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Port Antonio: Green Peace

Portland is country Jamaica. The parish seat of Port Antonio lies 60 miles over the Blue Mountains from Kingston but exists in a warp of 60-or maybe 100-years ago. Mento bands still play the old licentious calypsos. Old-timers talk about duppie (ghost) haunts and about the widow Flynn who, they whisper, feeds crocodiles to keep intruders off the Errol Flynn Estates.

Port Antonio is one of the remote, poor, and beautiful places of the world. Capital is scarce. Those who have it are mostly expats from overseas who come to escape winter in luxury. Ambition, when it shows up, stands out in quirky relief. The region unfolds like a board game of castles and palaces, of intrigue and flamboyance along the enduring landscape.

Beautiful as it is, country can sometimes be a pain. You can find yourself, as I recently did, on the receiving end of an argument with a hotel clerk who insisted that I'd shown up for my hotel room a day early. Right or wrong, what I wanted to hear was that, there or elsewhere, I would have a room for the night.

Chalk that behavior up to the leftovers of British rule. Portlanders can get notoriously defensive about their authority, little of which ever got passed around. What pittance found its way ashore prefers to go unchallenged.

But the British thing can charm as well. Portland remains one of those places where locals continue to lavish genuine affection on the Royals.

That's because the recent colonial past was a lot more reassuring than today is. Port Antonio a hundred years ago prospered from growing bananas until disease ravaged the crop in the '20s. Following the Second World War, Port Antonio re-emerged as a tourist center. The town claims it was the birthplace of tourism in Jamaica from the time tourists began arriving on the early banana ships.

No doubt, swashbuckling actor Errol Flynn played a role in luring visitors to the region. Flynn first laid eyes on Port Antonio when his yacht was blown off course during a hurricane back in the 1940s. He fell in love with the lush, green countryside. Flynn soon bought property there (including Navy Island in the harbor and the Titchfield Hotel) and hosted lavish parties attended by Hollywood notables-and his requisite stream of lady friends.

By the 1960s, on the verge of Jamaican independence (1962), 30,000 visitors a year toured this beautiful resort coast while their cruise ships docked in the picturebook harbor. Each winter saw the return of the rich and famous. Many of the area's monied visitors came by yacht. Others chartered the fleet of pleasure boats permanently based at Blue Lagoon. There and at nearby Boston Beach, international-style restaurants attracted the colony of potentates, industrialists, and celebrity writers who, when they weren't ensconced in their villas, took their exercise climbing up and down the hilly fairways of the San San resort area's nine-hole golf course. Locals enjoyed shops, a cinema, and a railroad that carried them to Kingston.

It's no surprise that portraits of the Windsors still hang in living rooms as they do. But British reserve soon gives way to down-home friendliness. Portlanders are inherently rootsy and they delightfully engage visitors.

People vacation around Port Antonio because of the natural beauty-and because of the Portlanders who are themselves so much a part of that natural beauty. And they often return, for the serenity of its crescent and cove beaches and to get in touch with a place that endlessly pleases by displays of kindness and perseverance. Certain attractions are a must for visitors to Port Antonio, like bamboo rafting on the Rio Grande. Rafting, which began as a labor-saving way to carry bananas to Boundbrook Wharf, was adapted for people pleasure by Errol Flynn, that devotee of all things pleasurable. Little has changed, but today's rafters will find entrepreneurs who wade into the crystal-clear water and greet rafts carrying chilled bottles of Red Stripe beer, and who cater entire meals while you swim in some heavenly cove in the glow of unimaginable brochure indulgence.

A newer attraction combines falls, caves, and a dose of adventure. Valley Hikes offers explorers everything from two- or three-hour jaunts along the Rio Grande and its tributaries up to Scatter Water Falls and Foxes Caves to five-day treks through remote areas of the Blue Mountains. Watercress grows in a stream and can be carried off, tied with plucked hog meat vine. The path is strewn with fallen apples. Cows along the way provide direct fertilization, as you discover, sometimes ruefully.

Not only does Valley Hikes introduce visitors to Portland's natural beauty, but it is also working to ensure that the region will be preserved for generations to come. Launched in 1995, it has received strong support from PEPA (Portland Environmental Protection Association). PEPA is one of the first volunteer organizations in Jamaica dedicated to environmental protection.

Like elsewhere in Jamaica and the rest of the Caribbean, the region around Port Antonio provides plenty of sun, sand, and sea. Yet it's the town's social richness-however paradoxical that might sound in the face of near poverty-that so satisfies vacationers who want to return home with more than sun tans and a few extra pounds.

Anywhere in town is safe for walking. Beggars are fewer than banks, though for sure, vendors in the traditional Musgrave Market rely on persistent pleas to draw you to their wares. More upscale shopping is now available at the Village of St. George shopping center, as hotelier and developer Sigi Fahmi calls her architectural pastiche where the old cinema used to be. The best of the new upscale shops sells Rasta jewelry and art, where the familiar icons of Jamaica's indigenous faith find polished expression.

That said, Fahmi's building is more interesting than most of the shops, juxtaposing every architectural style that has had any connection with Jamaica. The three-story bazaar beside the 19th-century Georgian and Queen Anne parish building shocks as a kind of theme park intrusion. The town of Port Antonio is shabby but utterly beautiful beneath its grime. West Street is narrow but perfectly proportioned for the buildings alongside with their ornamental iron balconies, fretwork, and bracketing. Overhangs are galvanized and beautifully blue. Virtually every sign in town is hand-painted. There are no chain stores, there is no sameness.

The Anglican Church stands with its doors open, entered between bushes of colorful bougainvillaea. An elderly cleaning lady in the aisle between the scroll-end pews sweeps her straw broom across the cut stone floor.

The church is 155 years old, the organ 87, or so the 86-year-old organist, Eric Aaron, tells me. He asks what nationality I am. I say American. Oh, he says, I will play some American music for you.

He closes his ancient Anglican hymn book and plays Edelweiss. As he works his stops, a netsuke bobs up and down on a tensioned string. He offers another and plays The Happy Wanderer. While he pumps out his Fal-de-ris and Fal-de-rahs, the cleaning lady claps her hands and dances with her broom.

Posted online 05/01/97.

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