A few years ago, Mickey and I took a trip to Jamaica. I saw a sign by the side of the road while being shuttled from the airport to the hotel. It said "408 deaths on this highway this year." I kid you not. I sat there in the shuttle thinking, "If tourism is their biggest business, why would you advertise the fact that you may die before you get to your hotel." That was my introduction to Jamaica.
Once we got to our hotel we noticed that the hotel seemed nice and we soon discovered that the food was exceptional. I also found that some parts of the resort seemed to be a bit in disrepair. Our room air conditioner was not working properly so we phoned the front desk where they promptly sent up a repair guy to fix the AC. He tore off a piece of duct tape and stuck it to the AC unit then said, "No problem man" and walked out. I must say that the cooler seemed to work fine after that. We soon learned that duct tape was the tool of choice for most repairs.
A couple of days into our trip, Mickey and I were headed down to the beach from our room, I felt like the elevator was extremely slow so I decided to take the stairs. Mickey decided to take the elevator so of course it became a race. I ran down the three flights to the lobby and stood by the elevator doors waiting for Mickey. I waited for 10 minutes and noticed that during that time the elevator doors had not opened once. I guessed that Mickey was still waiting for the elevator on the third floor. Right about then I heard a woman scream and a bump/bang sound. It was not a good elevator sound. The elevator did the ding thing and the doors opened. All I could see was the top of Mickey's noggin and a woman was making sounds of panic from the inside of the elevator. Mickey must have been comforting her.
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| Heading towards the elevator and looking into the elevator to see the top of Mickey's head. Notice the people taking the stairs. |
The elevator had overshot the stopping point so the duct tape guy got a ladder and lowered it down so they could climb out. Mickey informed me that the elevator had, in fact, malfunctioned. First it wouldn't move at all. Next it bumped a bit and started down and then the elevator bounced a bit while trying to stop. He said that he was trying to calm the woman down because she was certain that they were going to plummet to their death. Just then the door opened and Mickey and the woman were looking mostly at a concrete wall and above it was the floor to the lobby. I just figured that if the roads to the hotel didn't kill you perhaps the elevator would.
The elevator was "Out of Order" for a few days but I swear I saw the repair guy with the duct tape fixing it one day. I had already decided to take the stairs for the rest of the trip.
A day later we went to Dunn River Falls. The first thing they tell you when you arrive in Jamaica is to always use the shuttles provided by the hotel for the day excursions....so of course Mickey informed me that he had worked out a private ride from his new Jamaican friend, Javaun, that he just met in the parking lot. Mickey said that Javaun had a "real nice" van and that he would take us to the falls.
That particular day was blazing hot and humid and as I looked at Javaun's van I told Mickey we HAD to have air-conditioning and that his van didn't even look like it had seats. Mickey asked if he had air conditioning in his van and he said, "No problem man." This was not a good sign.
I get motion sick easily and I thought of backing out of the adventure but I did not. I had taken my Bonine and I brought a bottle of water. I thought I was prepared. We hopped into Mickey's new bestie's van and headed to Dunn River Falls. I will say that the ride there was nothing short of an amusement park barf ride. Just a few minutes had passed when I realized that the road was a single lane with cars going in both directions. No wonder so many people die on the highway. When a car came straight at us, Javaun would honk (yes the horn worked well) and the other car would also honk, then a game of chicken would begin. About 10 feet from collision, one of the drivers would swerve into the dirt. This continued for over an hour and a half on the windiest road I've been on next to the road to Hana. (A whole other blog).
The best part was the no air-conditioning part. When we asked Javaun to turn up the air he would fiddle with the controls and say, "No problem man". Not an ounce of air came out of any vent in that van but Javaun pretended it did. I mentioned to Mickey that I didn't feel any cool air at all so Mickey's solution was to open the windows, that way the hot furnace kind of air could at least blow into our car sick faces.
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| The picture we took at Dunn River Falls |
When we got to the falls, Javaun assured us that he would be waiting to drive us back to the hotel....yay. I started debating with myself about whether or not it would be better and safer to walk back to the hotel and take the chance of getting heatstroke or kidnapped or ride back in the heat wagon playing chicken. It couldn't decide.
When we got out of the van, Mickey told me that he was motion sick and didn't feel well. I just looked at him. "Ya sure?" We headed to the falls where every tourist in Jamaica goes and walked up and down the falls. We took our picture, found a huge spider, got accosted by the locals trying to sell their wares and climbed into the death van for the hell ride back. That adventure was 30 minutes of beauty and 4 hours of misery, terror, nausea and heat stroke. We made it safely back to the hotel and I was so happy to get to our room with the duct taped cooler.
The cherry on the cake of our Jamaica trip was our snorkeling day. While Mickey went to rent our snorkel gear, I waited on the beach. I was offered many Jamaican goods and services while waiting. I succumbed to the hair braiding. The pressure was just too much, especially after our van ride. I almost purchased some of the weed that was being offered too. I was still motion sick after the van trip from the day before.
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| My Jamaican braids |
By the time Mickey returned with our snorkel gear, I was braided up and ready to go. We headed into the surf. The ocean was beautiful and the fish fascinating. I was finding so many incredible fish that I had to point all of them out to Mickey as he followed me around. I just kept swimming and pointing out fish. Soon I noticed that there were others that wanted to see the fish I was pointing out. I had a following. Other snorkelers loved the exotic fish I kept finding. I really thought I was popular. The thing is, Mickey just kept following me too. I was a snorkel star.
Eventually, I stopped and popped up out of the water to take any questions that my followers had about how I found the most astonishing fish in the sea. The first thing I noticed, though, was a light breeze blowing over one of my boosies. Hum. Why would that be? I looked down to see that I had one bosom tucked nicely inside of my swimsuit and the other had popped right out into the open for all my fish fans to see. I put the offending boosie back into my swimsuit and tripped over my fins to have a chat with Mickey.
Shari: How long has this zipple been out for everyone to see?
Mickey: Not long enough
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| Me before "the incident" and my amazing snorkel skills bubble was burst...no followers gathered so far. |
Shari: I thought I was finding amazing and exotic fish. Is this why I have a crowd following me? It's not my snorkel abilities?
Mickey: Nope. It's not your snorkeling.
Shari: Why didn't you say something?
Mickey: Shrug. But that was amazing!!
I snorkeled away thinking, "Idiots! All of them!
Just as we were headed to shore, Karma struck. Mickey swam under a rope that had a couple of jelly fish stuck to it. They stung him on the back.
Mickey thought he was dying and I thought it was Karma because he let every tourist at the resort see one of my tatters. The first aid station gave him some sort of salve to put on it and sent us back to our room with a roll of duct tape. (Just kidding about the duct tape)
And that was our trip to Jamaica.
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