We got up Friday morning and got a cab up to Samsara. Orsi had taken Szof to school with Nav, so it was me and the boys for the day. Pila hailed a cab for us, and we rode into the hills above town to a place called both Ragabones and the Red Dragon. Matt and Kris were in search of the best jerk pork in Negril.
The pork wasn’t quite ready yet (it was around 11), so we got beers and hung out at a table. Kris had mentioned that they had the coldest Red Stripes around, and it was no joke: the bottles iced over instantly.
Atti and I hung out while Matt and Kris went to check on the meat’s progress. I loved the place instantly, because it was covered in stickers from all over the world. Many of them were from Wisconsin, confusingly.
Thankfully, they had a little shop on site for those of us who didn’t eat jerk pork. Matt got me a cheese bun. (That might seem disappointing, but it’s not. The wheat cheese bun is the BEST.)
We took a bunch of pictures there, because of our love for the Red Dragon in Minneapolis. This place wasn’t quite the same, but it was still awesome.
Our cab driver waited for us the whole time, and after lunch took us down to the farm store in town. Kris wanted seeds and a machete. They didn’t have either at that store, so we went further down the road to another one. THEY didn’t have seeds, either, but they definitely had a giant machete.
We took everything back to the hotel, and took this picture to send Orsi, so she was aware of what was going on while she was at school:
Orsi showed up, and the kids went to nap. We changed into bathing suits and went to go snorkel off the cliffs. The visibility was pretty good, and there were blue crabs climbing all over the rocks. Kris saw some eels, too, but I couldn’t find them.
We swam from that spot down to the area where we’d jumped off the cliffs before. Kris managed to find a crowd of tiny jellyfish along the way, and got stung a lot by them. I got a couple stings on my arm, but they weren’t bad. We climbed out of the water, and Kris got vinegar from the bar to put on his stings. Those invisible jellyfish are a bunch of jerks.
We dried off and changed again to head to No Limit. What we learned there is that you can just buy yourself a bottle of Appleton. Byron didn’t have Diet Pepsi, so I ran next door to buy some. I left it at the bar, which made it convenient when we stopped back later.
While we were sitting there, a huge storm erupted. I couldn’t believe how much it rained in half an hour’s time. We waited out the storm with our rum, and Kris’ roots drink.
Once the rain let up a little, we left the kids at the bar (under Nav’s care, not the drinkers) and got a cab to Pushcart for dinner. We got there and found it closed for a private party, so we went to 3 Dives instead. It was still raining a little, and everyone was damp.
The place was mobbed, so I figured it would take forever. We found a spot to sit and drink beer while the men went to order. The food didn’t actually take that long at all, surprisingly. I had a giant vegetarian plate, and ate it with all of the hot sauce in the world.
After dinner, we rode back to No Limit. Kris and Orsi grabbed the kids and went back to the hotel, and Matt and I stayed and ordered another drink from Nav, who was tending bar. (They said they’d never see her do that before, which was funny.) We grabbed a cab back to our hotel, and hung out on the patio for a bit. We went to bed just as Capleton was coming on at Bourbon Beach, so I had trouble getting to sleep from the show echoing down the beach.