an accidental trip to jamaica

february 16-22th, 2005

Hi there, Internet. Wow, my life's been busy lately and I haven't been able to find the time to work on this site! But today's a rainy Labor Day weekend (in 2006!) and I don't have much to do so I figured I sit back down and try to crank out a few more entries! So, if you remember where I left off, I had just got back from a two week trip through Eastern Europe with Grant and Jake. While I was away on that, Meredith emailed me and told me that she'd planned a secret surprise vacation for her and I and that we would be leaving on it the day after I got back from my trip (Feb. 15th). So I got back to Meredith's on Feb 14th, had a nice Valentine's night and packed a suitcase - I was only told that I should pack for a "tropical destination" - and Meredith set the alarm for 10am because our flight wasn't until the evening. The next morning I awoke to Meredith crying. Somehow she'd misread the tickets and we'd missed our plane (It left at 6am) to Guatemala (that I learned was our surprise destination). I got on the phone to the airline to learn that their wouldn't be another flight available for another 3 days and since Meredith only took a week off from work, we decided to take a credit on the plane tickets and try to book a last minute trip to anywhere else. We hit the internet and 40 minutes later we'd booked a week trip to Ocho Rios, Jamaica. Thank you, internet! Wednesday, February 16th Wednesday morning, we got up nice and early to make sure we could get to the airport to claim our tickets and make sure there weren't going to be any other snags. So far, so good. With plenty of time to spare before our flight we decided to mack and relax with some McDonald's breakfast. By the way, who loves chicken more than this lady? Meredith laughing at me reading Wired. Which she now reads. (Guess who's been infected with NERDOM?) Booking tickets last minute apparently means two layovers. Here's us transferring over to scary jet-prop on our second flight. Noisy! On to flight # 3. I passed the fuck out and Meredith took pics of my sleeping double chin. Hahaha. And then made faces at me in my sleep. (That's ok, I make faces at her pretty much EVERY NIGHT while she's sleeping). I awoke to see that the water below had changed colors. Hark, Jamaica! Sooooooo, exciting! We were immediately innundated to the relaxed Jamaican attitude that we'd heard so much about when he hit the mother of all lines trying to get through Jamaican immigration. No rush at all, mon! The place we'd booked to stay out was a gated-off resort-type place so we decided to rent a car because it would give us more freedom to explore the island. I'd driven on the left side of the road before and figured it would be no big deal. WRONG! Too bad no one told me that Jamaicans, who are reknowned around the world for getting high and being all friendly and "No problem, mon!" turn into crazy people as soon as they get behind the control on anything that has wheels a motor. Seriously, they are hands down the craziest drivers I've ever seen (and I grew up in NEW JERSEY!). Look! The passenger's in the driver's seat! The driving was so out of control stressful that about halfway to Ocho Rios we had to pull over so I could take a break. We found a road-side "jerk shack" ("Hey, we're jerks!") and decided to have a smoke, have a drink and have some spicy Jamaican food. Hahaha. Rice and beans and jerk chicken. After a harrowing 90 minute drive (the roads are in such terrible condition that it took us that long to drive 45 miles!) we finally made it to our place in Ocho Rios, which was nice for how cheap we'd scored it. We pretty much dropped our bags and decided to hit the beach for a swim before settling in for the night. Thursday, February 17th Thursday morning we got up, hit the beach and watched the cruise ships come in. This is what comes off of cruise ships. It's like a geriatric invasion...on wheels! Mmmmmmmmmmm. Over breakfast we busted out the guidebook we'd bought the day before in NYC... ...and discussed things we wanted to check out over the week. Then we hit the beach. Pasty guy on the beach! Pasty guy on the beach! Pale, blinky girl on the beach! Pale blinky girl! After some sunnin' and swimmin', (and after I'd mentally prepared myself to face some more Jamaican drivers) we decided to hop in the car and explore some places on the northern shore of Jamaica east of Ocho Rios. First stop, James Bond Beach! Apparently, this is where Ian Flemming lived back in the day when we was writing the eponymous books. Jungley! Meredith poses in front of the "beach." While standing there, we had a realization... ..."beach" in Jamaican roughly translates to "place where the "razor sharp coral meets the water." My feet feel like burning. We also learned something else about Jamaica: no matter where you go, no matter how remote or desolate the place might seem, you will have about eight minutes of "alone time," before a local will appear, seemingly out of nowhere, to try to sell you something. A tour, a bracelet, a boat ride, a snorkeling trip, and if all else fails, a giant bag of weed. After James Bond Beach, we decided to check out Brimmer Hall Estate. Brimmer Hall has been around so long it used to be a slave-labor sugar cane farm. It's still a working farm and we read that they give