Alligator Pond, Manchester – Jeffrey Pusey, who has lived in Alligator Pond since 1959, remembers when the January 1 celebration was mostly about a race at sea, involving fishermen using boats hewn from cotton wood.

“Dem days the older heads use to do boat race and other people bet on the boat race. We talking ’bout cotton tree boat. Sometimes when a man lose im bet, im sey di race don’ fair and sometimes yuh get a fight, not fight to kill, jus’ thump,” said Pusey with a laugh, as he busily fried fish over a wood fire in his yard.

The fried fish was intended for sale to a few of the thousands who descended on Alligator Pond last Monday. It was yet another of the massive New Year’s Day parties that have become compulsory for the South Manchester coastal village, on the border with South East St Elizabeth.

Everald Christian, manager of the famous Little Ochi Restaurant, one of the leading modern-day organisers of the January 1 celebration, told how in decades gone, people from “higher Manchester and St Elizabeth” flocked to the seaside village just to see the boat race.

The boat race is no longer the major attraction. In fact, last Monday there was none. Huge waves spawned by a strong south-easterly breeze, rose several feet high as they neared shore, rendering conditions more suitable for surfing than boating.

Christian, said the planned Red Stripe-sponsored boat race, which would have provided prizes worth $52,000, had been abandoned in the interest of “safety” out of an abundance of caution, because of the high seas.

Undeterred, Christian recalled that in 2005, a “boat from Rocky Point won the top prize of $25,000” and he insisted that next year another boat race will be organised as part of the effort to “mek oletime sinting come back again”.

Still, even without the boat race, the multitude gathered at what Christian claims is a more than a 100-year-old celebration, and they appeared to find plenty to do last Monday. The high seas meant the more adventurous had to be content with wallowing in the sandy, churning waters close to shore.

Soon they and everyone else would take the one-mile walk westward from Little Ochi, gradually leaving the pulsating music from myriad sound boxes behind, to the Alligator Pond ‘river’ – really a small stream – which breaks to the surface close to the coastline and flows gently into the sea.

No one who entered the deliciously clean water seemed ready to leave it.

Then there were those who came to gorge themselves on the roast and fry fish, conch and lobster. Like Mildley Powell, originally from Coleyville and home from New York for Christmas and New year. “I trying to find out which direction the fish is …,” she told the Sunday Observer with a laugh, “When I finish I go to the gym and work out all the food that I eat”.

Seafood wasn’t the only cuisine on offer. Inevitably the ‘pan jerk’ men were there, including Peter Douglas, a former Observer vendor complete with his Observer bib, who claimed his jerk pork is “di bes’ in a Alligator Pond”.

There were those, mostly women, who couldn’t avoid checking out the latest styles from Miami, Panama and Curacao on the scores of stalls set up by vendors from all over, including Santa Cruz, Mandeville and Kingston. Most vendors declined to talk to the Sunday Observer for fear of “di taxman” but Natalie Remekie of Lititz in St Elizabeth, with an array of polo shirts, jeans and foot wear decorating the back of her 1999 Caldina, claimed business was “very good …”

“Prices better today, because it’s Happy New Year, what used to be $1,500 is just $1,000 today…” she said.

For Neville Powell of May Pen, who has been to Alligator Pond “every year” since childhood when he first came “looking for alligator”, the annual trip has taken on Mecca-like proportions. “Lots of people come from all over and meet up down here, every year, and nobody no fight an quarrel a dem place yah …” he said.

Sadly, he has noticed environmental changes, and not for the better. “When mi come first, yuh could see turtle that tek more than one somebody to lift im up, now mi nuh see turtle anymore,” he said.

But Angela Barnes, who hails from the remote district of Caves Land on the western side of the Santa Cruz Mountains, and who has visited annually for the last five years, was admiring of an obvious beach clean-up. “First time me couldn’t stand on the beach like this,” she said, pointing to her bare feet on the dark sand.

For Marcia McDonald, who has been a bar hostess at Little Ochi for the past 16 years, not a lot has changed. “It’s the same old thing,” she said, “people up and down, up and down, from the sea to the river, eating and drinking and having fun”.