'Walk Good' is an adventure travel story chronicling the experiences of the author in Negril, Jamaica. It's an escape to the sunny beaches, the seas and the mountain back roads of the island. The culture of the island, including the food, the music, a smattering of history and the character of the people form the backdrop of the story.
Walk Good, a Jamaican colloquialism, means 'have a safe and comfortable trip'. Come on along!
Ride the bus on the infamous long and bumpy road from Montego Bay to Negril. Take in the sights, sounds and smells along the way, enjoy the rustic beauty of the roadside villages. Lassive, our driver, deftly directs our bus around the myriad obstacles that are common to Jamaican roads; cows, goats, potholes, big ladies with baskets on their heads and oncoming traffic in our lane. A large boulder careens down an incline from a construction site, just missing the bus, one of the passengers rolls a ganja spliff and passes it around.
On the beach in Negril we talk to an old minstrel who sings a Bob Marley tune during a glorious Caribbean sunset. We laugh with the vendors who work on the beach, including one tall thin cigarette vendor who looks like The Cat in the Hat (Cigarrrreeeeeettts!). In a small I craft stall we come face to face with Reddie Freddie, a wooden carving common in Jamaica that features a little man with colossal erect penis and a big smile pasted across his woody face. A bartender in a run-down shack of a bar introduces us to a local drink called Joncrobatty, which literally translated means 'Buzzard's Ass'. The drink lives up to its name. Observe the hilarious stumblings of the debauched neighbors, we call them 'The Jerks', that share the room next door. Relax on a sunset cruise on 'Wild Thing', a party boat where a couple of tourist girls have a bit too much from the open bar and do an impromptu strip show. Pose live on the World Wide Web (the camera is mounted on a coconut tree on the beach), taunt work colleagues, tuned in via their desktop computers back in the frozen Canadian tundra. Leslie, one of the chambermaids at the hotel is startled when she finds something unexpected in the bed ("I t'ought it was a dead mon!"). Experience Negril's night scene, complete with beach bonfires, flares out over the water, live reggae music and an incredible canopy of starts above.
Are you up for a wedding on the beach? Join friends and family at the resort where they help my fiancée and I tie the knot. My daughters spot their first real Rastaman, complete with long dreadlocks and carrying a large ganja bud. The wedding is on the beach just before sunset in an idyllic setting, we dine in the slanting rays of the setting sun beneath the thatched canopy of a seaside restaurant. Our honeymoon is at the notorious Hedonism resort in Negril. It's a no-holds-barred, full-tilt adult fantasyland, complete with toga parties, nude hot tubs, wet T-shirt contests and ... well, you'll have to read the book. Take a trip to the north shore of Jamaica, where we arrive after a crazy ride with a wild-man cab driver. Attend a mass nude wedding on the beach on Valentines Day, complete with the media, helicopters overhead and placard carrying protesters. Make the pilgrimage up into the hills to visit the spiritual sanctuary where Bob Marley, Jamaica's legendary reggae music! star, lays. On the way take in the sights in the pastoral rolling countryside. Back at the seaside go for a scuba dive in the crystalline waters of Runaway Bay. Trek up the highway to the famous Dunns River Falls, join in a human-chain and climb the cool cascading waterfalls.
Return to Negril, our little slice of paradise. Feast on a steaming mound of spicy jerk chicken, do battle with a large and Herculean centipede (called 'forty legs' by Jamaicans) that lurks in the bathroom. Encounter a pack of beach dogs, dodge the aloe gel ladies on the beach, who try to rub you down with aloe gel and then charge you after-the-fact. Talk to an old fisherman friend (a Hemingway-esque Santiago) as you peruse his collection of shells and things from the sea. Jump off a 35-foot cliff into the sparkling emerald waters at The Pickled Parrot, a sunset café.
Each chapter of 'Walk Good' is introduced with a Jamaican proverb. There is also an appendix of Jamaican Proverbs, which are pointed and humorous little gems of wisdom that are steeped in the local culture but apply equally as well to Western society.
Roland Reimer lives in eastern Canada with his wife and children. By trade, he is an air traffic controller, having spent his career controlling aircraft and instructing new recruits. Currently, he develops computerized air traffic control systems. He is a licensed pilot and sport parachutist. His interests include sailing, scuba diving, fishing, photography and mountain biking. His love for Jamaica was initially formed on a trip to the island in the mid '70's. Since then he has visited many islands, but always returns to Jamaica, just because it feels like home. Roland is working on his second book, an adventure novel situated in Montego Bay and, of course, Negril.
