Jamaica/Wedding, Zip Lining and Dolphins

  

Wed, Jan. 8th - Wed, Jan. 22nd, 2014

I flew out of Phoenix very early on Wednesday morning and met up with the rest of my family and other wedding guests in Atlanta where we continued on to Jamaica.  It was very hot and humid when we arrived there in the late afternoon.  Very warm for those that came from the extreme cold of North Dakota wearing multiple layers of clothing.  There were 15 of us and we had an almost two hour bus ride to our resort in Riu Negril.  Our bus driver said, "We will be going by our underground condos up ahead.   People are dying to get in".... cemetery.  Ha Ha.  About half way there, we stopped at a little roadside bar like this one, for a Red Stripe beer to get the party started.   "Welcome to Jamaica, Mon!  Have a nice day.  Yah, Mon!"

Jamaica was first sighted by Christopher Columbus on his second voyage in 1494.  He was stranded there on his fourth voyage from 1503 to 1504.  I'd rather be stranded there than North Dakota, especially this time of year!  The Spanish called it Santiago and settled it in 1509.  It was conquered by the English in 1655 and became a base of operations for privateers, including Captain Henry Morgan, operating from the main English settlement of Port Royal.  After an earthquake in 1692 they settled across the bay at Kingston, which became the biggest town by 1716 and the capitol in 1872.  Until the early 1800s Africans were captured, kidnapped and forced into slavery on the sugar cane plantations.  The British crown abolished slavery in 1834 and they got their independence in 1962.  Jamaica is about 146 miles long with 14 parishes (counties) and a population of 2.8 million with almost a million living in Kingston.

At our resort in Riu Negril these guys and several others walked up and down the beach singing Reggae type music.  "Every little thing's gonna be all right, all right.  Don't worry, be happy!  Yah, Mon."  Claude and Morgan each both bought one of their CDs.

Our travel person got us signed up for some fun activities and we were up bright and early our first day to go zip lining.  YEE HAH!  Me, Rob, Lacey, Morgan, my Mom and my baby brother, all harnessed up and ready to go.  We had to divide into two groups, so the rest were in another group.

Here's our guide, Ryan, hooking my niece, Lacey, to the zip line.  She's looking a little leery, but Ryan says, "Just walk off the end of the ramp."  Easy for him to say and off she goes!

And here I am.  It wasn't nearly as scary as it looked.  And I had no choice but to go, when my 79 year old mother raised her hand to sign up.  She just said, "I'm going."  And what could the rest of us do?

And here she is, having a great time.  There were nine different zip lines and we had to hike up to each one in the heat and humidity.  It was hard for all of us, even the youngsters in our group.  Mom had to sit and rest for a bit on one especially steep hike and have some water, but I and several others had to rest a bit, too.  Our guide, Ryan, kept saying, "How you doing Mama Clem?  You okay, Mama Clem?" and he helped her over rocky areas, but she really didn't need his help.  He was very good to her.  They said their age record for doing the zip line was 84, so she should come back in five years and break the record.

Here's Morgan

And the bride-to-be.

Here's our group at the end, with our guides, Ryan and Chin, and another couple who joined us.

The next afternoon, some of our group took a catamaran cruise out of the bay and down the coast a few miles.  I didn't go.  This is one of the sights they saw, not sure what it was.  Maybe somebody will let me know when they read this.

I assume this is Rick's Cafe, a famous party bar along the cruise.

The gift shop, of course, is not to be missed.  When in Jamaica, do as the Jamaicans do.  Yah, Mon!  As one of our bus drivers told us, "There are no problems in Jamaica..... only situations."  And "What happens in Jamaica....  never happened."  Unless you have friends and relatives with cameras and access to the internet!  You just can't get by with anything these days.

View of the main pool at the resort with swim-up bar and tables and stools in a few places.  We could have taken a tour of the island and the rum distillery, but it took all day, and this just looked much more fun and relaxing.

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Some of the gang having a little cool off in the ocean, Mom, Claude, Jodi, Rob, Morgan and Lacey.

