Pirates of the Carribean

You've heard of one pot screamers, haven't you? Well, we're in a tour group of 13 - three guys and ten women. Five of the ten women are, well let's just say they are past their prime. And today we spent most of the day at Appleton's Plantation and Rum Distillery. Free tasting. Unlimited quantities. 10 different rums to sample. The most potent was 96% proof. To put it kindly, not everyone was used to drinking lots of rum in the morning. More like one thimble screamers really, and by the time we left about 2pm, without having had anything to eat since an early breakfast, the bus was noisy and boisterous.

People suddenly had opinions on all kinds of matters, and people needed our tour guide's help to do things like ring the distillery and see if they could find a phone that had been left behind. "I'm sorry" a voice called from the back of the bus a few minutes later. "I've found it". Not that our tour guide was much better, as she had sat and sculled Rum Punch while we were taken on our tour, but as she succinctly put it, she drinks lots of rum every day, so it doesn't affect her. The driver put on "Greatest Disco Hits of the 80s", and the singing from the back of the bus just added to the atmosphere.

It was actually a very good tour. They have been making rum at Appleton's since 1749, so they know something about it, and make a large variety of styles. We knew nothing about the process, but basically Appleton's have a large sugar cane plantation, and buy up cane from around Jamaica to supplement it. The sugar cane is crushed and spun to separate it into raw sugar and molasses.

We've seen the process from here on in Australia where they refine the raw sugar and sell the molasses, but here in Jamaica they sell the sugar and distill the molasses. They add yeast and then put it through a three stage distilling process to get the rum, which at this point is clear. The rum is then aged in American Oak barrels for a minimum of 3 years, usually it's between 5 and 15 years, but they let the batch commemorating the anniversary of Jamaica's independence age for 50 years. No, you can't afford it.

Batches of different ages and stages are then blended to make up the various labels they sell. Of course the idea after the tour was to taste all 10 labels (well hopefully not the 96% proof one - it's meant to be used in cooking), and choose what you wanted to buy, so there was yet more tasting. The tour guide noted later that there weren't many Australians on our tour - she didn't have to utilise the wheelchair once.

Lunch was a stop at Juici Patties, a chain of Jamaican fast food stores. Basically they are beef (or chicken or shrimp) pies in a pastie-like pastry case, or to put it another way, beef pasties with no vegetables. Very nice, and very cheap. It was 3pm by that stage, but at least the bus quietened down a bit as people got some food into their stomachs.

An hour or so later the bus bumped it's way into Treasure Beach on the far south coast of Jamaica. No pristine sandy beaches here. The rocky cliffs we are faced with outside our door are Pirates of the Caribbean stuff. Jack Sparrow country. The pirate ships called these remote coves home, as they plundered the Spanish ships trying to get all their loot home from the conquered countries of south and central america. There was even a large saltwater crocodile sunning itself on the river bank, so you had to be real keen to try to pursue them here.

We have a room overlooking the rocky cliffs and the ocean, and considered ourselves very lucky, until we realised that everybody had a similar room, so we are all very lucky.

The town of Treasure Beach is a just a small hamlet really. No ATM, and only a mini mart, so this is the remote, unspoilt Jamaica of the postcards. No touts, and they don't even bother password protecting the wifi. Mind you it's hurricane season too, and there's absolutely nothing protecting us from the south where the hurricanes form, so it would be a mixed blessing for the locals. Ate in the hotel restaurant, as there's little choice.