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| Nine Mile, the home of the Bob Marley tour. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Winding our way up a potholed road into the embrace of these remote green mountains in northern Jamaica, up the 60 kilometres from Ocho Rios to Nine Mile, the birthplace and final resting place of reggae megastar Bob Marley. The route, which takes us high into the Jamaican hills and through tiny villages, is less touristy and more beautiful than I could have imagined. Marley, a celebrity of the '70s music scene whose One Love and Get Up, Stand Up were anthems for a disaffected generation of middle-class North American kids, has, in his homeland, the stature of a prophet. |
Winding our way up a potholed road into the embrace of these remote green mountains in northern Jamaica, up the 60 kilometres from Ocho Rios to Nine Mile, the birthplace and final resting place of reggae megastar Bob Marley. | |||||||||||||||||||||
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Including Transportation Tour Length 3 Hours (Ocho Rios) Tour Length 5 Hours (Montego Bay) Entrance Fee $15.00 Each |
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| "Go and be with Bob. He's up there," a vendor in a local market in Ocho Rios tells me as he looks up and waves toward the distant hills. There is plenty of King of Reggae tourism in Jamaica, Miami and in Orlando at Universal. There's even a Bob Marley theme restaurant. But to understand the spiritual elements of Marley's music, it is the journey to his final destination that gives an insight into his boyhood, adult life and values, and into a Jamaica less travelled. We pass through villages where sleepy dogs flop in the dust outside snack stalls that sell sugar-cane juice and sweet coconut treats to clusters of neatly dressed schoolchildren. Higher up into the Dry Harbour mountains there are stretches where there is no trace of humans, just forest and fields, with hillside scatterings of cattle and goats. Another curve in the road, a weedy ad hoc cricket field, and suddenly we spy a few brightly painted shacks flying Rasta black, yellow, red and green flags and a small shop called One Stop for Dis and Dat, where elderly women in full, vibrant skirts and fine hats pause in their conversation to wave and smile. More Rasta signature flags and more lounging men with colourful knitted caps or long dreads are signs we are close to the country hamlet that is the Marley Mecca. The massive purple doors of Nine Mile clank open in greeting and a khaki-uniformed guard with shoulder-length dreadlocks smiles and says, as if he has been expecting us all along, "Welcome, brother and sister." The Nine Mile compound is both inspiring and cheesy. This is where Robert Nester Marley was born on Feb. 6, 1945, and where he lies encased in marble and where thousands of fans flock every February for music and memories. Posters of the holy one are on the interior gates. The Rasta incantation on coming and going, Respect, is painted on the wall, as is much graffiti, all of it paying homage. ("He says you don't drink and jive, but if you wish you can smoke and fly.") The tinny sound of a radio playing reggae blends with the unmistakable odour of ganja. A variety of relative neighbours and friends of the Marley family lounge around on beat up aluminum lawn chairs and wooden boxes. There's Fuzzy, a grizzled childhood playmate of Marley's who tells tales to anyone who will listen. There's a store full of junky souvenirs and Marley memorabilia such as over the-top T-shirts, commemorative rolling papers and kitschy cigarette lighters with Marley's image.
But the real draw, what brings diehard reggae fans from as far away as Japan, is the opportunity to walk where Marley walked, to see the small house where he was born and raised, to sit on the rock where Marley "read the Bible and meditated," our guide tells us, and, finally, to pay homage at the Marley mausoleum. Amble along with our guide as he alternately sings snatches of Marley tunes and rambles on in a mixture of anecdote and Bible quotes until we reach the tiny house where the young "Nesta," as his family called him, lived until his early teens. We duck into the little bedroom and suddenly the guide is almost breathless with awe, as if he hasn't been in this low-ceilinged room hundreds of times with hundreds of tourists. He points to a narrow bed. "He" -- with intake of breath -- "slept here!"
The house, full of photos and memorabilia, is interesting. The painted stumpy rock called Mt. Zion Rock, where Marley meditated on his trips to his childhood home, is curious, but the sacred spot, the Taj Mahal of Nine Mile, is surely the mausoleum where Marley lies in a brass coffin with his guitar, beloved soccer ball and Bible. The tomb, a marble monolith almost two metres high, is draped with multicoloured fabric, its base laden with gifts from reverential fans. There are shells, drawings, scraps of paper with poems, tambourines, African stringed instruments and ukuleles.
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Mobs Place |
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Thousands of pilgrims make this journey every year. Some opt for a kind of reggae fest roulant, a rolling pilgrimage on Zion Bus Line.
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Marley left a wealth of music
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Dunns River Falls | River Tubing | Beach adventure | Ocho Rios Highlights | Mystic Mountain | Bob Marley |Day At The Beach | Shopping |Map Of Ocho Rios | Book Now