an interesting tour about Jamaica's agricultural production. The rolling landscape of the estates. The neato, vine covered stairs. Most people that go to Jamaica stay at all inclusive resorts and never leave - so the locals always seemed surprised to see Mer and I turn up in a rental car. We asked about the tour, which they told us they usually only give to tour groups that arrive in buses, but they'd make an exception. So they fired up the tractor... ...and we hopped on the tram attached to the back! The guy who gave us the tour was the nicest man ever. Here he is showing us raw ackee, the national fruit. Ackee looks a lot like an orange pepper - except that it's filled with a poisonous gas (I swear to god I'm not making this up). When it gets ripe, the fruit splits open and the gas escapes making it safe for human consumption. On with the tour! These guys are working in a pineapple field. Tilling the soil. I don't remember what this fruit is called - all I remember is this guy showing us how it looked like a parrot's giant beak. Bananas! Every few hundred yards, we'd come to a new type of crop and they'd stop the tractor and the guy who was assisting on the tour would run off into a field and bring stuff back to show us...and sometimes model. These are cocoa beans! I can't believe this is where chocolate comes from. Sometimes when we'd stop, the main guy giving the tour would hop down off his tractor with a huge machete and hack us up a treat. In this case, raw sugar cane. Here he is showing off some type of bamboo thingy that he made in like ten seconds. The landscape. I love this photo. Shots of houses in the surrounding hills. This tree is 400 years old. Towards the end of hte tour... Our guide, grabbed fresh coconut and a lime, chopped the top off the coconut, produced a bottle of 150 proof rum from god knows where, and whipped us up a deadly-serious cocktail. I made Meredith go first. Awwww. Back at the hotel, we hit the beach to read and play Scrabble. I forgot a pen so we kept score in the sand. Meredith took the early lead... But by the end of the game, I somehow managed to... ...eek out a win! 236 to 230! Boo-yah! By the time we'd finished playing, it was almost dark. And we retired back to our place for a mellow night. Friday, February 18th Local fresh fruit for breakfast. Holy amazing delicious papaya! One of the best things about Jamaica is the locals and their kindness and awesome accent. I love when things are spelled like their spoken - for example: Sof Drink! Hahah. Breakfast lady making toast! After breakfast we took a three hour drive to check out Port Antonio, which was made famous because its Blue Lagoon was where the 80s Tom Cruise movie Cocktail was filmed ( which the locals still affectionally talk about like it came out in theaters last week). The place had been recently decimated by a hurricane and the whole surrounding town was pretty much empty...well, empty except for the 50 people who saw our lone car arriving and each took turns pitching us to get our hair braided, buy beads/bracelets and/or weed. Our sympathy for the locals who were desparate to make a buck in the face of Jamaica's receeding tourism, had begun to quickly dissipate. On the way back we saw signs for a beach and decided to swing in and check it out. Besides one other group of people, the beach was deserted. But it only took, yep, you guessed it, about 8 minutes for a local to appear out of the forest and offer us all sorts of services. This time, we took him up on his offer to have his friend take us out on a boat tour of the coast and the Blue Lagoon. We headed to eat lunch and set up a time to meet his friend with the boat after we'd eaten. We hopped in the car and quickly found a nice, quiet place to have some lunch. Awwwwww. Check out our super-sized Pina Coladas that arrived. Meredith's veggie burger was made out of all the local veggies. It was like delicious hot-chopped salad. After lunch, we were walking back out to our car and a local guy pointed out that our front passenger side tire had a dangerously large bulge in the wall. Doh. (The edges of the road through all of Jamaica are crumbly and littered with potholes so you kind of have to drive towards the middle of them. Well, until some crazy nut tries to pass you and forces you over to the shoulder and into said crumbly potholes.) My manliness gets Meredith so hot. After lunch, we went back to the beach to meet up with the boat tour guy. We took us on a nice, leisurely tour of the coastline which ended up back at the Blue Lagoon and we got to hear all sorts of Cocktail stories again. On the way back into the shallows, we saw this really big, beautiful spotted eel. Which I learned, after being stopped from reaching down to touch it, was an ELECTRIC EEL! Before embarking on the long-ass drive back to Ocho Rios we stopped to fill up the tank and stock up on treats. Back at the hotel we took a swim... ...and scored the biggest joint I've ever seen from one of the guys that worked there. So sometimes I like to dress up like to dress up like a sexy lady when I'm high. What? What's the big deal? Saturday, February 19th Saturday morning we got up and decided to go scuba diving. (I'd been diving a bunch of times before but Meredith had never tried it before!) Lounging in my flippers. Here's me with our boat's captain and