Cayman Islands - Jamaica, Late 70s

Cayman Islands, late-70s

Irma Eldevira’s Boarding House was an old cinder block building surrounded by sand and random patches of coarse scrub grass. There were no trees so the house would bake in the afternoon sun. The agent at the Cayman Islands Airport had recommended Irma’s when I had balked at the $175 rates for the hotels along Seven Mile Beach. For $15 a night I got a small bedroom, clean sheets every three days and breakfast every morning. The breakfast wasn’t much but I didn’t care. I was the only guest and usually just left the house early in the morning before breakfast anyway.

Sunset House Dive Resort was just across the street from Irma’s. They were on the water but there wasn’t a beach to speak of. There was a small patch of sand where SCUBA diving students could wade into the surf but that was it. I would walk across from Irma’s and spend the day at the resort. They had a nice pool and a Tiki Bar down by the water.

I signed up for SCUBA lessons on a whim and really enjoyed the diving. The water was warm and we didn’t need wetsuits. There was an abundance of brightly colored fish and a good variety of diving locales. On our first dive our instructor picked up a sea urchin with his knife and cut it in half. Within seconds his hand was covered by hundreds of small exotic fish that swarmed to eat the insides of the urchin. The swarm around his hand was a colored, writhing ball at least two feet in diameter.

The diving was great. Our instructor took us over the wall on one of our early dives. We dove to sixty feet where the colors were bright against the white sand. Large coral outcroppings dotted the sand. Our instructor took us over the wall one at a time. We faced the wall, his hand on our elbow, and sank to 100 feet. As we sank the colors faded leaving only the dark blues and reds. At 100 feet we leveled out and turned around to face away from the wall. There was nothing but water, green above where you could barely see light and dark green below with no bottom in sight. I asked our instructor later why he held on to us as he turned us away from the wall and he said that a lot of people panic. That much water, with nothing else to see, viewed while suspended 100 feet below the surface, certainly assured me of my insignificance in the world and I could see how some people would panic.

We also did a wreck dive. The ship was a steel-hulled freighter that was down about 80 feet, tilted slightly on its side. It wasn’t a large ship, only about 180 feet long, and there was a large jagged hole in the starboard bow, just below what used to be the ship’s waterline. We couldn’t go inside the ship but swam along the side of the ship, level with the outer passageways, and circled around the bridge. There was a light growth of algae all over with some tendrils of seaweed streaming in the current. It was an eerie scene, looking at the abandoned ship where people once worked and lived.

We would hang out at the Sunset House Tiki Bar at night. The bar faced west and we could watch the sun set into the gulf. A few drinks, a bite to eat and it was back to Irma’s to sleep in the sandy sheets. I rented a moped for a week and used that to cruise the sea road looking for good places for food and a glass of beer.

I had lunch with a bank manager one day and he told me stories of the men who fly in from Miami carrying briefcases full of cash for deposit in his bank. They were big men he said, well dressed, usually sporting pinky rings. They would be searched at Customs to ensure that they were not importing guns or drugs but there were no rules about importing cash. They would deposit the money and be back to Miami on the same plan they had arrived on. I asked the banker if he ever suspected that these large sums of cash, twenty to fifty thousand at a time, might have been gained through criminal means. He assured me that each deposit was accompanied with a signed affidavit from the depositor that the money was gained in a legal fashion. It must be true because even criminals would never lie on a signed affidavit.

After two weeks on the Island I started to get restless and I still had lots of vacation money left. I checked with a travel agent for my next stop and she recommended Jamaica so I booked a flight to Kingston for the next morning.

I only had a small carry-on bag with me and was waiting at Irma’s for an airport cab the next morning. An unmarked police car pulled into the sand lot instead. Two detectives got out and asked Irma to introduce them to me. There was a man fitting my description that had been running up bar tabs at local bars and hotels and then skipping out on them. Irma gave them a character reference for me and I claimed innocence. I had been in several of the bars that they listed but had always paid. The lead detective told me not to leave the island until they were done their investigation and they left. And so did I.

Jamaica

Kingston in the late seventies wasn’t a very good idea as a tourist destination. The streets weren’t safe, even in the daylight hours and I never have been much for just hanging around hotels so I decided to leave. My destination was Montego Bay on the north side of the island. I picked up a cab at the hotel and asked him to take me to the bus depot. He told me that he could take me to Montego Bay for only $80 but, being the frugal guy that I am, insisted on a bus. Again, not such a good idea.

He drove me to the central town square where the market was and from where the buses started their routes. We parked and suddenly the daylight was gone. Every window of the cab was covered with hands and faces of the locals getting a good look at the stupid white guy in their market. The driver smirked and asked if I still wanted to take the bus. It being a good day for bad choices I said yes.

