Kittys Place

Thursday 31st December 1987. New Year’s Eve.

We went down to the Post Office in the rain so that Declan could try to ring England. He wanted to call “Ducky” (Karen, pictured with Declan in Cornwall below), the girlfriend he never wanted to see again when he flew out of Britain! The friendly Postmaster promised that the weather would improve but forecast bad winter with temperatures down to 55 Fahrenheit (°F), or 13 Celsius (°C)!

We then set too with our overdue washing (laundry) in the local brown tap water. The coffee in Jayls Restaurant is great, strong Nescafé from Mexico with cream or condensed milk. The afternoon was spent swinging in a hammock drinking neat rum from the bottle and listening to Ron, the Yankie Canadian rambling on and on.

The locals scurried back and forth on the sandy paths carrying drinks for this evenings New Year celebrations. The weather remained overcast and as dusk fell, we rushed to bring in our drying laundry in a torrential rain shower.

At 18:30 hrs we started with a meal in Jayls Restaurant and walked about a mile down the beach, getting a lift for the last mile in a van, to an American woman’s new bar. This was called Kitty’s Place and was a two-storey building with colonial arches and a bar full of ex-patriot Americans.

A local band provided an average musical backdrop and we tanked into the rum and coke. We saw in the New Year 1988 and eventually I walked back to Ran’s with Diego. It was pissing with rain and my flip-flop sandals flicked red mud up the back of my legs.

At the lodge I showered off the sand and hung my dripping t-shirt out to dry on Declan’s hammock. The others came back, having got a lift, and a late-night firecracker raid almost ended in Declan and Diego coming to blows. Happy New Year!