All those thousands of tiny fish, so little time.
For breakfast I had the porridge, callaloo, and roasted tomato combo again. While eating I spied a couple of yellow-crowned night herons fly over the beach, so I tiptoed my way around them to get a shot with the sun to my back.
We were scheduled to move rooms today, from a lagoon cottage to a beach villa. We were not sure if we'd have to stow our luggage or if we could just move straight to the room, so we walked up to the main office to chat with the concierge about the move. There I saw the entrance driveway which leads to Ian Fleming's house, and a massive banyan tree. I'll be returning to photograph it properly, but I did notice this branch of the banyan had cut across another tree, which in turn grew around the expanding trunk.
G and I called this "Nom-Nom Tree"
In order to make the move smooth, we needed to re-pack our stuff to make it transportable. We worked on that for a bit, then waited for the new room to be available. I took advantage of the down time to wander the property a bit with my lensball and DSLR
This is on the edge of the property
There is a large field called the "playscape" which has a firepit surrounded by stone seating and tall, grassy-looking flowers.
On my walk I spotted an photographed a bananquit, one of my favorite Caribbean birds.
The clouds were thickening and I felt a few sprinkles, so I made my way back to the cottage, where I spotted a lizard hanging out on the bench.
Fabulous lizard is fabulous.
We called over to the office to let them know we were ready to have our luggage picked up, and found out that the new room was ready for us to move right into, so we waited just a bit longer to drop our luggage before heading to lunch.
A quick tour of the new villa:
The full kitchen is off to the side of the living room
Living room area is on a lower level, the couch doubles as G's bed (and unlike other places we've been, this is an actual spring mattress, not a futon mat)
The bedroom is up three steps, separated by a thick curtain
The wall is open to the bathroom/tub area, water closet is through the little door on the left
Standing at my bedside looking back towards the curtain, the length of the wall houses a long and sturdy desk.
one of the front porch seating areas
The other side of the porch
Looking out to the main beach, the rain is picking up again
The whole back yard is the shower
After dropping off our bags, we walked across the beach to Bizot for lunch
I had the snapper with veggies and rice & peas again
The rain continued to come in waves all afternoon. During a brief break the water off the beach seemed really calm, so D and I floated in it for a bit, but as I'd had such a large lunch I just couldn't swim for long. It began to rain more anyway, so we headed in to shower up. It was interesting to shower while it was raining, and this yard has more birds in it than the last one... so every so often I would be startled by the sound of fluttering wings above my head.
D headed to the bar to find a game of dominoes, I sat on the porch to read. I ended up dozing off to the sound of the ocean waves.
We had a pretty laid back afternoon and evening, staying out of the rain in either the villa or at the bar. We decided to venture off property for dinner, and there were several suggestions to go to Chris's Cafe in Oracabessa.
The wall of the restaurant
The stairs to the terrace seating
It was this, plus one other occupied table.
The salad was refreshing: cucumber, carrot, tomato, and pineapple with a simple oil/vinegar dressing (similar to a cucumber salad at a Thai restaurant) D and G each had some fried chicken, the rice and peas were good, the curry shrimp was great, but the lobster (brown dish bottom right) was bad. Not unpleasant, but spoiled. D only had one bite, I only smelled it after he ate it. The ammonia smell actually burned my nose.
While most of the rest of the dinner was pretty enjoyable, the lobster part put a bit of a damper on the experience. We took the opportunity to stop at a grocery store for some snacks and headed back to the room. We were all quite honestly feeling a bit off-color because of the dinner, and after a bit of soda water and ginger cookie, I headed off to bed.
Today (April 12) has dawned bright and sunny, and my stomach seems to have recovered alright, so I'm off to find some Blue Mountain coffee.
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