Tiny, our diving instructor. Having never used scuba gear before, Meredith was apprehensive. But earlier in the morning I'd reassured her that they'd spend some time taking her through everything and giving her a lesson before the dive. Nope! Not in Jamaica! They were pretty much like, "Just don' forget to keep breee'ting, mon. An' ev'ry ting will be fiiiiiine!" Hahaha. Seriously, that was about all the instruction she got. Heading out to the dive site. The dive went ok. Meredith had some trouble regulating her buoyancy (Hmmm...maybe because no one ever showed her how to properly use her BC vest?) and spend the majority of her dive in a trying-not-to-float-to-the-surface panic. But hey, at the end of the day, Jamaica's got lots of TINGS to help you deal with stress... Hahahah. Maybe that dive won't such a bad ting afterall. Haha, look! It's jerk on the bay! Later that night we took a break from all the Rastifarian restaurants we'd been eating in and opted for some Italian. And after dinner, another round of Scrabble. The board at the end. Final score: 270 to 238.And the winner is? Awwww, yeah. Two games to none! Sunday, February 20th On Sunday we decided to drive west of Ocho Rios to try and find another secluded beach.... ...and lookee what we found! Totally deserted. We took a swim, and about, ooooh, about eight minutes after our heads hit the sand... ...not just one visitor trying to sell us stuff and/or take us on a tour... ...but two! But, that's ok - by this point Meredith and I had decided to roll with the punches and actually got to meet and hang out with a bunch of locals which isn't usually the case you travel. Besides... ...we did also manage to score some suh-weet bracelet and/or anklets. Squinty! Exhausted from trouncing Meredith at Scrabble (yet again! 3-0, baby!) I hit the towel for a nizzap. And rather than make faces at me, this time Meredith decided to impersonate me. After the beach we suited up in our newly purchased AQUA SOX! Check the outfits! Awwww, yeah! And headed over to Dunns River Falls. Which is this really nice picturesque waterfall that you climb up. (Don't have pics becuase I was afraid about my cam getting ruined). Afterwards we hit the beach back at our hotel and Meredith finally managed to get a point up on the Scrabble board. 3-1. However, she also managed to get a pretty severe case of heat hives on her legs. (Despite her dark-as-coal soul, Meredith's lily-white skin is crazy photosensitive.) With the sun setting on the beach anyway... ...we retired to our room for a night of TV and pizza! Woooooo! Monday, February 21st Squinty in the morning about to order up some breakfast. After breakfast, I met up with my new buddy Tiny to go scuba diving again. After her shaky first diving experience, Meredith opted out of diving and instead decided to explore Ocho Rios. (By the way, that thing that Tiny's holding in his right hand? Yeah, that's a motherfucking SPEARGUN! While I was exploring the reef, he was spearing up a bagful of fish for his family). Once our tanks were set up it was time for me to slip into my super-attractive... ...wetsuit. Hahaha. Just as we were about to cast off, a big storm started rolling in causing big waves to start breaking over the reef. Despite the fact that we were in a tiny dinghy with a 2.5 horsepower motor, Tiny was not dissauded. "Me family has to eat, mon! Let's go diving." Meanwhile, Meredith was walking the strets of Ocho Rios making friends with the local ducks. And doing some souvenir shopping. The store she visted had all sorts of cutsey-wootsie stuff. Like big-eyed maracas. Seashell boxes. Er, salt and pepper shakers of pigs fucking? And, um, a pipe of a rasta man with a cock to rival my forearm. Charming! With so many great gifts to choose from I bet you're wondering what she ended up getting me. I got the "Jamaica me crazy" socks! And some delicious, delicious... ...Cock Soup Mix. Mmmmmmmmmm, cockful! The afternooon was overcast and drizzly so we... ...stayed inside and read (and took creepy photos of ourselves, apparently). And we played more Scrabble. Guess who won this game... ...by two points? Not this one. This one. (By the way, how sweet is that bracelet of mine? I'm actually still wearing it 18 months later). Later that night we went for a romantic dinner at a cliffside restaurant that over looked the ocean. Watching one of the cruise ships depart. "Farewell, senior citizens!" In addition to the sunset and sprawling Caribbean seascape, the romance factor of the restaurant was further enhanced by.... ...the fake-rose and fuzzy white bear set up on our table. And a bow. You definitely can't leave out the bow. After some wonderful dinner and a few rounds of refreshing tropical drinks... ...we played more Scrabble. And this time... ...I dished out an ASS WHOOPIN! Wooooo! I AM THE SCRABBLE MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE! (Or at least our hotel room). Tuesday, February 22nd Tuesday morning we woke up and headed to the airport to catch our flight back to NYC...but not before we pulled over for a little "beach one more time" detour en route. On the flight home we took this pic... ...then I conked the fuck out so Meredith could take some more pics mocking me in my sleep. Farewell, sweet, sweet Jamaica. (added on 09.02.2006)

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