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STRAIN HUNTERS LIVE THREAD! - JAMAICA


franco
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EPIC .... Franco thanks for all the videos. You guys make us feel like we are almost there with you. Keep up the hard work and stay safe.

Thanks for sharing your 1994 pics....... Maximum respect Franco, you have been a Strain Hunter for a long time bro.

Hey Franco are you going to stabilse the sativa out of the MOST WANTED to give us the Green House LAMBS BREAD?

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shanti is an amazing singer, love that greenhouse chanting inna the river.i can feel the good vibes only watching at the thread so far away from jamaica, but i close my eyes listening to the green house tune and i feel in the river xD

in jamaica must be a very happy mood, because Haile Selassie coronation aniversary was last week

jah bless

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This is fantastic everything from Franco's text to mr x pictures. I wish I could join in and hunt former races with you, or new =)! I hope you have a good trip my friend.

Franco how is the chicken on the Island?

Peace

Jimmy

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Awesome Franco, looks like everybody is having an amazing time and what stunning locations! :D

lovely looking buds and fields an that island wow!!

Great pics from the past! if i had similar pics i would take take them everywhere i go too hehe

Loving the footage from the GoPro! superb pieces of Tech!

Well written and stunning picutres as usual

Can't wait for the next post

Keep Rocking dude!

Peace

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my understanding is that it the Lambsbread is a hybrid...in about 8 weeks this Lambsbread plant should be close to being ready, sorry for hijacking your thread guys, haha...

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I don't expect anyone here to know what the Lambsbread is so whatever, it's rare but it's not extinct. There are a few hybrids on the market too, were they created with some kind of lambsbread rip off or something? She's a sensitive one, cuttings wilt fast and her leaves were irritated a little by the foliar feeding I gave her yesterday. She is probably a sativa dominant strain but ther is definitely some indica in there too. The LB has an extraordinary flavor and aroma i dont think is possible to find in a pure sativa plant. too many deep notes like chocolate and coffee...

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@ holliherbs: yes man, we recovered the beans and we are going to work on The Most Wanted, we are planning to release it in landrace form as well as in several crosses. But it's going to take a while...

@ CannCollector: bro, you can call it the way you like it. It's not the Lambsbread. At least not the original landrace. If there's any Lambsbread at all in that cut, it's very, very watered down. LB would never ever finish in 8 or 9 weeks. More like 14 weeks bro.

;-)

But hey, if they sold it to you as LB and you wanna call it so, no problem. Just be aware of the reality and the history.

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DAY 4

We wake up early, as usual. My room is hot and sticky, and it stinks like rotten food. The air-conditioner is leaking and makes a weird metallic noise.

I roll a joint with some gum, and cough my way down the stairs, desperately looking for some coffee. Nampo always prefers to smoke gum rather than weed, and I must admit he gets really good quality gum. Unfortunately for my caffeine cravings, the only thing I manage to find is some mint tea, kindly prepared by the cleaning lady (the only person awake on the property this early).

As I sip my mint tea I hear the others crawling out of their rooms, and I can hear Simon coughing loud. He's having his breakfast as well.

By 7am we have packed the cars - we are getting used to the routine, and everyday it gets smoother and faster - and drive off, but we stop after just a few minutes in Black River town to get some coffee and some breads.

After well-deserved caffeine intake we just drive, all the way back to Montego Bay.

The road is decent, but the potholes are treacherous, requiring no distractions from the drivers (Bigga and myself). I ask Simon to roll me a few joints along the way, because my hands are on the wheel and my eyes are glued to the road PS3-style.

We have appointment with an old Rasta at a Boboshanti camp on the hills near town, around 10am, but when we get there he's nowhere to be found. We wait a bit, then we decide to move on. It cannot always go as planned, especially not in the Caribbean!

After evaluating our options we decide to drive all the way to Port Antonio, on the other side of the island; it's a 4 to 5 hours drive, depending on the traffic and the weather.

The cars are fast and drive smoothly, so we crunch kilometers. We decide to make a detour and go visit the Bob Marley grave in Nine Miles, one of the most famous places in Jamaica. The road gets twisty inland, and we take a good hour to drive from the coast up to the Mausoleum where Bob's body rests. Just before arriving we meet along the road with one of Boboshanti's contacts: an old-school Rasta, and a very respected organic grower. We will visit him after we're done at the Mausoleum.

I am truly excited: I grew up listening to Bob Marley's music and to (some of) his messages, and I have been to Jamaica several times over the last 17 years, but I have never visited this mystic place.

As soon as we drive up to the compound gates a group of street hasslers starts screaming at us to follow them. They offer to look after our cars, and to take us to Bob Marley's original ganja fields (yeah right…) and any kind of other dodgy deals.

Our crew quickly gets rid of them, then we approach the gates of the Mausoleum compound and park our cars inside the yard.

I have a bad feeling now. This place looks a little bit over the top.

We get out of the cars and are greeted by an indian guy that shows us the ticket-office. We pay 20 US$ each to enter. Then we are escorted to a souvenir shop, where we are told the more money we spend the more the Marley family will benefit.

