I am today just coming back from a week in Jamaica (I am posting this from the airport in Montego Bay.) My first trip to Jamaica, in fact to any Carribean island. And purely thanks to other people who suggested the place and booked the whole thing, I stayed on the south coast of the island, at Treasure Beach, a place which is just beginning to be discovered. It is important, when you are a certain kind of traveler—one who likes, say, hot water, people who are used to dealing with clueless travelers, and someone who can sell you sunscreen if you forgot it—to not stay in a place that is yet ‘undiscovered.’ Undiscovered is beautiful. Undiscovered is unspoiled. Undiscovered is often inexpensive. Undiscovered is also likely to leave you standing outside the place you planned to stay only to discover that it is off season, closed and they didn’t take credit cards. When I was 29, I was intrepid. I am not so much anymore. But Treasure Beach is, in fact, discovered, but not yet actually built up. Which means that the place where we stayed could sell us sunscreen, and really really good pina coladas (a drink I had hitherto disdained) but that otherwise we were just in a Jamaican town without much industry intent on fleecing us.

I intended to attack where we were like Anthony Bourdain in No Reservations. I would eat the local specialties, search the local markets, try fruits I wouldn’t recognize in a grocery store. But faced with a market, I could only bring myself to buy spices and limes. Ackee turned out to be mildly poisonous unless it was ripe, and looking at it, I didn’t know what parts were edible. (Ackee, when fried, has a look and consistency very like scarmbled eggs.) And soursop did not look even remotely like it was edible. Not as off-putting as avocado, it was none-the-less formidable.

But I did have one culinary adventure which does feel to me worthy of Bourdain, or at least of part of a magazine article on Jamaica. One morning all fourteen of us trailed down to the beach where a long, open, wooden-hulled fishing boat waited in the shallow water. A extremely patient middle-aged man, thick-set and gray haired, helped us into the boat. I’m 5’ 4” and the boat was built for the ocean, which meant, among other things, that the sides were high.  They don’t look high in the photo, and maybe if someone else more limber were climbing in, they would not be, but for me, getting into the boat was an abject lesson in my own middle-aged inadequacies. That I did not end up in the bottom of the boat is testament to something, I’m just not sure what. We motored west along the coast. The houses on this part of the coast are mostly owned by the Jamaican middle-class professional. Doctors, lawyers, businessmen. They build a place, spend some time in it themselves, rent it out to friends and acquaintances. The houses are in vivid Caribbean colors—turquoise, scarlet, canary, deep blue. We came to a spit of land and 400 feet out was a rather precarious looking building. We motored slowly past it. If Waterworld were a Tarzen movie filmed in Jamaica, this would be a set. A kind of treehouse on the water, built on a sandspit and reef. The Pelican Bar serves Red Stripe, the local Jamaican beer. And if you bring them a fish, they’ll fry it up for you.

Our intrepid major domo/butler/tour guide Damien called across the water and told the fisherman we wanted fish for lunch for fourteen. The vegetarian said, thirteen and one vegetarian. Several non-fish eaters piped up that they were suddenly vegetarian, too. Ten fish lunches and four vegetarian. One o’clock. Much laughter. And then we turned and went up the Black River to look for crocodiles.

We saw crocodiles. Crocodiles on the Black River eat fish, and really don’t much care for people. Like alligators in Louisiana, these crocs mostly stayed really still and hoped we would go away. (We, of course, motored close and took digital photos. When I get home I will say to Bob, ‘See all that mangrove? There’s a croc in there. You can sort of see him.’) The crocs laid there thinking hard at us, ‘Log. Just a log. Nothing to see here. These are not the crocs you’re looking for.’ We stopped at the town of Black River. The we got out of the boat. I did not fall on my face, but other than that, the experience is best passed over. We went to the market where I learned I am easily intimidated by trying to buy foreign food without price tags.

Then back to the boat, where I did fall, but not on my face and I only got a little wet. Then off to the Pelican Bar.

Then out of boat onto a stair made of irregularly spaced tree branches. The Pelican Bar could not exist in the US. It breaks building codes that most of us don’t even know exist. No handicapped access. No access for not handicapped but not agile people who have to climb out of boats. Only pride got me to climb out of the boat, barefoot and holding my shoes, clutch the railing and make my awkward way up to the door.

Inside was a fire hazard over the ocean. The Pelican Bar is a treehouse with stilts instead of tree branches and water all around. No tables, just some low benches along the wall. There’s a kind of hut-like structure that serves as a kitchen and bar. Lunch was cooked in frying pans stuck on top of braziers full of coals. But the fish, snapper, was incredibly fresh. Fish an hour old served with rice and vinegar cabbage and cold beer. The skin of the fish was crispy and bronze, the flesh white and clean and almost sweet. I meant to take a photo of the dinner, served on a styrofoam plate but forgot and ate it instead.

It was a magical travel moment, one of those very rare moments in travel that really make it worth going through airport security. I have had a handful of magical meals in my life, but somehow, most of the time travel meals, so filled with promise, are not. We ate very very well the entire week we were in Jamaica. But this is one of those most extraordinary moments where I could have eaten this food, this very good food, no where else. It was even okay to fall back into the boat to go back to where we were staying.