Our first port of call was the island of Jamaica. We had done some research and were armed with notes of other birders who had visited the island. Because of our short stay here we knew we would not be able to see all that we wanted but tried to make the best of the two days we had. We decided to rent a car and explore the area around Montego Bay where our ship was docked. Renting the car was easy but the actual driving was not.
Jamaican cars are right-hand drive owing to the fact that their driving lanes are reversed.
This took some getting used to but it was not the main problem. While maps are available, roads are generally not marked and we often had no idea where we were going. The roads are also not in the best shape being narrow with no shoulders and traffic in and near the city was heavy. Nevertheless we had no particular problems and found most of the places that we wanted to visit. The book that we had brought with us, Bond's Birds of the West Indies proved to be more frustrating than helpful as it covered such a large area and had too few drawings, many of which were in useless black and white.