April 19, 2016 – If you stay in a place for one day or less, you really walk away with such a wrong impression of a place. If you stay behind the walls of a resort and live on the beach, you will never really have an opportunity to know a place or a people.
If you stay on the sidelines, enjoy your luxuries, and never set foot past the boundaries of comfort, literal or perceived, you will only see what a tour company wants you to see.
Sometimes you either need to push to see what you want, or something has to go wrong for you to have an opportunity, like getting lost, we’re really good at getting lost, and it’s truly the best thing that can happen when you are travelling because it means you find things you never expected to see, meet people you never expected to meet, and taste things you never expected to eat.
Although we didn’t get lost today, something did go slightly wrong, and it was the best thing that could have happened!
We had a lazy morning and then decided to hop on the Montego Bay shopping tour. We’d been told it went to the “Hip Strip” and to the Mo Bay craft market. It was an inexpensive outing and we were still looking for some treasure to bring home with us. So we signed up and headed down to the lobby at 1:30pm to meet up with the tour guide and the bus. Another couple, from the UK, hopped on board at the same time, and joined the other six passengers for a small group of ten.
And that’s when it went a little wrong….the bus headed straight for the Shoppes at Rose Hall. When we pulled into the little shopping village Kirk and I grumbled at each other. The UK couple caught our exchange, and said they’d tried to come here yesterday on the free shuttle bus, but it had been full so they’d paid for a taxi, so they were less than impressed too. The four of us expressed our annoyance to our tour guide, Maxine, and explained that none of us likely would have paid for a tour that brought us here for an hour of three hours, when we had access to a free ride any time we wanted. The UK couple were a bit more irritated than we were, given that they’d already paid to come here, and they were a bit more vocal about it, yet they were kind about it, and laid no blame on Maxine. Maxine, to her credit, took it wonderfully and made a call to the booking company to let them know there was some dissatisfaction and the reason for it. Our beef really was just that the information provided said the tour was to downtown Mo-Bay, not the Rose Hall. We just asked that the information sheet be made more clear as we felt that we’d lost time by having already come here, and probably wouldn’t have if we’d known it was a stop on their little shopping tour.
So the four of us, and Maxine, killed the hour by having a nice chat about all sorts of things. And then Maxine collected everyone and we headed into town.
En route Maxine displayed her wealth of knowledge about all things Jamaica. She was a walking, talking, Jamaican encyclopedia! Since we’d already been on a couple of different excursions, we’d heard some of it. Along the highway she leaned forward to the driver and said a few things, and then had him turn off into a residential area. We drove up into the hills and she pointed out the nature of the houses and talked about prices and building practices. When an earlier tour guide had told us that it can take 10-20 years to build a house because of high interest rates, I’d written that mortgage rates were 8.5%….that was a little misleading. Maxine told us that for most people, a loan is in the range of 15-30%, and that’s why the Jamaicans build their houses in fits and starts and take a long time to build their dream homes.
I’d also written about the terrible poverty we’d seen, and that on the trip to Negril we went through areas that I thought were perhaps middle class. I was wrong about that too. The area we were now driving through I had assumed was upper class – the homes were gorgeous, had spectacular views, and were landscaped beautifully, some with mango trees, papaya trees, and huge breadfruit trees. Maxine told us the homes were worth about $150,000, and that if people wish to come to Jamaica for a few weeks or more, these homes – villas – can be rented for $800 – $1000 per month. Pretty good deal when you look at the cost of the hotels on the beach below.
And then she told us that this is where the middle class live.
If that’s middle class, I think I’d be shocked at the upper class because these homes were spectacular! One short stop was at an old windmill.
We drove through the neighbourhoods for a bit and then headed into Mo Bay, with Maxine imparting her wealth of information about businesses, economy, public education, Reggae music events, and everything else you could possibly want to learn about. We climbed the hill above Mo Bay and, after a hair raising three point turn in the middle of a two lane curved road, with a semi truck barrelling down on us, stopped at a cafe/bar/gift shop high on the hill above town, with a fabulous rooftop deck overlooking everything. It was scorching hot up there, but a fabulous place for a few photos.
