Jamaica - Dec 2011

The gang just arrived!

We had such a great time in St Lucia with the Raleigh gang that we decided to do one more island trip for the year to Negril, Jamaica.  Originally Steve/Amy were to join us, but a week out they cancelled due to some family issues.  However, the intrepid eight (John/JoAnna, Phil/Joyce, Jonathan/Kim, and Keith/Shawna) were determined to have a great time!

Accommodation:

Negril Tree House Resort

Negril Tree House Resort - The hotel is clean and is in a great location right in the middle of Seven Mile Beach.  There are multiple buildings all over the property with ~6 rooms per building.  We had room #3 which was close to the main area - the drawback was it was quite noisy even in late evening and early morning.  A breakfast buffet is included which had fruit, bread, three hot buffet items, and waffles/omelets made by an attendant.  The beach was the best part of the hotel - it is a terrific place to just relax on a lounger and read by the ocean.  The group did have one serious incident: Kim and Jonathan woke up New Years morning to find that their room had been broken in to while they were asleep.  The bedside drawers were opened,  the safe (in the bathroom) was opened and their passports/wallet were stolen.  The upside of this (yes - there is one!) is that the thieves left the wallet, credit cards, and passports on the table outside the room - they only took the cash!  And...to make things even better, the hotel owners gave them $200 to replace the $100 that was stolen.  The local police came to dust for fingerprints and we seemed to receive VIP treatment from the hotel going forward.  So, while it is quite scary to have this happen, the hotel team did respond very well. 


Activities:

We arranged our flights from Dallas since we were there for Xmas.  Keith was able to get a direct flight on AA (on points) while Shawna flew via Charlotte on USAir (also on points).  John and Joanna were on the same flight from Charlotte to Montego Bay as Shawna and arrived about 30 minutes before Keith.  As Keith was approaching the customs line, a woman asked him where he was staying - of course he had no idea.  Fortunately Shawna was 30 mins ahead in the customs line, so with a bit of shouting and arm waving, Keith figured out the place and was able to complete his customs form.  Immediately after exiting customs, Shawna/John/Joanna headed straight for a bar about 25 feet outside the airport where they promptly ordered a round of Red Stripe.  Keith joined them 30 mins later, and we were all joined by Kim/Jonathan an hour later and Phil/Joyce an hour after that.  In the interim, we managed to drink all the cold Red Stripe in the bar and found that their wings and fries platter was quite tasty!  Phil had arranged transportation to the hotel via a van for all of us, so we piled in for the 1.5 hour drive to Negril.  After arriving at the hotel after dark and checking in, we headed down the road in search of a restaurant for dinner where we found a nice Italian place.

After breakfast the next day, Keith retired to the room and read all day as he was recovering from a rough cold.  Shawna and the rest of the gang spent the day on loungers on the beach reading, napping, people watching, and chatting.  For lunch we had jerk chicken pasties for $2 a piece bought at a little shack next door - marvelous!  A few Red Stripes were had in the afternoon followed by a terrific dinner at the Rock House.

The next day was our first organized day.  We started off heading to YS Falls which was about a 2 hour ride from the hotel.  From the parking lot we took a tractor ride to the falls where a guide/lifeguard took us to each of the parts of the falls.  We spent a couple of hours swimming, climbing falls, doing a rope swing, and jumping off small falls.  The water was quite crisp and the falls very strong - Keith darn near lost his swimsuit!  Following the falls, we headed to Floyd's Pelican Bar for lunch before returning to the hotel in late afternoon.  Before dinner, we had drinks at the bar at the hotel and watched the beautiful sunset.  We had a fun dinner and then headed to bed.

Having fun at YS Falls

On New Years Eve day, John/Joanna, Kim/Jonathan, and Shawna and I headed out in the morning to swim with dolphins at Dolphin Cove.  This was a really cool experience that was on our "swim with stuff" section of the bucket list (also included on the list: Manta Rays, Great White Sharks, and Whales).  The company does quite a good experience.  The six of us were put in one group, jumped in the water, and for 30 minutes took turns letting the two dolphins kiss us, pull us by their dorsal fins, and pushing our feet so we fly through the water, as well as dancing and singing with us (not sure who had the worst voices).

