A long day trip to Kingston

Thursday 27 Feb, Jamaica day 4: Road trip to Kingston, the loooong way around, and beautiful drive back over the top of Blue Mountains.

Early alarm goes off, ready for our road trip to Kingston. When we arrived into Port Antonio and looked at the chart plotter, I commented to Oana that Kingston is only 20miles south of Antonio and that we could probably drive there in 45 minutes. Please remember this when you finish reading today’s blog!

It’s a beautiful cloudless day and for once we can see the Blue Mountains stretching their lush green slopes inland. A good day to drive south across them and not be up in the clouds.
Almost immediately that we are on the road westwards we note everything is so much different to yesterday’s trip to the east. The road is wide with an excellent surface, and the housing and villages are so much tidier. There are even teams of people heavily streaming the road edges, making it look very manicured as we pass plantations of banana trees and other fruits. We decide to take the main road to Kingston and avoid the picturesque but super twisty road that directly transits the peaks of the mountains. So at Annotto Bay, we turn south on the brand new A3 highway heading across the island to Kingston. All good. At this rate we’ll be there in just over an hour.

…. But the journey then quickly goes pear-shaped! Men with red flags wave us off the main road onto a detour. The new road is still under construction and today it’s shut! Oh well, how bad can a detour be? At first the road was reasonable. Pot-holed but drivable. But that didn’t last too long. After 40 minutes we stopped to look at google maps only to find we are actually driving away from the direction of Kingston back to the north coast! But soon after, we spot a detour sign at Highgate and we are heading south again on the B2 road, up into the mountains.
The road quickly gets twistier, and narrower. Sometimes with vegetation encroaching across the road, sometimes half the road gone in a landslide and often with a sheer drop on one side or the other. It’s basically a very small un-maintained country road winding its way through the mountains. Add to that, all the Kingston traffic that has been diverted is on it too. And they are driving ridiculously fast, often almost pushing us off the road, which is down to single track in lots of places. It becomes a wild drive and we often think about turning back. Surely this can’t go on for much longer, can it? But it does, almost all the way to the outskirts of Kingston, totaling a 3 hour journey! And before we even see the town, I’m not looking forward to the return drive 🙁

Kingston is much larger than we expected. As we drive through, its traffic is chaotic and the scenery pretty grubby. So we decide to go see the Royal Jamaica Yacht Club for a rest and a well-deserved cool beer. The club apparently has quite a history dating back to the mid 1800’s. As we get out the car it’s roasting hot. 34DegC. Plus it’s dry and dusty over this side of the island. Pretty quickly we realise the club has seen better days. It’s pleasant enough, with pool and terrace. But rather run down. There are trophy cupboards full of tarnished silverware, most of which do not look like they’ve be “won” for many decades.
The marina itself is full of older looking motor boats with hardly any sailing boats. If you ask me, motor boats will always kill a good yacht club in the end. Anyway, we do sit for a cool beer and try to work out where, if anywhere, is the nice part of Kingston to visit. Google images of the town certainly don’t show it in a good light. In our short time before we need to start our return journey, we decide to visit Downtown then the Uptown area.

Downtown it a latticework of narrow streets lined with both modern and some traditional colonial buildings. None of which look like they’ve been cared for in decades. We stop the car near Saint William Grant park and take a stroll. The surrounding busy streets and markets are like the rough part of Santo Domingo, but even worst. Unlike Port Antonio, the people are quite aggressive and we feel somewhat threatened. The overall effect on Oana is quite dramatic. She suddenly feels very sad and frightened at the same time (to the point of crying), for the whole scene and situation. Especially after we spot lots of police all heavily armed with assault rifles. So it’s time for a sharp exit! We have seen quite a few poor and dilapidated towns throughout our travels, but we have never had quite such a disturbed feeling before.
We then drive to the uptown area hoping for better. Yes, it is slightly cleaner, there are shopping centers and a more modern scene, but still pretty grubby and the traffic is manic. Getting hungry, we stop at a Burger King out of desperation, only to find over 100 people queuing for the counter. So another sharp exit is made. And we give up on any more sightseeing, frankly quite disappointed.

It’s now 3pm and I don’t want to be driving back in the darkness. So we set course back to the marina, via the picturesque B1 mountain route which passes over the Blue Mountain National Park. After this morning, I’m really not looking forward to another mountain road but I also absolutely don’t want to go the same route as we did coming in.
Finally we get out of Kingston suburbs and we are soon climbing steeply on the narrow twisty road. But this time, the road surface is very smooth and there is little to no traffic. And the occasional view backwards is quite spectacular looking down on Kingston.

Halfway up, we come across a small cafe. There are lots of “local” shanty looking bars which we passed, but this one, Blue Café, looks different. And it turns out to be a real gem. Like a little oasis for our troubled day. It could be a coffee shop in the middle of Paris with all the smells and a display full of delicious looking cakes. What on earth it’s doing here, half way up a deserted mountain, we cannot fathom. But we welcome the good food at long last! We sit on their terrace, overlooking the mountain scene, next to a young French family. We have big cups of cafe latte made from the local Blue Mountain coffee, jerk chicken paninis and huge slices of cake and we have to pinch ourselves. Did we just die and go to heaven?!

This stop was exactly what we needed to relax us for the rest of the journey. After that, everything seemed so much more pleasant and the return journey turned into a real not-to-be-missed highlight. The road continued to twist its way up through the amazing mountain scenery and coffee plantations. Every now and then we would see a worker carrying a sack of coffee beans. Presumably their pickings for the day. And we wished we’d come this way this morning, so we could have seen it in bright daylight.
Almost at the top, we pass a barbed wire enclosure and the road suddenly seems to end at a raised barrier into the complex. Our hearts sink. Is this the end of the road? Did google maps trick us again like it did in Puerto Rico? We drive very slowly passed the barrier into a large neat yard with a couple of army guys in the corner. We ask them, expecting the obvious answer. But to our surprise they politely tell us “no, you are in the army training yard, just go to that next barrier across the yard and you are back on the road”. Phew! And we realise we are in a large army mountain training camp. How odd for the road to pass right through their parade ground. Surreal!

So onwards and yet more upwards. When we stop at a small lookout, a local guys asks if we can give him a lift home – just 4 miles away. As it’s on our route we agree (well, I agree, Oana is not so sure after our experiences yesterday at Bath and earlier in Kingston). We hope he will just keep quiet in the back. His name is Simon and he is actually very pleasant and thankfully not a chatterbox. And it’s quite lucky we have him, because not long after we notice our GPS dot way off the road we are supposed to be on. He tries to reassure us that the usual road was damaged in a hurricane and this is the “bypass” road. We are not convinced, but what can we do other than to carry on?
We are even more nervous when the road goes to a very steep inclined single dirt track with vegetation brushing down both sides the car! But just as he promised, our GPS dot eventually converges back onto the planned B1 road. And we are thankful. We drop him off in the village of Cascades where the road finally starts descending, with not so many swish-back turns. Good job, because it’s starting to get dark by now, as we descend through the valley.

Down on the coast road the traffic is heavy and we have our eyes peeled to the side of the road. Locals all drive with full beam, blinding us, and it is very difficult to spot pedestrians (they all walk on the side of the road) and cyclists. And sure enough, few kilometers later we see an accident, a young girl was run down and probably dead. This shocks us even further and we slow down even more.
We finally and gratefully make it back to the marina at 7:30pm. We are both pretty exhausted. 300km on those roads was quite a day to remember. Kingston Town is now ticked off… and crossed off (as in: no need to return there!). We are in bed like babies before 10pm!