I asked Maxine about University tuition and programs for students. She smiled at me, filled my head with even more information, and then smiled her dazzling smile and asked if I was a teacher, because only a teacher would ask the questions I’d been asking. “Well, partly, on the side, yes…”
And then we were on the road again, Maxine filling our heads with even more information. As we came down the hill she pointed across the water to the cruise ship terminal where a ship was at dock and said we were lucky to be staying on land, because the cruise ship people never get to see the Island the way people who stay on land do, they never get enough time to do the types of excursions we were experiencing. I’m still mixed even on this type of travelling, being at a resort makes me feel cagey and restricted, I love to be able to see as much of a place as possible to feel that I can say I’ve actually “been” to a place.
We wound our way down into town and stopped on the “Hip Strip” where we were given a little less than an hour to wander the strip and poke around in the shops. We stepped into Margaritaville, and then headed down the street to see what was around. The taxi drivers all asked if we needed a ride “No mon” and shopkeepers called out to us and tried to wave us in. One woman kept stride with me and said “C’mon in sweetie, come see the jewellery, it’s rude to walk by a shop and not take a look at least, do you need a tour guide?” “No mon” was not working on this woman at all, but if my intuition was right, I assumed she’d probably have a strip beyond which she was infringing on someone else’s turf and leave me alone. I was right and eventually she fell back.
Along the way, in one shop, I heard a woman say to here husband “I hate the way they harass, it makes me uncomfortable, I wish they’d just put the honest sticker price on and stick to it.
Seriously? Where’s the fun in that!?!
We poked in and out of a few shops, and really didn’t see anything of interest. I did want a scarf/beach wrap of the Jamaican flag, but I wasn’t going to pay much for one, so I put on my haggling pants and got ready to deal. I found one that I didn’t mind, the sticker price was $35US, the girl in the store immediately dropped to $20, and I waved it off and left the store to see if I could find it elsewhere. I didn’t see it anywhere else, so I took all of my cash, except for $10, out of my pockets, and went back in. She saw me come back and started to hard sell.
She said $15!
I said $10.
She went around the corner to ask her boss, and came back and said $12!
I shrugged and said “All I have is $10” and pulled out my two five dollar bills.
She looked at the bills and walked away with the wrap and I thought I’d lost that deal when I heard her say to someone “She only has $10”.
She came back around the corner and grunted something at me and said the wrap was at the cash desk.
So that tells me that the thing was probably a cost of $5, but it was still $10 the shopkeeper didn’t have before.
I don’t know why, but I do like to haggle.
Maxine collected us all and when we re-boarded the bus we had a new passenger, a little, very adorable, boy names Jason. His mother is Jamaican and married an American. Jason was born in New York before his family moved to Georgia, where he now lives. His mother and, Maxine told us, most mothers, will send their children back to Jamaica for some schooling to learn the culture at a young age. His school was a split school and his classes went from 7am until around noon, and he had joined us to connect with Maxine for a ride back to his grandparents home. He was an exceptionally cute kid.
Maxine had the driver take us though the centre of town and down into the food market. The streets were narrow and full of people. Carts of fruits and vegetables, tables of clothing – hand sewn by locals – were pressed against walls, and people laughed, smiled, and waved at us as we passed. As we came into the centre square Maxine pointed out a small rock building which she informed us was the slave cage. I tried to take a photo, but suddenly I had a very cute and cheeky little boy in every frame I tried to shoot.
Sometimes you just have to surrender to the moment and go with it.
As we wound through the narrow streets and alleys on our little bus, Maxine said “People always ask if it’s safe to walk around, it’s safer for you than me. And just so you know, when we visit your cities, we ask the same question.”
That was a good reality check.
Maxine had the driver navigate around the streets until we popped back out on a main strip and then drove to the craft market. She warned us that people here were pushier and less likely to take no for an answer. She told us we didn’t have to go in, that many people were uncomfortable with the vendors and preferred to shop elsewhere. No one on the bus moved, I was near the back and all I said was “It can’t be any worse than Mexico”, and stood up. That seemed to jar people into motion, and the bus emptied.
