Continued from Part 1
A short walk past an old Red Stripe
sign proclaiming it to be “Where the Buccaneers Drank their Beer,” brought me into the city that cheered Morgan on his return from Portobelo. You needn't be Rockefeller to see that Port Royal is a far cry from a prim Williamsburg restoration or anything like that. Rather, the Pirate Pompeii greets the sunrise as a quiet fishing village in which uniformed schoolgirls await their bus in the dawn's crisp air, and --provided you stay long enough past day-oh for it to open -- the Red Stripe flows pier-side at a shabby watering hole called the Fisherman's Cabin. For me, it was enough to pull a chair up to this still-shuttered establishment and watch a rusted freighter sail the harbor in a scene as tropical as any showing palm-shaded natives with pots on their heads.
