We switched things up a little and went on an architectural walking tour of the nearby town of Falmouth. We hired a cab to drive us there. You know the cab fare is inflated when the cab driver insists on waiting 2 hours, for free, for the privilege of driving you back to the hotel 2 hours later. He even loaned me a little cell phone that I could call him on.
Falmouth started out a little scary. There was a very aggressive beggar who'd spotted us and had his grimy hand out touching the van window before we even got out of the car. Both our driver and the tour guide we came to meet tried valiantly to shoo the guy away but he was a tough one. They both kept telling him we had no money which was such an obvious lie that it made me uncomfortable. Not uncomfortable enough to give him anything though. Eventually he lost interest and beat it.
Our guide, Simone, was excited that we had heard of the tour and wanted to know more about how we found it. Usually the tour only operates when the cruise ships are docked, so we had this tour all to ourselves.
Falmouth was a big deal port town back when Jamaica was the world's largest sugar producer. The guide book claimed that the town had running water before New York did.
Our walk began at the courthouse.
The town square. There was a food tour available that we wanted to do but since it was Sunday most of the restaurants were closed. Loud, boisterous sermons could be heard echoing out of many of the churches we passed.
I liked that this church's graveyard foliage was being maintained by several goats.
Simone does a lot of talking with her hands which makes her a good photo subject.
Some of the buildings were in better shape than others. I got the impression that this historical heritage was a bit of a mixed bag for Falmouth. On one hand having awesome things in your town is awesome, and the recently built cruise port makes it clear that it's something that tourists will pay to see. The downside is that it's really expensive to restore/maintain these old gems and many of the people living inside just can't support them. As a result many of them were looking pretty run down. The government won't let you knock them down, so one trick that we heard is that people will secretly build a cement block house inside an old house and then knock it down afterwards. Pretty sneaky.
Lastly we got to see a school which I think Lydia enjoyed. There were lots of educational things painted all over the place.
The school had the most excellent playground ever. It was right next to the ocean and had a colonial armory on it complete with a cannon. Can't beat that.
I hadn't planned on stopping at the Far Out Fish Hut but I spotted it on the way back to the hotel and asked our driver if he would mind stopping. I felt extra guilty when it took them like an hour to cook our food.
Lydia had shrimp and okra which was nice and spicy. Well worth the wait.
I was pretty excited about getting pulled over because I got to see some up-close daily life happening. The driver was less excited about it. He had committed the grave sin of passing when the center line was solid. I think the fine was like $10 USD so my advice would be to just get over it.
We did some resting back at the ranch.
Sure we'd already eaten, but I needed to see if they had anything fun. The Hilton did a really good job of having a couple local things available for every meal in addition to the pizza and more boring stuff. Clockwise on the plate is oxtail, coconut, starfruit, and then unchewed and then chewed sugarcane.
It was pretty overcast again. We didn't really do any beach time on this trip. We were just too busy.
Boom.
Later that night we took a group night bus tour to the Glistening Waters Luminous Lagoon. The water there is filled with some sort of luminescent algae that lights up on contact. Our first glimpse of it was a speedboat zooming by with a bright blue trail behind in the black nighttime water. Swimming around in the water produced a sort of light halo that would follow you wherever you went. The splashier you were, the brighter the effect. Pulling your hand or face up out of the water made you crackle with little specs of light. It was the closest thing to magic that I think I've ever seen. I brought my trusty GoPro with me to capture this phenomena but it was just too dark and that failed completely. Luckily there was a photographer on the boat and we bought a few shots from him. It was epic.