(The brilliant idea for this title, stolen from my good blogger buddy and real-life friend Narm.)
It's that time again...this time it's the Jamaica edition.
Please note, that most of these images were not taken with a professional-grade camera. In fact, on all of our excursions we took one of those disposable waterproof, hard plastic cameras on a rubber band string doohickeys.
You get the point.
Oh Jamaica...where do I even start?
Let's just say if I never went back to that island I'd be a happy camper. Don't get me wrong, the island was beautiful, and I actually wish we would have had more time to explore the rain forest, maybe even do a zip line tour - which we passed up because upon further inspection it wasn't that adventurous after all - but I'm sure the scenery was gorgeous.
Looking at this, I'd imagine so:
(Some form of steam coming from the forest...)Anyway, so when you get off the ship at what I understand to be an old sugar mine, you are immediately accosted by locals trying to get you to go into their cab to take you God knows where on this island.
Once we found our group we waiting, and waited - you'll find this to be a theme throughout.
Our excursion was split into two separate events. The first was what they referred to as white water tubing. We were going tubing down a river with exciting rapids, stopping at one point to cliff dive 30 feet into the ocean, or at least, this is what I was sold.
In reality, the river looked more like this throughout.
(White water...huh?)There was a five year old girl in her own tube, what does that tell you?
When we stopped half-way through, we saw the "cliff," which was a man-made wooden plank about 15 feet above the
river water, which at that point was, oh, about 2 and 1/2 feet deep, tops.
It said jump at your own risk. Unfortunately, I didn't capture this on film - I was too appalled.
If it says that in Jamaica, it's translated as "you will most likely die if you attempt this," in American.
Needless to say, we passed on that opportunity.
After tubing we were supposed to get picked up by our driver. So we waited, and waited, in the hot ass sun, slightly frustrated from our overly-hyped river tubing experience, and getting more pissed off by the minute.
And since we were told to leave all our stuff on the van we were all slightly concerned about our belongings, too.
But he showed, eventually, and then we were off to our next adventure. And that it was!
We climbed Dunns River Falls - a 600 foot, never-ending waterfall. The experience was one of my favorites from the trip. There was just enough danger and excitement involved that it kept our blood pumping.
(A small section of the 600 feet we climbed that day!) Though after, we were led through a tourist trap of Jamaican shops. We were caught by the first tent by a guy who called himself the Termite - real name, Jason Smith....quite Jamaican if I do say so.
We were led back into his lair where the SO purchased a Bob Marley shirt for his roommate, and the Termite proceeded to carve our names into these mahogany figurines. Then he told us some story about stacking them on top of one another when we are "mounting" each other. No joke. This guy was a trip.
Anyhow, after that we really had to get back to the ship so we practically ran through the rest of the shop area, getting touched and yelled at by Jamaicans, telling us we had no respect.
Sorry people, we had no time, either.
The driver picked us up right on time - GASP - and we made it back to the ship in one piece - though starving and exhausted from a long day on the island.
It was a great experience, but next time, I'm choosing Turks and Caicos over another visit to Jamaica, mon!
Cheers!
-A
