Travel / Jamaica

We Were Lost. And That’s the Whole Point.

One last lap around the backwoods of Jamaica

There was only one thing left for me yesterday before leaving Jamaica, the place I’ve lived for the last fifteen months. Well, two, if you count the last jerk chicken and Red Stripe feed which I have planned for later on today.

There are four working rum distilleries in Jamaica (Appleton, Worthy Park and the Clarendon distillery which makes Mony Musk). I had been to two of these and wrote about the experience at one of them below. Before I left I wanted to find my way to the Hampden Estate in the Queen of Spain Valley in Trelawny Parish, and sample some of their rums in a cool, green valley while the tropical breeze licked my skin.

I enlisted the able services of my long-time friend, Andrew. We’ve known each other since we swam up and down pools as kids and later, became good friends doing the same thing in college. He’s lived in Montego Bay for twenty-plus years and his local knowledge is immeasurable in terms of people, flora, fauna and just finding a way to do things. In short, he knows his way around.

Or so I thought.

The quick beer on the old highway that once hugged the north coast but is now mostly overgrown and populated by makeshift bars was the easy part. It occurred to me that I’ve spent the last seven years in countries (Colombia, Tanzania and Jamaica) in which life is often lived in makeshift fashion by many people out of necessity. I say this without a shred of looking down my nose at this reality at all, but with an immensity of respect for how people can just make it work with what they have. I am returning to a place that is decidedly unmakeshift and I wonder what impact this will have on me.

Yes, I know that’s not a word. You’ll either have to indulge me or pretend I’m Shakespeare.

From there it was onto roads of declining quality, pushing further into Trelawny Parish. It’s not the poorest of Jamaica’s thirteen parishes, but it’s one of them. There is plenty of makeshift to go around and it only adds to the beauty of the place. GoogleMaps will only get you so far in this part of the world. It is better, seated comfortably in a beast of an air-conditioned 4x4 to try roads that you think might get you there, the ones that don’t appear online just yet, the ones that exist in memory. And when that fails, then there is almost always someone walking on the road who knows the area like the back of their hand and is happy to help. And have a chat. It’s never just a short explanation, there’s always a chat involved.

Twists and turns and bad roads that just end, and getting lost is a part of it. In fact, for me, that’s the whole point.

We did eventually find the Hampden Rum Estate. Naturally, it was already closed for the day, gift shop and all. No rum for you, which is a shame because they have quite a range and it is impossible to find in stores anywhere in the country. That was a disappointment for someone who is into rum but falls just short of aficionado. But that’s what you get when you don’t plan ahead or call ahead and make a reservation to let them know you are coming. Sometimes things fall into place and sometimes they don’t.

It’s the things that happen when they don’t that make travelling truly worthwhile after all. And that is a big part of what I will miss about being in this country. The getting lost on the backroads and in the backwoods in Jamaica — and really, if I may get philosophical for a minute, in life — is really where you learn to let go of expectations about how things should be, and instead keep your mind and eyes and heart on the way things are.

GoogleMaps recalibrates when it thinks we’ve gone the wrong way. And it doesn’t tell us. And on we go, on increasingly untenable roads, thinking GoogleMaps knows what it’s doing. Well, it doesn’t and it’s the same thing I learned out in the bush in Botswana. You need to have a few ways of figuring out where you are and how to get where you want to go.

Or none. And that “none”, is a truly liberating feeling.

An approach to life again, if you will.

At one point, in trying to get out of there and find the back route to Andrew’s home which is also in a remote area and on top of a mountain, and following the GPS guidance, we passed a road sign so distinctive that we realized that we had also passed it about 30 minutes prior.

We had gone in a circle.

As a result of relying on faulty intelligence instead of our instinct, we had gone in an almost perfect circle. The initial frustration turned into laughter and the feeling of freedom that can only come with the realization that this is the way it works sometimes.

Yup. There are maps. We should follow them, they know what they are doing. But sometimes it’s better not to follow those maps, guidebooks, ratings, reviews, recommendations, how-tos and top 10s. They may inject us with certainties and guarantees, but they really do suck the joy of discovery and the life out of everything. You might not get the Rum Estate tasting experience that you were looking for. But you might get something better.

Thank you for everything, Jamaica. I will be back.

If you are interested in reading more about my experience in discovering this beautiful country as a foreigner, this article has a series of articles linked to it.

If you are into rum and visiting rum factories around the world in off the beaten track places, take a look at this article about that very topic.