day 3: indescribable.

We decided to make the drive east down the coast to Port Antonio to "raft" down the Rio Grande river. Mom and Dad had stayed here before on a previous trip and is my Dad's favorite part of the island. We left Ocho Rios a little before 8 and expected the drive to take about two to two and a half hours. We got about 10 minutes down the road and from that point on the roads became almost impassable. There would be splashes of paved road for a couple of miles at a time but aside from those we barely got over 30 miles an hour and were constantly slowing to a crawl to go over parts of the road [more like just mildly packed, horribly rough limestone] where it looked like 2 contractors got in a fight about where they were supposed start and stop because there would constantly be huge horizontal chunks of "road" just missing. A couple of times we didn't see them until it was a bit too late and hit the spots with tremendous force and mom and I would get thrown a couple inches in the air. Fun times.

Four hours later we made it to Port Antonio, dropped off the car at the bottom of the river [where it met the ocean], rode to the top in a taxi where we met our raft captains, and began our journey.

The rafts were made of 10-12' long bamboo stalks with a bamboo seat made for 2 towards the back as you can see and the captain stood at the front and pole-d you down the river with a big bamboo stalk.

I cannot express and the pictures do not do justice how amazingly gorgeous this river is. When my parents told us we were going to go rafting down a river, I just assumed we were going down a [brownish] river. I was clearly mistaken. We go down 7 miles of river and it takes about 2 and half hours. If you ever go to Jamaica, you HAVE to do this. The landscape we floated by was breathtaking, the hills were covered in huge trees and ferns and banana plantations and the water was bright turquoise and crystal clear just like the ocean, it was incredible. You could see straight to the bottom and it varied in depths, sometimes only a few inches and sometimes several feet. As we went down we would occasionally reach quick little rapids where we would go down with a rush and then we would travel on lazily. We stopped at one point about 2/3 of the way down and got some true Jamaican cuisine that a woman was selling on the river shore and we went swimming for awhile. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

We then went into Port Antonio to look around and go visit the Blue Lagoon - the real one - and where the movie Return to the Blue Lagoon was filmed. Basically the Blue Lagoon is an insanely deep cove type area - it flows into the ocean - which is fed by a natural spring. Because of it's depth it is a brilliant blue color. It was also really cold, I didn't get in. Here's some pictures.

It was almost 6 o'clock and we decided to go ahead and drive back to Ocho Rios even though it would be late getting back and we were exhausted. It was going a little quicker since we didn't have to stop this time for directions and there was a bit less traffic. Well, scratch that there was less traffic until we got to Port Maria, a little more than half way home, when we were suddenly in a huge line a traffic going at a crawl.

I can't believe I haven't mentioned before now that this year is an election year in Jamaica. Their elections were today actually. So needless to say there was major campaigning going on around the island and we talked to everyone we met about state politics and the general feel is that everyone is fed up, not only with the current ruling party, but the government in general, however no one planned on voting. I am curious to see tomorrow the estimated turnout.

Well the traffic we were suddenly in was actually a long line of campaigners on their way to Port Maria for a political rally for the Jamaica Labour Party [the opposition]. We finally made in into the city and the streets were packed with many more people than cars as we arrived just when it started. Adults, children, everywhere you looked wearing green, waving green flags & streamers, blowing green horns, blasting some official song of the party from these huge speakers on top of their cars. All incredibly passionate and pumped up about the possibility of their party winning. I wondered how many of them were going to vote.

We made it through slowly but surely and were home around 9:30, feeling it was definitely worth the long drive. Here are some more pictures we took just on the drive.