would be US$50 for a return trip! so we decided to go on Wednesday and try organize a hire car for $80 and include a selfdrive out to the famous Blue Mountains, where the famous Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee is grown, and drive ourselves back to the airport on Thursday, saving another US$20. I presume we will be able to get a car from 9am Wednesday to 9am Thursday and be charged one day.
Tomorrow we want to go the Bob Marley recording studio, which has been made into a museum. we have one day of cricket, on Tuesday, Windies Vs the Pakkies, and that is all we will be getting up to while we are here. Kingston is not a very tourist orientated place.

That's it from me for now,

Irie.

PS drop us a mail if you can, our addresses are in the right hand column!

Comments

Jaman
Please feel free to leave comments on our site, at the bottom of each post is a link "comments" click it and have your two cents worth!

Irie man.