This island—just 3 miles wide at its widest point—is famous for its lobsters that many fisherman here catch by free diving as deep as 60 feet. Sailors like us (we’ve been sailing around the BVI on a Moorings charter Catamaran) make the trip here for the lobsters as well as the spectacular wind-swept beaches.
The advantage here—besides the privacy and the chance to putter in the kitchen yourself—is that you aren’t paying $5 each time a child wants a virgin colada or $15 for the real thing.
Today we are all diving as a family. The Wreck of the Rhone is just off Salt Island in two big pieces 60 to 80 feet down, but there are many smaller pieces.
“That’s part of the adventure,” says my 25 year old daughter Reggie. “It’s not like we’re at a fancy resort where everything is being done for us.”
When it came time to decide on a family trip for my far flung gang—the first time we’d all be together in more than a year—sailing, with some diving included, was everyone’s top pick.
Reggie and I are already imagining our next dive back home in the much colder, kelp-forested waters of Monterey, California — just a couple hours away from our domicile in San Francisco.
No I’m not dreaming of an effortless holiday gathering that could never be real — at least in my world. I’m actually wide awake in Jamaica, enjoying a pre-holiday moms’ getaway with my three oldest friends from grade school at the most unusual all-inclusive resort I’ve ever visited.
I can’ t stop thinking about Delta when we return to our Bluefields Bay villa overlooking the sea served breakfast—a traditional Jamaican concoction of saltfish with vegetables cooked in coconut milk called Rundown.
Wolde Kristos is a man with a mission—and a vision. He hopes to bring the sleepy Jamaican town of Bluefields Bay into the 21st century—tourist wise.
Our driver Percy Baldwin first takes us to the Black River—at 44 miles the longest navigable river in Jamaica. We’re only going to cruise for about an hour down the pristine river where Crocodiles and birds live and mangroves grow.
TakingTheKids