Port Antonio, Jamaica
Port Antonio can be found on the north-eastern coast, about 100 km from the capital, Kingston. The town is surrounded by some of the most rugged and beautiful scenery in all of Jamaica. It is the island's third largest port, and famous as a shipping point for bananas and coconuts. You have just got to love the idea of a tropical island featuring bananas and coconuts, don’t you?
Apparently, Port Antonio was a sleepy coastal town up until the 1880s, when the banana trade took off in Jamaica and Port Antonio began to be promoted as a destination for wealthy American travellers. It is claimed that the banana trade, coupled with the tourists who came in the banana boats, was once so large that weekly sailing from Port Antonio was greater than weekly sailing from the port of Liverpool. Of that, I am somewhat sceptical, but it’s still a nice story.
In the wettest, greenest parish in Jamaica, known for its many rivers and waterfalls, Port Antonio was the model of paradise for Hollywood for some time, and it became the playground for royals, movie stars, musicians, and eminent politicians. The arrival of film star (and fellow Tasmanian), Errol Flynn only added to the lustre. He actually went out and purchased ‘Navy Island’, the eighteenth century base of the British Navy in Port Antonio. Yet although it was once at the centre of Jamaican tourism, the region has since been eclipsed by Montego Bay, Ocho Rios, and Negril.
In the middle of town, it is said that you can still see the Jamaica of old. This small, bustling town is like many in Jamaica: clean though ramshackle, its sidewalks surrounding a market filled with vendors, tin-roofed shacks compete with old Georgian and modern brick and concrete buildings. One of the more popular sites in this area is the Blue Lagoon, which owes its colour to its depth of 200 feet, whether or not two shipwrecked young people are there, exploring their own burgeoning sexuality, remains unknown.
Another point of interest for me is in the “Windward Maroons”, who fled into the hills around Port Antonio to escape slavery. In the remote high-altitude hinterlands of Jamaica, the Maroons waged a successful guerrilla campaign for a full eighty years before the British found and destroyed their settlements. It wasn't until 1739 that Quao, the Blue Mountain Maroon leader signed a peace treaty with the British, granting the Maroons some form of autonomy and independence, which they still enjoy today. The most legendary of the Maroons was Queen Nanny, although not much is known about her. She was said to possess magical powers. According to tall tales, she kept a cauldron bubbling day and night without benefit of fire, to boil alive any British soldier who tracked her down.
I want to go, baby or no baby.
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