When in Rome right?! It’s no secret that weed is to Jamaica like what champagne is to France so why not indulge in all the country’s famous “high”lights.
When I visit a new place, I prefer an as authentic, but safe, experience of where I am as possible. So after porting in Jamaica, we bypassed the swarms of people loading into tour buses and hired a taxi for the day. Our driver’s name was Stone. He had to be pushing 60, was as skinny as a rail and spoke with a thick, beautiful Jamaican accent. 100 bucks and he was ours for the day.
Within 5 minutes we had some electric lettuce. Nate gave Stone $10 bucks and told him we wanted to try the Jamaican smoke but on our way through a seedy alley a guy selling Red Stripes 2 for $5 hooked us up with a spiff. Oh Stone was mad! “Ya don’t just buy weed from anyone mon!” he rebuked. We should’ve just let him get it, maybe we would have ended up with better quality stuff but oh well.
Jamaicans drive on the “wrong” side of the road. Stone was an incredibly careful, and slow, driver. He took us through, what should have been, an affluent neighborhood but nearly half of the houses were either abandoned or had been stopped mid construction. He pointed to concrete homes, all in various states of finish, and told us how they were being built for drug dealers. When they got busted the construction just stopped. Many of the houses had crude, makeshift scaffolding still up. All of the occupied homes, however, were beautiful. Either a caribbean coral or yellow stucco with white for trim and had mature orange or mango trees in the front yard. High up on the hill through the half-beautiful and half-tradgic neighborhood he stopped the little van and we got out to have that smoke.
The weed wasn’t great. It was just schwag and there was no pride in the craftsmanship of the joint. It had been either rolled too tight or hadn’t been broken up. I took 2 hits and got nothing from it. Nate smoked 1/2 the joint so he was feeling it but I think that was a case of quantity over quality. “High Nate” is probably my favorite version of him. I love him regardless but he’s so funny and carefree and even a little goofy. I love seeing him like that because he’s usually so composed and calculated.
Can you really say you went to Jamaica if you don’t see Montego? I think not! There is litterally no better vibes than relaxing on Montego Beach in the hot sun, drinking Red Stripe beers, eating Jerk Chicken and listening to the DJ blast Shaggy while a thick Jamaican woman with the longest braids I’ve ever seen teaches a handful of 60 year old white women how to twerk. Definitely the most random day but also one of the coolest as well.