And the fun began 🙂
I watched a vendor latch onto the UK couple and lead them up the steps to his little walk in locker sized shop near the top. A woman beseeched me to enter her shop and look at her wares and I told her I planned to go to the top end and work my way back around, I said I’d be back. I said that a lot as we slowly wandered up the steps and wound through the narrow corridors lined by vendors. Near the top we turned around and I saw the woman who had been verbally plucking at me to visit her shop and I called out to her “What, you didn’t believe me? Do you think I’m lying to you? I said I’d come back to your shop, and I will!” She seemed genuinely surprised that I called her out, but pointed to an open but empty shop and said it was her sister’s.
I wandered slowly back down through every single little shop. I felt I had to. I went into one and when I would walk out I would make direct eye contact and say “Thank you for letting me look at your things” And every single one looked right back and me, smiled, and said “Thank you for looking.”
Politeness and simple respect is such a valuable commodity, and too few people employ it.
Near the end of the shops I was still empty handed. Yes, some things were hand crafted, but they were all so similar, so typically touristy, that nothing called out to me.
We walked by an older Rastafarian man knitting, he gestured across the square and said “My shop is over there at the end, if you would like to look.” There was something I liked about him. He seemed gentle natured, laid back, easy going, kind. Eventually we got to his shop, it was a bit bigger than the others, but it still contained many of the typical items, and then my eyes fell on something different.
I make it a point of not touching anything that I am not prepared to barter on, it’s a part of the process and the vendors constantly say “Feel free to touch, feel free to pick anything up…..” I generally don’t, once you touch something you have started the bargaining process, and unless I am prepared to walk out with it after a bartering session, I won’t touch it.
What my eyes had fallen on wouldn’t have looked like much, unless one already knew what it was. It was a little pile of wooden rectangles, but they were folded in on each other in a little stacked pattern. I have something similar that I purchased from a craft vendor up the Rio Negro in Brazil. It is a wooden trivet made of native woods and it folds up into an interesting little package. I reached out to pick it up, and a young woman came over to me immediately. She started to try to explain it, and I told her I knew what it was, the question was, how much was it.
I saw the Rastafarian man stand up and walk across the square, and we began to discuss the item and the price. We started at $20, went to $15, and then $12. I said I’d consider it, and put it back down. He pointed out other items, and I asked him what he was knitting. A cap, he picked one up from the wall and showed us, it had “IRIE” knitted into the pattern. I smiled and asked him if he could explain the difference between Irie and Mi dey ya, and his entire body language and expression changed. He explained that Irie means “All right” where Mi deh ya is a more meaningful phrase, it means “I am here”. He made a comment of appreciation that we were trying to learn some of the local dialect, it’s such a little thing, but I always try to learn a few meaningful words and phrases to demonstrate my interest in learning about them, rather than about the things that get me what I want.
I went back to the bus where everyone was waiting and said, sorry, I’ll just be a moment. I took all of my cash off my person; I took two fives and folded them together and slipped them into a pocket. I slipped back off the bus and could see the vendors watching me with intent….ours was the only customer bus and I was now the only potential customer. I zipped back to the Rastafarian’s booth and he came over, we engaged in a little bit of bartering, and when I offered $10 he said I cold only have the smaller trivet for the price, I agreed and took that one instead of the larger one, we bumped fists uttered “Respect” to one another, and then I had to run an absolute gauntlet to get back to the bus. The others had seen me pass cash and wanted some, and I could, in all honesty, pull my pockets out and say I had no more money with me.
Maxine had our driver take us through the cruise ship area, past the gated homes and condos that surround the terminal, pretty she said, if you like that sort of thing. We dropped off four passengers and then headed back on to the highway. Maxine again filled out heads with so much information, and said that she knew it was only supposed to be a three hour trip, but that we were approaching more than five hours.
When the little bus reached our hotel we dug out a hefty tip for her and the driver, she had started off badly with us, and then stood on her head to make it up. It was very clear that what we’d received was anything but the standard tour, and we appreciated it.
Then it was down to the pier to watch a spectacular sunset, dinner, a drink or two, before we collapsed into bed.
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