You would think these small town North Dakota boys had never seen a mermaid before?

This is an old, dead tree on the beach that someone had some fun with.

He took them at their word, when they said have a nice day.  Cuban cigars, free drinks, "You wanna dance, Mom?"

Saturday afternoon arrived all too soon and it was time to get ready for the big event.  Father and sisters of the bride.

Mom and I.  No pressure on us.  We just had to show up.

All systems go and waiting for the bride.

Lacey and Josh.

Morgan and Kyle.

And here she comes, looking incredibly beautiful.

You clean up pretty good, too, Dad.

The pictures pretty much speak for themselves from here on out.  

It was a short and beautiful wedding and I felt so lucky to be able to be there.

Rob was in charge of the video camera.  There were three official photographers and everyone else was snapping all the pictures they could.  I had 625 pictures on my camera after five days and that was after I deleted almost 300 bad ones.  A friend once told me just take lots.  Some are bound to turn out good.  She was right.  Thank goodness we don't have to pay for film and developing anymore.   These kids probably don't even remember those days or know what I'm talking about.

The deed is done.  It's official.

Mr. and Mrs. Peterson

"Whew, maybe I can get out of this hot suit jacket, now."  "Oh, no way.  There's still lots more pictures to be taken."

"Seriously?"

"Oh, yeah."

"Everybody start lining up for your turn."

Proud parents.

Grandma.

Bridesmaids and videographer.

Sisters.

The whole family.  Christmas cards, ya know.

Wedding party.

The happy couple walking off into the sunset.

We had drinks at the main poolside bar before the wedding supper, but afterwards we were all drawn to the little bar in the main lobby where Paul, the singing bartender, was entertaining the crowd.

You can check him out on you tube on the internet.  Just google Paul, the Jamaican singing bartender.

He was awesome, taking orders and mixing drinks, all while singing and holding notes that just gave you the shivers.  He sang songs like "My Love", "Lady in Red" and "Under the Boardwalk".  I bought his CD, as did some of the others.

Mama Jodi with her girls.

Brooke says it's been a long, but wonderful day!

Sunday, after seeing Rob and Lacey off to the airport, we all took off to swim with the dolphins.

Here I am getting a little kiss on the cheek.

Morgan having a swim with two dolphins,, hanging onto their fins.

Jodi getting a kiss

and a swim on the belly of the dolphin.

A little kiss for Morgan.

The new Mrs. Peterson having a swim with the dolphins.

Morgan trying the ultimate experience where you lay on top of the water and the dolphins each push one of your feet until you stand right up out of the water, if you can manage to keep your body stiff enough.

The new bride did much better than the rest of us.

Here's me giving it a try.

And my little brother.

And Claude swimming with them.  This was lots of fun and I highly recommend it, if you get a chance.

For another $50 we could get in with the sharks and pet them.  We decided to pass on this.

Getting in with sting rays was included in our package and that was quite interesting, too.  They have sharp needle-like things all along their spine and feel kind of soft and slimy.  The dolphins don't feel slimy at all, just hard and wet.  No comments on that, please!

He asked a volunteer to come forward to get a kiss from the sting ray and just as the guy was approaching it, it sprayed a bunch of water out of its mouth.  I'm not sure how he got it to do that.  They also offered camel rides at this place, which seemed kind of out of place at the beach.  John and I rode camels by the pyramids when we were in Egypt, so I passed on that.

Back at the beach at the resort, the bar boys were always going around picking up empty glasses.  It was nothing to see them carrying stacks about eight feet long.  Mom and I were sitting next to a couple ladies one afternoon who asked us about what kinds of drinks to order.  So I commenced to name off a few we had tried--Red Stripe beer, Super Conga, Bahama Mama, Tropicale, Rum Fruit Punch, Miami Vice, Blue Ocean, Mango Tango, Strawberry Mango Daquiri, Pina Colada, Chocolate Martini, Creme de Menthe with seltzer water, etc.  They started to laugh and asked, "Just how many days have you two been here?"  It was only our third day, but I don't think they really put very much booze in them unless you asked them to.  But they were yummy and the Miami Vice was my favorite, which was red, white and blue, very pretty.

