Had a long trip in the bus today, some two hours, but it was OK because we had the CD of 'The Carpenters Greatest Reggae Hits' to keep our mind off the tedium as we bumped along.
Basically we travelled east along the south coast of Jamaica from Treasure Beach to the capital Kingston, though this involved climbing up and over the mountain range that stretches the length of the island, giving us some great views of the the countryside, the ocean, and the big bauxite mine in the middle of the island. It's here that the bauxite is dug up and sent to Japan to make aluminium (or aluminum if you are from the US. The confusion over the aluminum/ aluminium spelling arose because the person who first isolated the element in 1808, called it alumium. For some reason he thought better of that and changed it to aluminum four years later. Americans dutifully adopted the new term, but many British users disliked aluminum, pointing out that it disrupted the -ium pattern established by sodium, calcium and strontium, so they added a vowel and syllable and called it aluminium. Don't say I never teach you anything).
Our major stop of the day was at the Bob Marley museum on the outskirts of Kingston. A bit like Graceland really, it was the home that Marley bought in the capital after he had become famous, and is now full of memorabilia from his career, and rooms depicting his lifestyle. Bob Marley was certainly a talented, successful and influential musician, but it didn't hurt his popularity to be a marijuana smoking, dreadlock adorned Rastafari musician who became successful in the flower power days of the 70s.
Bob, according to his offical website, had eleven children, or twelve if you believe the museum, some with his wife and the rest with six other women. However, don't feel too sorry for his wife. Apparently she had kids with three other guys besides Bob, so it was all very chummy. However, all this pales into insignificance compared to his band leader 'Family Man' Barrett who has acknowledged 41 children. Bob's mother also married his lead guitarist's father so everybody gave up trying to draw the family tree and decided to concentrate on the music.
Surviving a shooting at his home, Bob later died of cancer in May 1981 at the age of 31. It's hard to know just how many albums he has sold, as the number probably climbs every day, but suffice to say that his greatest hits album has gone 15x platinum (or is that platinium?) Like Che Guevara before him, he has become an endlessly merchandised cult icon, and the smiling benevolent image we have of him today is far different to the angry kid from the shanty town of his childhood, but his music certainly left a legacy that will live on for a long time.
After a stop at the bank, the chemist, the supermarket, the money exchange, and the ice cream parlour (tour groups take for ever sometimes), we finally arrived at our Kingston hotel, which is more like a conference centre with lots of outlying buildings set around the property rather than a conventional hotel.
Mandy and I walked around the streets of Kingston near to our hotel after we had settled in and purged the room of mosquitos. Whilst the suburb we are in is meant to be a high class suburb, it's typical of most cities and large towns where there is a great divide between the rich and the poor. We are back to a suburb with big gates, high fences, razor wire and snarling dogs.
Had dinner at the hotel restaurant. The food was nice but the service was a shambles. Suffice to say that the Cuba airport delivered our bags quicker than it took the bar to deliver our drinks order.
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