Thursday, April 3, 2008

March - Negril, Jamaica


Travel Destination: Errol's guesthouse in Negril



I had a lot of reservations about Negril, mostly because I was traveling alone to meet up with a good friend of mine. The traveling alone part would've been fine if my destination hadn’t been 3 hours away from the airport at Montego Bay. To prove my hesitance wrong - the drive to Negril was a BLAST. The driver told me so many things to do/try. Despite my physical sickness that week, my trip to Negril turned out to be a blessing from the Caribbean’s and all the chill people in Jamaica!


There, there. Montego bay from afar.
First picture taken at the guesthouse from a window at the bar. See the poster for Red Stripe? That's THE Jamaica beer!! Don't you dare order anything else haha





I really enjoyed their local architecture as well... you can really see the diversity in their culture through something as simple as the way the roof is shaped.












After 16 hours of traveling, dude, this IS heaven!








This was the best angle of our room. Hey it's a guest house... you expect a lot of home-like cozy things, and definitely none of that all-inclusive-bs-luxury.








Here's the beach side of Errol's. And there's are the guys who took care of us at the guesthouse.








Isn't this beautiful? I wish I had a better camera than my Kodak easyshare.



This is such a... post card picture, isn't it? Good job Kodak easyshare... haha
Here's a picture from the souther side of the beach we were on. Patrick, our host native of negril told us places to go.
You see the flag behind us? The green, yellow and black one... it's the Jamaica flag :)

Patrick told us how to weasle our way into town... here are some pictures I took when we were on our way to town. You know, the Islands are very colorful places!


This is what I saw of a Jamaican street. This area has a lot of tourists because it's near the 7mile beach everyone stays at. However many of the locals (especially ones in the tourist business) also work and live here. BTW, people drive CRAZY in Jamaica. They drive on the left side of the road as the Brits do... well they were conolized by them for quite some time. The natives refer to those days as the "slave days." You NEVER tell a Jamaica driver that he drives on the "wrong side of the road"... b/c HE WILL switch to the RIGHT side of the road and give you a heartattack -- this is from what I heard.
I got a juice at the patty place. It was 30 Jamaican dollar, equivalent to 50 cents (but I know it was still over priced for Jamaica).
Here's THE PATRICK I've been mentioning about. He's a cool cat! :D
Salt cod fish with Ackee and fried dumplings – a staple of the Jamaican breakfast that the bus driver had told me to try.
mMMm I'm a lucky girl to have tried it!










Fin




Purpose of HuEndorphines

I've had many blogs in the past few years. Some are dedicated to rant about my involvement with biopsychology, some are to promote/slash a certain political/sociological cause, and some are used to.. eh blog? Anyhow, I decided to utilize this one for the sharing of my trips :) as I will (hopefully) be doing a lot of that in the next 6 months. What’s on my agenda for the next 6months? I don’t know… Puerto Rico? London? Rome? Haiti (I know not a lotta people go there!)? Peru? Ha, I don’t even know… but I guess you can just wait and see! One thing that’s worth noting about my traveling is that I’m not too fund of the really touristsy places. I feel like if you stay at an all-inclusive hotel, while you do get the luxury and western food, what’s missing is the CULTURE. I like to stay in guesthouses of the locals and sample their food. I love different cultures – therefore I travel. I like to explore the local dishes and talk to the local people. Of course, sometimes that’s hard to do – especially if I have no knowledge of the place. In some places it’s really hard to escape the tourist places. In fact, in some countries, the tourist places will be the only thing available to me. However, I guess I try to stay as close to the locals as possible to get a little taste of how the country’s really like – and may or may not even blog about it.

Enjoy (;