Our last afternoon I walked down the beach a ways past the end of our resort.  A couple days earlier a young man had been going up and down the resort beach with two live lobsters, telling everyone about this wonderful grilled seafood restaurant just past the resort, where you could pick your live seafood and they would grill it for you.

I walked quite a ways down the beach and every tree branch seemed to be a sale rack.

These people just seem to show up for the day, sell what they can, all relaxed and having fun, while their kids are playing in the ocean.  No problem, no worries, yah mon.

It's not like Mexico.  I did not feel harassed at all.

Beautiful, huge shells.  Claude bought one earlier from a beach peddler for $5.00.  I talked to someone who bought a little bit smaller one for $1.00.

Their were several bars like these two along this little stretch of beach.  This one was called "Office of Nature" and the sign said, "ere the fun don't done".

There was a guy grilling something under the little shelter.

Walking back to the resort.  

One place I walked by just appeared to be some young guys partying and smokin' the good stuff.  I heard several people in our group say they had been offered some of the good stuff to buy.   As they say, "What happens in Jamaica...  never happened."

John's always asking me if I met anyone I knew when I come back from a walk, but this time I actually did.  Some of the girls from the wedding were out for one last shopping spree before we had to go home.

Several places along here, just set back in the trees a little, there were tarps like this that seemed to be permanent homes for some folks.  Dog laying in the foreground and what appears to be a shower or porta potty shelter back to the right.

Notice the busted up plastic chair hanging from the tree like a swing.

Back at the resort Grandma, Morgan and Jodi are still relaxing by the ocean on our last afternoon.

This is the building Mom and I stayed in.  There were four really huge buildings like this.  I have no idea how many they might hold, but they certainly weren't full, by any means.  There were lots of trees like these two on the grounds.  I don't know if they had to train them to grow flat like that or not.  The leaves look like banana trees, but I'm not sure what they were.

On the bus ride back to the airport.

These are typical homes or businesses along the road back to the airport.  We saw little 10x10 shacks built out of old corrugated metal or whatever other scrap lumber they could find.

There are goats everywhere here, including the buffet table.  Our bus driver said they call them Jamaican reindeer or just roadkill.  Speaking of buffets, we got to try lots of new and unusual foods.  The jackfruit is a spiny, oval shaped fruit, the largest fruit in the world and the national fruit of Bangladesh.  It has a sort of spongy, stringy texture, but is very sweet and tasty.  I thought the goat, lamb and oxtail were okay.  The conch tasted okay, but is very tough to chew.  I never cared for calamari, as I thought it was so tough and chewy, but they fixed it several different ways and it wasn't too bad.  The pumpkin soup was very good and the caramelized plantains were yummy, but the eel sushi was only edible and I wouldn't have it again.  I tried beef carpaccio and salmon carpaccio, but had to look it up later to see what it actually was.  I didn't mind the salmon, but did not care for the beef.  It is an Italian dish usually served as an appetizer.  It is very thinly slice beef, veal, venison, salmon or tuna served on a dish with a marinade of lemon and olive oil with shavings of white truffle or parmesan cheese.  It can be topped with rocket (from the word rugula), a type of cabbage.  It was invented and popularized by the owner of Harry's Bar in Venice, originally prepared for a countess whose doctors had told her to eat more raw meat.  It was named at an exhibition in Venice in 1950 for the painter, Vittore Carpaccio.  It's amazing what you can find on the internet.

We saw lots of unfinished homes like this with re-bar sticking out of the top for the next story.  The interest rates for mortgages run from 9.4% to 18%, so many people prefer to build as much as they can afford and then wait until they can save up some more money.  Many join a kind of co-op where you put in so much money every month and then you get to take a draw once every year or two when it is your turn.  Then you build some more on your house.

They have about 16% unemployment, but no unemployment insurance.  They do have a national insurance that you can buy into if you want.  But most families live with extended families in one home, children, parents, grandparents, etc. with possibly several incomes coming in.  So if someone loses a job, the rest of the family picks up the slack and they take care of each other.