It all looks like some sort of reggae-themed-disneyland (no offense to Mickey Mouse) and I start feeling uncomfortable, and angry.

But I keep quiet.

The indian guy hands us over to our official tour-guide. This is really a joke, I cannot believe what I am seeing and hearing. This guy is a Rasta from Kingston, in his 40s, and he starts telling bad jokes about Rastafarian culture. When he realizes we are not the typical tourists he tones the game down, but he still looks like a clown.

It is strictly forbidden to take video footage, but I manage to scam some with my GoPro, just to spite these guys.

After a twenty-minutes tour of the compound we finally get to the tombs. First we visit Bob's mother tomb. Then we visit Bob's. He is buried together with one of his brothers, who was killed in Miami in a gunfight with the police.

The tomb is a large marble block, and we can walk all around it and touch it.

People left all kind of offerings around the massive stone, on the ground: rolled-up joints, candles, scars with the Rasta colors, small flags, even some bud and some seeds. I feel the importance of this place.

This is the man who literally put Jamaica on the map, who created a national identity and who helped free the cannabis plant from the chains of insanity.

We walk out, and I feel angry. Angry at the commercialization of such a place. This should be a place of prayer and revelation, not a souvenir shop for cruise-ship tourists.

We just want to leave. We tell the manager how disappointed we are, and we drive off. The hasslers are waiting for us at the gate, and we scream at each others insults as we drive away. Bomboklaat!

Time to go meet our organic man. He lives just few kilometers inland, up the mountains.

We reach his house, a shack on the side of a muddy road, and we sit for a smoke. It does not take long before we realize this man is special. He has great knowledge of the cannabis plant, and he talks about very interesting fields he can show us if we want to come back tomorrow. And even more interesting, he tells us how he makes Jamaican charras.

As soon as he pronounces the word "charras" Simon, Arjan and myself look at each others, and we're about to burst.

Charras in Jamaica? We have to see this.

He then takes us for a short walk through the bush, behind his house, and shows us two large flowering plants. His helper starts rubbing the buds vigorously, and after a few minutes they are both making charras. It's very rough, much rougher than the Indian one, but it's charras.

They explain that depending on how ripe the plants are different types of charras are made. They rub the same plants up to 3 times, with a few days rest in between each rubbing session.

They rub in a way that does not brake much leaves, so the plants keep flowering after the rubbing. It's a very efficient way of making charras, and even if the product is quite green it still smokes beautiful. And very, very strong - an effect probably also due to the climate, hot and humid.

We decide to change our plan again, we will find a place to sleep nearby, along the coast, and tomorrow morning we will come back to see the organic grower and his fields.

We drive off, happy for the unexpected discovery, and excited for the trekking we are planning for tomorrow. When we arrive by the sea we look for a place to sleep, and we end up in a resort near Runaway Bay. It's a very commercial place, but we need to sleep, so we take it.

We eat dinner talking about the day, and our spirits are still disturbed by the Bob Marley mausoleum experience. After dinner we laugh at the social-games the resort staff is creating for the guests, like the typical beer-drinking contest, or the dancing contest.

It looks so cheesy…. I need to smoke a lot of weed to calm down and be able to sleep. Lucky for me Simon has the same problem. We burn spliff after spliff, then we surrender to Jah power.

One last look at the watch tells me it's past one in the morning. I finally get to sleep.

MisterX has been working hard to provide us with the visuals, the best part... enjoy!

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yah man, Bob marley's grave you lucky guys, but of course you can't avoid commercial part now ^^

And that charras looks very nice, would love to smoke some.

Hope your appointment will be there tomorrow guys, have a good treking

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when i went 10 years ago to nine miles it wasnt so comercial, but i guess with the years it has become very comercial for the local people to get money from the tourist, in rototom sunsplash this year rita marley talked about moving bob back to africa, to the motherland

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The jamaican charas does look rougher but damn it seems like those guys know the ricks to produce plenty, any specification as howw their technique differ to the himaya guys, that wise old men you'd met in india near the ned of the trip (with an youger gentleman that was transkating) was saying that in his best day he could make form 4 to 6 g of hash if my memory's right :P In those pictures looks like at least 150 to 250 gramms, have they done that in a day or is it a multiple day "harvest"?

One last question you're saying that their technique allows the plant to keep flowering, would you dare though to try to do charas yourself on of your flowering plant in the GHSC headquarter or would you say that charas making is made possible by having amazing fields like those seens in india ( i dont know if you guys have such fields indodr but i would guess you dont and focus on growing the best weed?)

Sorry for asking som much question but you guys are raising my interest, and i'm sorry for you dissapointment when visiting bob marleys grave, as Dust said i guess commercialism i hard to escape and for real travelers like you guys are it must be even harder, at the end of the day his music is what really matters! Keep on enjoying the true jamaica and bringing it to us, you already brought us the real india we trust you to do so with jamaica thanks to your travelers sensitivity (laughing so hard when you sound dissapointed to sleep in one of those commercial places!)

Peace out!

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Sorry for the typo i dont mean to be disrespectful and i'll be sure to read my post a second time next time, it's quite a pain in the ass for the reader i'll realize when reading my post....after posting it!

Sorry about that...

Peace out!

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