Wickets, Overs, Bowlers, and the White Witch

Two weekends ago (August 23) one of the coaches that Margaret is tutoring in exercise physiology decided that it was time to go on a day trip to a part of Jamaica we hadn’t visited. So on Sunday morning we took off at 8 am (scheduled for 7am) and headed to the south shore to a place named Alligator Pond…the beach was called Little Ochi (named after the north shore town of Ochi Rios). The beach was pleasant, not crowded and different in that the sand was black…the picture attached to this blog doesn’t really show the color very well but believe me it was black. After an hour or so beach walk, some lazy Sunday morning lounging and some wonderful shrimp and Red Stripe for lunch we ventured back on a little different course and stopped off in Mandeville (a town nestled up in the mountains and always cooler than wherever else we’ve been) to take in a cricket match.

I will not bore you with the details of the match except for a few common-like features that were similar to baseball. It really didn’t matter who the match was between…we were trying to decipher which were the offense and the defense because they all wore the same color, except for the umpires. The “pitch” (similar to a baseball field in that it had an outfield and an area that was representative of a diamond – although not a diamond but a rectangular shape) was the playing field. The “bowler” was the counterpart to the pitcher. The main difference with the offense was that there was no such thing as a foul ball…everything hit was in play….and that balls that were hit and rolled past the outfielders and past the limit of the outfield were scored as 4 runs and balls that were hit over the limits of the outfield (like a homerun in baseball) were counted as 6 runs. Anyway we finally got the knack of the game after a couple hours…the winning team won 102 – 101 in a game that had a limit of 15 overs for each team. Each “over” consisted of 6 deliveries by the bowlers of each team. GOT IT?!!!!

Last weekend (Fri) was my birthday. We celebrated by playing two rounds of golf in Kingston and staying in our favorite hotel which had the last of its “summer specials.” It sounds crazy but we were in heaven and enjoyed a king size bed, air conditioning, wonderful Jamaican breakfast buffet, pool, and gym…in a quiet area of Kingston called New Kingston (which BTW is where the Peace Corps office is located). My present from Margaret was six books…I’ve already read 17 books since we landed in Jamaica……that’s essentially a result of no night life after 6pm.
Summer is basically over, just as in the US but you’d never know it with regard to the temperatures….(not like the temps I noticed on the NY channel we get which showed 50s and 60s for nighttime lows near the end of August). Children go back to school after Labor Day, just as in the US, but it’s not called Labor Day here…that was back in May.
We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of our first guests (John and his new girlfriend, Ashley) scheduled for Columbus Day weekend (US). We plan to show them around Chapelton for a day or so and then venture to Negril (the capital of “chill”) in the far west of Jamaica. We’ve not been there yet so it will be an experience for all four of us. They will be treated to Jamaican taxi and minibus transportation on the way. After chilling for two days we will end the long weekend in Rose Hall (Montego Bay) with a round of golf at the White Witch Golf Club…which is named after the ‘White Witch’ of Rose Hall…an old sugar cane plantation back in the 1800’s…Rose Hall is the name of the main house located on the plantation, where the White Witch (Annie Palmer) lived and supposedly murdered three of her lovers (husbands and slave lover)…it was burned down by the slaves during a rebellion and then restored in the mid 1900’s by an Englishman. The course is now located on part of the old plantation grounds and is supposed to be very scenic overlooking the Caribbean on many holes. Johnny Cash’s Jamaican home is very close by on the grounds of Cinnamon Hill Golf Course [it does sound as if we only play golf in JA, trust us, that’s not the case, it’s an escape on the occasional weekends we have nothing to do].
Till next time…walk gud!!!