He locked me in the cab and went off to find a bus for me. When he returned he told me to keep one hand on my wallet and one hand on my suitcase. He grabbed my arm and pulled me through the crowd. I could feel the locals going through my pockets as I was pulled through the crowd. Anything in them was gone by the time we cleared the crowd. The driver took me to a Volkswagen van parked at the curb and told me that it was the bus to Montego Bay and it would leave when it was full. I threw my bag in the back, thanked him and he left me standing on the side of the road.

I hopped into the bus and sat on the back seat where I could keep an eye on my bag, next to the only other occupant in the bus. He looked at me and told me “Sit in the front, Whitey, it’s a lot safer”. Who was I to argue?

It was hot and humid out so I sat with the window open. I got a lot of angry stares from the people walking the sidewalk and a couple of little kids even spit at me but the scary part was the old guy. I don’t know where he could have been carrying the knife, it looked too big to be concealed in his only clothing, a pair of raggy old shorts, but suddenly he was waving it in my face screaming “White man, you going to die”. And I thought to myself, yes, probably today, probably right here. But the old guy moved on, apparently satisfied that he had scared the crap out of me.

The bus filled up, I paid my $12 and we moved inland, over the mountains to the north shore. We passed a housing project that had started out with good intentions. The concrete structures were terraced into the hillside. The government had given people the back and side walls of the houses with the expectation that the people would build the front wall and roof, thereby buying into the project and having a sense of ownership. None of the houses were completed and most didn’t even have roofs. The unsupported side walls were starting to fall over. The place was a dump even though it was just a couple of years old.

We arrived in the town of Montego Bay in early afternoon. I was met by two large men selling drugs. I declined; they looked at me with suspicion and asked where I was staying. I had no plans but was thinking of looking around for a room to rent and told them so. I got another one of those looks I was getting used to in Jamaica. It was that look that says “Stupid white boy”. They must have decided that I looked stupid enough that I needed help so they led me through some pretty crappy parts of town to the Holiday Inn where they left me shaking their heads as they walked down the street.

It had already been a long day so I checked in to the hotel and went to the hotel Tiki Bar where I was going to save a man’s life.

There I was, standing at the bar, minding my own business. I had my third cold beer on the bar in front of me and I was scanning the beach. The sky was clear blue and it was not but there wasn’t the humidity of Kingston. A man came out of the water and limped over to be bar. He had stepped on a sea urchin and the sole of his foot was filled with the urchin’s spines. The spines had broken off in his skin as he had walked up the beach and all that showed of the spines was thirty or so black dots. The man was in pain.

After we introduced ourselves and Dave had shown me his foot I announced that I could cure him. The SCUBA lessons of the previous week were already paying off. I got a bucket from the bartender, went behind the hut and recycled my earlier beers into the bucket. I talked Dave into sticking his foot into the bucket and the ammonia in the urine went right to work dissolving the quills. After twenty minutes, and three more beer, Dave’s foot didn’t hurt anymore. After a few more beer the quills were disappearing and everyone was feeling better. By that time Dave’s friends had joined us and everyone wanted in on the act and they were keeping the urine in the bucket fresh. After a couple of hours the quills were gone and Dave was healed. For the next two weeks he introduced me as the man who saved his life and he paid for my drinks whenever we were together.

We had the opportunity to go to Negril Beach Village one afternoon. One of the hotel guests was an insurance investigator hot on the trail of an alleged dead man. At least the guy’s wife claimed he was dead and wanted Mutual of Omaha to pay out on the policy. All the investigator needed was one picture of the man breathing and they wouldn’t have to pay. He had trailed the dead guy from Miami to Jamaica and wanted to cruise the little airstrips along the north shore to see if anyone remembered this guy. For some reason, there are lots of little airstrips along the shore road. The air strips didn’t look like much, just a short grass runway, a wind sock and a shelter for the ground crew.

We had lunch at Negril Beach. The resort was famous at the time for its laid back, yet hedonistic, anything goes atmosphere. There are lots of places like that now but this style of resort was different back then. The buffet was good but the lunch time entertainment needed improvement. It was a wet tee shirt contest but the contestants were all in the “not quite ready for prime time” group. The winner was a seventy year old woman who was thoroughly enjoying herself. The stage was a long table right behind and level with the buffet table so it was really hard to ignore the program.

It was on our way back to our hotel that we stopped in the airstrip that proved lucky for our investigator. The agent working the charter desk recognized the dead guy from three days ago. He had chartered an airplane to the Bahamas. The investigator made similar arrangements and left early the next morning.

The area around the hotel was nice but if you left the hotel compound there was always a group of peddlers and beggars to walk through. Drug sales were common. Cute little kids, complete with school uniforms, would ask if there was anything we wanted to leave with them. Shoes and wallets seemed to be their favorite items.

There was a good restaurant just up the road from the hotel that specialized in curried goat. There was even three goats tied up in the yard. One Wednesday they were out of the goat but told us to come back the next day. We came back and there was two goats tied up in the yard and the kitchen had been restocked.

By then I had been on the road for over a month and it was time to go home. Besides, Dave had gone home and I had to buy my own drinks so the money was starting to run low.