If you MUST drive this road in Bluefields, Westmoreland then whatever you do…..DON’T forget to hang onto the tool that keeps your car running!!
Let me explain.
One random day we were hanging out at a bar in Bluefields, Westmoreland and we coincidentally ran into a family from Edmonton, so close to where we’re from back in Canada. Long story short they invited us for dinner to the guest house where they were staying and of course, we were delighted! So my friend and I followed them and the guest house owner on what now ranks in my top 10 most ridiculous Jamaican roads! The place they were staying is called Shafston guest house, which I will write about in another post, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why anyone would voluntarily live up there LOL!
I regret that I didn’t get any daylight video of the twenty minute drive up to this place but it’s probably better I don’t relive those moments anyway. There was an actual part in the road where the rocks were so big and so loosely packed that I was just sitting in a pile of large rocks spinning my wheels. But I did video my drive back down long after dark. God forbid anything goes wrong on this “road” after dark.
Now watch the video below and then I’ll tell you what did go wrong.
Trust me, that was the extreme short version of getting the hell off that mountain. The car I rented from Budget Car Rental was kind of like a space ship – it started by pushing a button inside so no key was required on this amazing 2016 unit. However, the car does come with a security FOB that needs to be near the car at all times to prevent theft. If the car is driven away without the FOB it kills the engine when you reach a certain distance. A tip I had to learn in Jamaica of all places lol.
So anyway, you can see what the road and the darkness looked like in the video. You can barely see a road, never mind a place to turn around on that poor excuse for a road. About ten minutes and a good distance into our descent down the hill my phone rang several times and each time I tried to answer it no one was there. It was annoying because I was already white-knuckling behind the wheel. I rejected the call several times so I could concentrate but the person wouldn’t stop calling so I got Brenda to answer it. It was the owner of the guest house yelling at us to stop because the FOB that keeps our car running is back at the top of the mountain with him. I almost died because there was NO WAY I was going to attempt turning around to go back up for it, despite his urges for me to come back.
If you ever wanted to hear a grown woman beg, I politely pleaded for him to come down and find us. The dude lives there and drives that road every day. I felt like it was his duty lol.  So he told us to stay right where we were and someone would come down.
To my embarrassment he sent down his 14 and 16 year old sons in his car to bring my FOB to me. But listen, those kids were probably born up there….I was born in Canada, the land of pavement. But it was still embarrassing watching these two kids in my rear-view mirror maneuver a full 8-point turnaround and head back up the mountain. Ugh.
By the way, the actual reason the FOB was left at the top of the hill is because the guest house owner reversed my car out of a tight spot before we left. So he actually forgot to give it back to us.
The lesson in this story?  Tape the FOB of your 2016 push-button car to your body somewhere. That’s all I can think of.
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