Visiting Negril and Spring Garden; Whitehouse, Jamaica - Day 3

We got up early and Carol had cut us up some fresh fruit for breakfast.  What a wonderful treat. You have never had such sweet pineapple or such succulant papaya until you’ve eaten it in fresh in Jamaica. After breakfast, we put Linda in our little car with us and took off toward Negril.

We went to Spring Garden first, met Lynette at Tracy’s house, introduced Linda, and had a nice “likkle” chat.  Tracy came up to the house to see us, and then our friend Shorty came over, too.  We were so glad to see our friends!  We went to check out the building progress of Lynette’s new house, which appears to be almost finished.  We talked to Tracy about building in Jamaica, all the things he has learned, about how to get water from the spring, what kind of pump to use, how big of a water tank to have, etc.  He also shared quite a bit with us about the property that we wanted to look at again: Rick’s place next door.

Eventually we made our way over to Rick’s property. Bruce drove Linda over in the car while Lynette and I walked.  Shorty has done quite a bit of trimming and cleaning up of the drive and some of the surrounding areas since we were here last.  The property is still a mess, but Bruce and I still felt the same sense of peace there back in secluded Spring Garden.  While we were walking around, Jeff Citrin tried to call us again.  Bruce answered and tried to talk to him, but there wasn’t a good signal in the valley, so we told him that we would call him back. He has no idea that we are here and we comment how ironic it is that he is trying to call us while we are in Jamaica.

Bruce and I got busy drawing, measuring and taking pictures of the larger main building. Finally, we went back over to Lynette’s place to say good bye. Shorty shimmied up a tree and cut down some huge coconuts for us.  Linda raved and raved about how good they were.  We drank the coconut milk and ate out the meat while we drove in to Negril.

We stopped at our favorite local restaurant, Sweet Spice,  for lunch and treated Linda.  We came to this place on the recommendation of some American friends we had met here before, and we just loved it.  The peppered chicken is amazing.  After lunch, we drove over to the Yoga Center to see if we could find Rachel Citrin who owns the original property in Negril that we had come to see on our last trip.  We learned that she wasn’t going to be back to Negril until a few days after we had gone home.  But while we were there we got internet service in the car and I received an email from Nicola who said that Richard would meet us at the church.  So, off we went.

He wasn’t there when we arrived, but he did come back a few minutes later.  We had a nice visit with him for about an hour.  We exchanged ideas and contact information.  We really like him and feel like we are going to be partnering up with them in the future.  After he had to leave to pick up his daughter, Bruce and I took a walk along the beach to find Tony’s wood carving shop to say hello and buy a gift or two.  While we were walking along the beach, Jeff Citrin called back.  Bruce talked to him for quite a while.

The first thing Jeff said was that his mom, Rachel, loves our ideas and our vision and wants us to have her property at Spring Garden.  They are not ready to just donate the property to us but they are going to stop actively trying to sell it until we are ready to do something with it.  Bruce and Jeff talked for a long time.  We never did find Tony and eventually needed to turn around to pick up Linda.

We stopped at the craft market to find a rug that Linda was having made for her but it wasn’t ready yet.  Then we pulled in to a bakery to buy a cake for Miss Carol.  We didn’t know it, but it was her birthday!  In Jamaica, birthdays aren’t always celebrated the way that we do in the United States. Linda really wanted to make Carol’s day special.  We picked out just the right cake and then started on the hour long drive back to Whitehouse.

We dropped the cake off at Z Bar Restaurant on the outskirts of town and went back to the house to pick up Carol to take her out.  She wanted hamburgers and french fries as her birthday dinner so the rest of us followed suit. We ate right on the ocean. It took forever to get the food but we watched a nice sunset and had a good dinner. Since the special cake was already there, it was a big surprise for Carol.  She was very happy and certainly felt loved and appreciated.