Trivia:  Bob Marley, the legendary "King of Reggae", was born in 1945 in Nine Miles, a small town about three hours north of Kingston in the beautiful mountains of St. Ann, Jamaica.  He grew up in poverty in a small mountain village with no plumbing or electricity.  His father was a white Jamaican of English descent and he endured ridicule and disdain by black Jamaicans for being a mulatto.  There is a Marley tour of the same house he grew up in given by a Rastafarian guide.  You can sit on the Mt. Zion Rock where he meditated and rest your head on the "pillow" made famous in the song "Talkin' Blues".  The highlight is the beautiful mausoleum that is his final resting place.  

Back in Phoenix Monday night.  We spent a day parked at the Lone Butte Casino in Chandler.  Then we stayed a week at Cotton Lane RV Park just on the west edge of the Phoenix metro area, where I went swimming and hiking everyday and we drove back into town for a couple movies.  We saw August: Osage County which you can skip and Lone Survivor, which was good and based on a true story, but very bloody.  Sunday we went to an RV show in town, but I haven't yet convinced John that it's time to trade up.  Wednesday we are heading for Quartzsite where one of the biggest RV shows in the country is going on, so I'll have another chance to work on him.   

Don't worry, be happy.

Tarra

On to Arizona

Thursday, Dec. 26, 2013 - Tuesday, Jan.7, 2014

We left Kathy's the day after Christmas.  She was standing in her front yard breathing a huge sigh of relief as she waved goodbye to us.  We drove down to Bakersfield and took Hwy. 58 to Barstow in the Mojave Desert.  At Barstow we took I-40 to Ludlow, where we took old Route 66 and stopped to spend the night at Amboy Crater.  

In the morning we hiked the three-mile, round-trip trail up to the rim of the crater.  This is a view of the lava field and desert from the rim of the crater.  It is a National Natural Landmark.  It is 250 feet high, 1,500 feet in diameter and about a mile around the rim of the cone.

An explosive eruption breached the crater wall on the back side, leaving a wide opening where you can hike up to the rim.  John is in the crater, heading toward one of the trails up to the rim.

It is situated in one of the youngest volcanic fields in the U.S. in the Barstow-Bristol Trough and approximately straddles the boundary of the Mojave and Sonoran Deserts.  Now we are on the rim looking back into the crater.  

There were six different periods of eruptions that created the resulting nested group of volcanic cinder cones encompassing 24 square miles.  Volcanic activity started an estimated 6,000 years ago with the last period of eruptions as recently as 500 years ago.

Artwork on the desert floor.  

From here we headed back to I-40 until we crossed into Arizona and spent four nights in the desert a few miles south of Lake Havasu City.  This area is just 4-wheeler heaven and we saw lots of them.

We went for several hikes while we were camped here.  The desert is really beautiful here.  Lake Havasu, which is many miles long, was created when Parker Dam was built in the 1930s.  It was the tallest dam in the world at the time.

If you look closely, you can see several RVs in the center of the picture. Ours is among them.  What a beautiful spot to camp!

From Havasu we drove down toward Parker and stayed two nights at the La Paz County Campground.  This is just one of many "senior" toys we saw in the campground.  Not sure how much good his carport was doing.  Sign says, "Old Fart Parking".  Maybe he just had a senior moment and forgot to put the top on the carport.

Just a couple scenes in the campground.  Looks like Santa is taking a break after the holiday rush.

Sometimes we feel like hobos, too.

These RVs had the waterfront spots and each spot had it's own shelter with cement pad.  Most of them had put up sun shade walls around them and Christmas lights and some had full-size Christmas trees.

Adjoining the county campground, is a little classier campground, called the Pirate's Den.  Their waterfront sites have these really nice shelters with electricity, that most people have set up with patio tables and chairs, full-size grills, Christmas trees, etc.  

This is where they usually gathered in groups for "happy hour" around 4:00.  It's 5:00 o'clock somewhere right?