Swimming with dolphins at Dolphin Cove

We headed back to the resort in the afternoon where we relaxed on the beach and Keith got a beach massage - now in the top 10% of massages.  We took a van to dinner at 8am and after dinner walked the beach back to our hotel.  The beach was packed with people.  Some of the hotels had bonfires and some were letting off burning lanterns like we had seen in Thailand (and now quite mainstream as a result of the movie Tangled).  There was a stunning amount of smoke as we walked down the beach - 90% of it ganja.  It was so prevalent that both of us were hacking up a lung and ended up with bronchitis for the week after the trip - wow!

The last day in Negril was spent relaxing on the beach again, with Keith getting another massage (different masseuse which then put it in the bottom 50% of massages).  We cranked through some Kindle books, drank a few beers, had more pasties for lunch, and generally relaxed.  While sitting on the beach, we experienced some interesting people watching.  People came by selling all sorts of goods from cigs (by a guy who yelled cigs in the most unappealing way), fruit, drinks, wicker baskets (by the self-proclaimed 'wicker man'), sea shells, bracelets and of course 'baked goods' (we wondered if maybe they were pot brownies).  The tourists were equally as interesting -- all ages, nationalities and sizes -- sadly the larger the person, the smaller the swimsuit and the less attractive the guy, the more likely he was wearing a banana hammock!

Relaxing on Seven Mile Beach

A bus picked us up at the hotel at 10am to drive us back to the airport, where we said our goodbyes.  Keith managed to get an earlier connection to Denver from Dallas so we both made it home by 11pm, ready for the first day of work in the new year.


Restaurants:
Ristorante Da Gino - An Italian restaurant along Seven Mile Beach.  We had lobster pasta and steak.  The pasta was good but the steak was a little tough.

Rock House - This was was best meal of the trip.  Rock House is about a 10 minute van ride south of the hotel in the cliff area of Negril.  It is a nice hotel, with the restaurant built into the cliff grottoes.  We got to watch the sunset as we sat down and ordered our drinks.  There was reggae music playing in the background (cliche, but it fits!).  The table shared several plates of Coconut Shrimp and Conch Fritters to start.  We then had the Lobster Glaze for our appetizer, followed by Blackened Mahi Mahi, and wrapped it up with a Coconut Cream Pie. 

Dinner at Rock House

Floyd's Pelican Bar - This is a a ramshackle hut a few hundred yards offshore.  It looks like a bunch of sticks about to fall in the water but what a great location.  After a few minute boat ride to the bar which is situated on a sand bar we just climbed up to the hut, ordered a few drinks, and relaxed for an hour or so over a lunch of Lobster Curry and Grilled Fish with rice, washed down by more Red Stripe.

Floyd's Pelican Bar

Shereta - This restaurant was within walking distance from our hotel along Seven Mile Beach.  We sat outside and had to wait quite a while for our food (a common experience in Jamaica).  The food was pretty good - it was a shrimp evening for us with coconut shrimp, jerk shrimp, and curry shrimp for dinner followed by chocolate cake for dessert.

Kuyaba - Well, this was a heck of a way to bring in the New Year - while it has a great decor, it takes the cake for the worst service ever.  It took about 45 minutes to even be acknowledged after sitting down, another 30 minutes for the first round of drinks to arrive and another hour before we got our food.  Quite honestly, given the experience, we cannot even remember if the food was good.  Surprisingly, they gave us a comment card so we decided to share our comments.  The waiter read our comments and then shared the card with the manager who came over to our table and rather than apologize, she decided to make excuses and even argue with us.  Finally, it appeared that she would go back and take some money off of the bill which turned out to only be $20 that she took off.  Definitely would not recommend this place!

Sweet Spice - The group was in the mood for goat curry so the hotel recommended this place which was a 5 minute van ride south in town.  The restaurant is definitely a family type place - nothing special about the decor but the food and service was great (well, the service was great relative to Jamaican standards, anyway).  The place did not have a liquor license so Keith and John scurried across the road to Texaco where they got a 6-pack of Red Stripe and a bottle of red wine.  For dinner, we had the Curried Goat and Curried Lobster - we had also ordered fries but never got them (they had run out) so Keith really gave the waiter a hard time over that (jokingly).

For more photos of this trip: