Life on the farm

On our vacation we’ve done quite a few different things these last couple of days and with only a couple of days more left, we sure was hoping that they’d be good ones! So here’s how we spent our time

Sunrise:

Guess what? I finally got the sunrise that I was hoping to capture. I spent about an hour just hanging out on the beach one morning and taking pictures from all the angles. This one was the best of the bunch. And if you notice, the coconut guy was no where to be found. To be honest, I’m not sure where exactly he was this morning ?

Shopping:

Even though we had a couple of gift shops in our hotel, it still wasn’t the same as going to town to see how the local shops were. We were told it was safe for tourists to go to Ochos Rios,  so we made arrangements to be picked up by a bus and off we went. It was only a couple minute drive to get to town and soon we were getting off the bus for a few hours to check out the town and to do some shopping. The first shops were the ones that the bus driver said that the businesses will take care of us because we came to town with him. Now I’m not sure that anyone ever believes this when your told that they’ll take special care of us, but we were polite and smiled and did take a look around for awhile. Then we headed downtown to see what else we could find. We heard that there was some open markets that the locals supported, so we wanted to find those shops. It didn’t take long and soon we were in the thick of it. The stereotype of this type of a market is that people will hassle you to come and take a quick look – and this market met all those stereotypes. But we knew it going in and we actually did buy a couple of things. The local economy isn’t very good, so for me I wish that we could buy something from everyone! There were two markets that we went to and they both looked pretty much the same. Here is a couple of pictures that I took while in them.

Looking down the rows in the market

Daryl chilling at one of the market vendors

Photo Op:

Have you ever tried to look like ‘I’m so cool’ and the photo turned out like ‘what in the world are you doing’? Well that’s what happened to us. We took a walk to a small part of the beach that overlooked the ocean. Yup, pretty picturesque. So Daryl and I went over to the railing and with the waves roaring behind us, it was the perfect lovey dovey picture. I can just see it now – an 8 x 10 over the fireplace. OK.. so what happened is this is the first picture and we look a little apprehensive. Then the really big waves came!And now this is the picture that is supposed to be on our mantel. We laughed and laughed when we saw how this picture turned out. Even though it’s probably not going to be turned into a saved treasure photo, it made our belly hurt so much from laughing that maybe we should just get it made into a larger picture for our living room.

Entertainment:

Every night there was entertainment at the hotel and it went from a Newlywed Game to fun couple’s games. We even had a night when we had a beach party. I was glad that we had these shows to go to every night because each night was something different and was fun to go to. Here’s a picture of the beach party just getting started

One more time – Paddle boat:

If you remember the first time that we took out the paddle boat, I kinda freaked out and gave my bag with our cameras in it to the beach guy so they wouldn’t get wet. Well we’ve been trying ever since to get back on the ocean with the paddle boats, but the water has been too rough for them. We could take the kayaks out, but I’m thinking that it wasn’t the best idea for us. So we finally got a chance to take them out. We were leaving to head back to the airport to go home at 10:30 in the morning on the final day, and the weather was perfect! There was a really good chance that the paddle boats would go out, but the real question was if we could paddle them out in the ocean, take a picture of the hotel, paddle back to the beach, get to our room, take a shower, and then still make the bus. The shop opened up at 9:00 and Daryl said with a LOT of hesitation, ‘I’ll go with you if you really want to’ OK. Sounds good and let’s get our suits on! I think he was really hoping that I changed my mind. But I knew (well honestly I was hoping) that we could do this. So at 8:45 we went to the shack to see about getting a paddle boat. Nope, they open at 9:00. Humm. So I hovered and after about the 3rd time they asked if they could help me, and I said that I was waiting to take a paddle boat out, they finally gave in and let us get one around 8:55. OK, we smiled and then let it rip! And I mean we were moving!! We were pumping those old pedals so hard until my legs were just burning. I’m guessing it almost looked like we had some type of motor on the boat or something because the water was just a flying behind us. I had to be careful so we didn’t get the cameras wet with the spraying water! With our hotel being so big, and the sun shining so bright, I wasn’t sure just exactly what I was taking a picture of. But I took about 10 pictures and from all different parts of the ocean as we were going from one place and then moving to another. Then we sped back to the beach again with the water just a flying! The whole time of the trip? Maybe 10 minutes. Now this trip really probably should have taken us around 30 minutes 🙂 When we got back to the shore, the guy was even trying to stall us. He said, let me take your picture. So after he took a couple, he then said, ‘now let’s take one kissing’.  Daryl said “what did he say?” I told him just hurry up and kiss me and then let’s go. Now I think the guy helping us must have thought that we had probably the weirdest way of being on vacation ever! Later when we looked at the pictures, I realized that I didn’t get the whole hotel all in one picture – shoot! So I messed around with a couple of them for awhile once we got home and thought that I really should be able to combine the two and I was right!

Our hotel from the ocean

Now even though it’s not perfect, it still works for me. The hotel was really two different sections. One side was family side, the middle was the restaurants, and the other side was the adult side. And tons of swimming pools and stuff in between. After a  quick shower from our paddle boat ride, we even had time to spare before we had to head back home.

Now our winter vacation is over for another year and it was definitely a good one! Good bye warm weather – hello snow!

These next couple of days of our vacation was just as fun as the first couple of days or maybe even better. Remember the group of people from Iowa that we met as we were checking into the hotel? Well we ran into them quite a bit as the week went on and found out that we had a lot in common. We even got invited to a weekend party that they have every year and I’m thinking that it’ll be a whoot! It’s planned for July and I sure hope that it will work in our schedule.