This is the marina at the Pirate's Den Campground.

Zooming in, this is the Black Pearl Restaurant with the Black Pearl ship moored at the pier.

This flag flies over the office where you check in.  It says, "The beatings will continue until morale improves."  I'm not sure I want to stay here.  It's a little out of our budget anyway.

Back at our campsite, we had a neighbor who was really on a budget.  I never did see a tent or camper.  Not sure if he just slept out in the open or in a friend's camper, or what.

Oh, those Canadians!  Sign says, "The time flies, when you're having rum."

This group set out a sign to block their street every day about 3:30 pm, so they could gather for happy hour.  The sign says, "Slow, Children at Play."  I guess it's true what they say, "When you get old, you become childlike again."

Here we were walking over to the Roadrunner Floating Restaurant right next to our end of the campground.  We had the lunch special, hamburger, fries and a beer for $7.75, and it was really good!

Then we moved on to Blue Water Casino where we spent one night.  Our neighbors there really had us outclassed.  The great thing down here is you see rigs that appear to be worth no more than a few hundred dollars all the way up to a half million dollars or more, but all seem to be happy and friendly and enjoying the same sunshine and awesome weather.

The Blue Water Casino is really nice.  They have a beautiful indoor pool with water slides and this really nice marina with tons of boat slips and two launching ramps.

Another view of the marina island with a bridge over to the outdoor restaurant and outdoor stage and concert area.  The two concerts they had coming up were Winona Judd and Kenny Rogers.

They also have a really nice campground down in a ravine with beach access.  These little driftwood people were in front of one RV in the campground.   Notice the beer cans in the holsters.

We went to the Thursday night All-You-Can-Eat Fish Fry at a nearby restaurant.  It was good, but I didn't need any seconds.  John probably didn't either, but he didn't want to let them down, so he had a little more.  Notice the leg lamp next to the cash register, from the Christmas Story movie.  If you haven't seen it, you are missing out.  It's a classic!

When I stopped at the restroom on the way out, I couldn't resist lifting this toilet lid that was hanging on the wall.  I don't know what the Duke would think about this.  A sign above it said, "Don't squat on your spurs."  Good advice, it would seem.  John said there were pictures of Marilyn Monroe and such in the Men's room.  I'm finding that you should never pass up a chance to check out the restrooms.  Some of them can be very interesting, entertaining and informative.

We stayed one night at the Walmart in Parker and drove down to Poston to see the remains of an old Japanese Internment Camp from WWII.  The government called them War Relocation Centers.  Sounds much nicer, doesn't it?  FDR signed an executive order authorized by the Secretary of War to establish zones from which any or all persons could be excluded or evacuated.  120,000 people of Japanese ancestry living in strategic western states (mostly California) were evacuated and interned in 15 wartime Civilian Control Administration Centers (WCCA), mostly on fairgrounds or race tracks surrounded by barb wire fences under heavy military surveillance.  Several were on Southwest reservations. They were rounded up, forced to leave their homes and businesses, and only allowed to bring whatever luggage they could carry.  

Almost overnight, from May to August in 1942 (imagine the heat), Poston Camps I, II and III became Arizona's second largest city with 17,867 people.  Thousands were taken from their homes, numbered, tagged and herded into places like Poston and held captive by their own country for three and a half years until the government finally realized the full moral and legal implications of what it had done to its own citizens.

When they arrived on trains in the heat of the summer in 1942, there were rows of double-roofed, tar-paper barracks 20 x 100 feet long with thin partitioned rooms of 20 x 24 feet, each room housing one family of up to eight people.  In the cold desert nights they were practically freezing.  Eventually, the internees made adobe bricks and rebuilt the walls of the barracks.  The picture above shows the remains of a school building the internees built for their children.  There were 5,300 children that attended schools at the three camps with academic and athletic rivalries and competitions between them.  Many brought seeds with them and the irrigation canal was built to run through all three camps.  They grew 34 varieties of food crops, including the white radish (Daikon) which yielded 9,149 pounds per acre.  They also raised chickens and hogs.

