A Trip to Portland, Jamaica

I went to Jamaica this year to visit my sister, a professor at one of the universities there, and it was my second visit to that beautiful country.

Before I arrived, my well-organised sister had researched, booked and paid for all the interesting places we would like to visit.

Bless her, how kind is that!

Our first outing was a day trip to Portland on the north coast, and I was so excited about the trip. Portland is known for its natural beauty, the Blue Lagoon, stunning beaches, lush vegetation, and water rafting. Nonetheless, I was a bit nervous, because I’ve never done water rafting before.

A few days after arriving in Kingston, where my sister lives, we left for Portland in Mr. Foster’s taxi. In Jamaica, people are often very formal unless they know you well enough to address you by your first name. Anyway, my sister hired Mr. Foster’s services for that day.

Portland, about eighty-eight kilometres from Kingston, has fairly good roads, unlike a few countries I’d been to over the years. I sat back in my seat and enjoyed the view from the car window. There were acres and acres of farmlands and lush green fields that seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see. I smiled to myself like a child in a sweet shop and was also very thankful that some of us made it through COVID. It has been a very difficult two years.

As we got closer and closer to Portland, huge hills suddenly began to pop up from nowhere, and they seemed to be closing in around us. We were tiny, like Lego pieces, and the hills, like skyscrapers in Chicago, as they towered over us.

Some minutes later, we were greeted by the most unusual sound I had ever heard. It filled the whole vehicle. I asked my sister what it was, and she said it was crickets.

Cricket? I said to myself, but they only came out at night and not in the mornings. I decided to identify where they were. I concluded that a lush green hill on our right was where the sound came from, and there must be millions of them as well.

Finally, we arrived at the Rio Grande, Portland, which is one of the tourist attractions there. We were fitted with safety vests, and the people there were very friendly and helpful.

Finally, we were ready to go, and as we went round the first corner in our raft, we saw in the distance a line of huge trucks parked on the shore; I wondered what they were doing there until my sister told me that there was an Illegal mining taking place.

We watched as one of the trucks crawled towards a digger already in the shallow water on the far left. The digger was illegally digging up tons and tons of sand and stones and tipping them onto the back of each truck. Soon, they would be sold to the building trade for huge profits, regardless of the environmental damage. Further down the river, we saw an old abandoned digger rusting away in the water.

Nevertheless, we enjoyed our day trip in Portland.

 

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