点评:My wife and I were visiting Jamaica for just a few days in conjunction with a family celebration, and being birders, we knew that we wanted to spend one day getting out of the resort and seeing what we could find. As first-timers in Jamaica, and having had very little time to research the options in advance, we started poking around on the web for birding day tours and found the website for Attractions Link. They seemed to offer pretty much exactly what we were looking for, and were able to accommodate us on less than 24-hours notice, at about the price we were expecting, so we booked a private tour of the Cockpit Country with Lorenzo as our guide. We were not disappointed. He picked us up just after 5:00 a.m. at our hotel in Ocho Rios; an early start to be sure, but designed to get us "in country" when the birds were most active. By about 6:15 we were birding, mostly along wooded roadsides way up in the hills, but also with a few stops along the north shore on the way back to Ocho Rios. Lorenzo gave us an extra hour of his time, so we were actually out for 9 hours, arriving back at the hotel shortly after 2:00 p.m. We identified 24 species, almost all of them new to us. As a bonus, the butterflies were out in force, too. Lorenzo brought along a cooler full of food, including hardboiled eggs, a selection of fruit, toast, sweetbread, and a thermos of Blue Mountain coffee. For later in the morning, he also had a plentiful supply of tuna salad sandwiches, and, of course, bottled water. Besides being an expert on the local birds and where to find them, he was also just a lot of fun to hang out with, and did a great job of negotiating the narrow roads and Jamaican traffic.
翻译:我和妻子因为参加家庭聚会,在牙买加只待了几天。我们都是观鸟爱好者,所以想抽出一天时间离开度假村,去看看有什么鸟。由于是第一次来牙买加,而且事先也没有太多时间做功课,我们只好上网搜索观鸟一日游,找到了 Attractions Link 的网站。他们提供的服务似乎完全符合我们的需求,而且在不到 24 小时的通知时间内就能安排好,价格也和我们预期的差不多,所以我们预订了由 Lorenzo 担任导游的科克皮特乡村私人之旅。我们没有失望。他早上 5 点刚过就到我们位于奥乔里奥斯的酒店接我们;确实出发很早,但这是为了让我们在鸟类最活跃的时候进入“内陆”。大约6点15分,我们开始观鸟,主要是在山上林木茂盛的公路旁,但也在返回奥乔里奥斯的途中,沿着北岸停留了几次。洛伦佐额外给了我们一个小时的时间,所以我们实际上一共观鸟了9个小时,下午2点刚过就回到了酒店。我们一共识别出了24种鸟类,几乎都是我们以前没见过的。更令人惊喜的是,蝴蝶也大量出现。洛伦佐带了一个装满食物的冷藏箱,里面有煮鸡蛋、各种水果、吐司、甜面包和一壶蓝山咖啡。他还准备了大量的金枪鱼沙拉三明治,当然还有瓶装水,以备上午晚些时候食用。洛伦佐不仅是当地鸟类专家,知道在哪里可以找到它们,而且和他在一起也很有趣,他很擅长应对狭窄的道路和牙买加拥挤的交通。