We met a young man here (about 30 or so) on his way home from work.  He said when he was in high school, he played in basketball tournaments here on the reservation and the players were housed here in the barracks.  At the time, he had no idea what they were.  For a time they were also used as a rehab center.  They are one of the few surviving internment camps.  

This is a memorial put up on the south edge of town in the 1995 by some of the internees from Sacramento in cooperation with C.R.I.T (Colorado River Indian Tribes).  C.R.I.T. provided the land on the reservation.  In 1943 there were 1,200 internees, young men and women, from the Poston camps who volunteered for military service and fought and died while their families were being held here.  Most were Nisei, second generation Japanese-American citzens by birth, who fought and died on battlefields in Italy, France and Germany.  The 442nd Regimental Combat Team emerged as the most highly decorated U.S. Army Unit in WWII.  Others served in Military Intelligence.  Nisei became draftable in the fall of 1943 as their selective service classification was changed from 4C to 1A.  Men and women served in nearly every theater with honor, courage and pride to help protect and preserve for all Americans the same constitutional freedoms that were at the very time being denied to them and their families.  Some, especially college students, responded to the urgent call for workers to assist with the sugar beet harvest in the mountain and midwest states, looking for employment and a better way of life.  There were also Germans and Italians interned.  There was an internment camp at Fort Lincoln near Mandan, ND. across the river from the current Fort Abraham Lincoln.  There were 22,532 Japanese-Americans who served from 1940 to 1945 in the U.S. Armed Forces.  1,200 from Poston, men and women, with 117 casualties, 25 men died.

Driving around the Parker area.  There are wild burros everywhere out in the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land.  We saw 7 or 8 wandering around this campground which was across the river from the county campground we stayed at.

This campground had quite a few of what they call park model homes, small permanent places owned by individuals who come south to spend the winter.

This is a view back across the river toward the La Paz County Campground and the Pirates Den Campground.

See the tracks up the sand dunes?  Those crazy 4-wheelers and dirt bikers are everywhere!

This is a cholla cactus in bloom in one of the campgrounds we drove through.

Then we moved on to Bouse for a couple nights where camped in the desert again.

General George Patton established Camp Bouse here in Butler Valley (approx. 30 miles behind this monument) as a site for training over 5,500 carefully screened and qualified volunteers.  They were trained to use a highly secret weapon called Canal Defense Light, that the soldiers dubbed "Gizmo".   This is right on the highway that runs through Bouse, which is its main street and business district with two small cafes, a bar, laundromat and VFW.  That's about it.  There's not much here.  We did stop at a lady's house where there was a box and a sign for free grapefruit and oranges.  They were wonderful and I stopped back for more before we left town.  She said they were off her neighbor's trees who never come down anymore.  So she canned as many as she could and was just picking them and giving them away.  I should have asked her how you can them.

It was a 13 million candle power searchlight mounted on the tank turret to illuminate the area at night to dazzle the enemy with its flickering light.  Troop trains brought the highly trained soldiers and their equipment from Fort Knox under heavy guard in Oct. 1943.  They trained in absolute secrecy, mainly at night.  The mysterious secret camp was the Canal Defense Light Project Training.  It was the home of the 9th Tank Group consisting of 6 tank battalions, 1 armored infantry battalion, an ordnance company and a station hospital.

A donkey named Eight Ball was their Morale Officer and there is a cute poem about him on the plaque.  Camp Bouse was one of twelve such camps built in the Southwestern deserts to harden and train U.S. troops.  It was a simulated theater of operations.  The Camp Bouse area has been cleared and farmed since 1943 and hundreds of target rockets were plowed under that are now sometimes found.  There are lots of cement pads left in the desert from when the training went on here.  They make great places to park an RV when you are boondocking in the desert.

From Bouse, we made a straight shot over to Phoenix on Monday, as I fly out early Wednesday morning to Jamaica for my niece's wedding.  I'm looking forward to seeing some of my family, but I bet they are just looking forward to warm temperatures!

Tarra