So the beginning of the week we spent time on the beach and pool. We also went snorkeling, Dunn’s River Falls, and a party catamaran out on the ocean. Our hotel package also included water sports so we all went out on paddle boats to see what we can see. Daryl doesn’t really like the water as much as I do, so I was glad that he was ready to go out into the ocean on a very small boat. They said the ‘rules’ were not to go into the swimming area (duh!) and also don’t get too close to the reef. Now this one I can believe. We wanted to get a picture of the hotel and with it being so big (around 850 rooms) it was a feat in itself! So what better way than to take it from the ocean right? Yea, well I had the bag that held our cameras and when we were just getting into the paddle boat we had what seemed to be a big wave hit us and I panicked. I’m kinda weird about cameras getting wet and I for sure didn’t want to get other people’s cameras wet that I had also in the bag. So I gave them to the guide on the beach. Now if I knew that it would take us 3 days to get back on the paddle boats because of rough water – well I would have re-thought that whole idea of giving away the bag. But once we were out in the water it was much calmer and so bizarre! We were a long way from the beach and you could literally see the bottom of the ocean floor! I was talking to someone else who visited Jamaica and she said that she asked the guide how deep was the water because they could also see the bottom and they were told around 30 feet. Now isn’t that just crazy? But like I said I didn’t take our camera out and later in the week we’ll have to try it again to see about getting a hotel picture.

I’ve also been working on trying to catch a good sunrise on the beach. Now even though I do kind of like this picture below, it’s still not what I was hoping to capture. I’ve gotten up the last couple of mornings early to try to snap a picture and the only thing that I’ve accomplished is that I think that the old man picking up coconuts off the beach is thinking that I’m hitting on him .

Morning sunrise on our beach

Each morning starts the same way and that’s eating breakfast. And for me that means an omelet. Even though there was always tons to eat I seemed to always pick the omelet guy. I was lucky that when I took this picture he was able to catch my breakfast in his pan and in one piece. Some people weren’t so lucky that morning.

Literally flipping my breakfast

After spending a nice time hanging out on the beach and the pool

Our beach

and having the best jerk chicken around

This guy just hacked and cut off a piece for you to eat. Crazy!

we found out where they were getting all the coconuts from that they were serving on the beach. Yea, just above everyone’s heads is where they were coming from! The hotel guys would take a machete and hack off some of the coconut so you can have a drink while lounging around. Now even though this sounds tempting – a cold drink from the bar with ice in it sounded much better 🙂

Now to do get ready for the night excursion.

A view of our room

I’m so excited to go on it tonight and could hardly wait! It was a Luminous Lagoon. Now are you saying to yourself.. ‘what in the heck it that’? Well let me tell you.

We were heading to a lagoon where the Martha Brae River meets the Caribbean Sea. This lagoon in the old days housed a wharf where large vessels from England unloaded goods onto smaller ships to be delivered inland up the river. Exciting right? Yea, not so much. But what is exciting about this lagoon is that are four of these in the world and the one in Jamaica is said to be the largest and most brilliant of all those 4 locations ! OK, now that IS COOL right! The water has a microscopic organism in it that’s called a Dinoflagellate and it works kind of like a firefly. When it gets agitated it glows. So off we go onto our next adventure. We wanted to bring not only our swimsuits, but also an empty bottle of water. You dip the water bottle into the water and it’s supposed to glow for about 5 days after. Yup… I was excited. I had my swimming suit on already and not just one camera in my bag this time – but two! When the bus pulled up to the lagoon, it wasn’t quite dark yet so they offered us a social hour to hang out until it was time. Finally it was dark and there was a bunch of us that climbed into this little boat. And if you ever had watched the Swamp People on the History Channel, our guide both looked and talked exactly like Troy Landry. Weird. As our guide – who I’m going to call Troy, was taking our small boat out to the middle of the lagoon the water behind us just billowed up with a bright blue glow. Now this is an awesome sight! You can hardly believe that this water does this. As we get to the middle of the lagoon, the boat stops and Troy asks if anyone wants to go swimming. He hardly got the whole sentence out and I was stripped down to my swimsuit and making my way to the front of the boat. Heck yea I’m going! After we got into the water I noticed that not too many people did actually go, but as in Rome do like the Romans right? I figured I’ll never get another chance to do this again. There was a bunch of pictures that we took  but nothing turned out so well, so we ended up buying the pictures that they were offering. Now don’t get me wrong, I was glad that we had the chance to buy them, but only about 4 of the ones that they took actually turned out and man they were an expensive 4 pictures!

When you move your arms and legs it makes the water glow. Very Cool!

We ended up taking the water bottle back with us to the hotel rooms that we filled with the water and it did actually glow. I tried to take a picture of it under the bed covers,  but after a bunch of tries I think Daryl was right – the pictures were just not going to turn out and please give up!

Part of the entertainment of the night was a guy who could do all these amazing things with his body. He could literally turn inside out and it almost made you hurt watching him. At the end of the night when it was time to get some sleep, I couldn’t shut off my brain just wondering what we’ll be able to see and do tomorrow. What a good time we were having!

So we were finally heading down south for some warmer weather, whoo whooo!! You just know that it’s going to be a good vacation when they’re de-icing the planes in the airport that your trying to leave and the weather that you’re heading to is between 80 and 90 degrees. Am I right? Now sitting on the plane watching them take the ice off the wings can be a little nerve wracking, but for me? Well I’m OK with it! 

Good Bye cold weather!

Like I said, as long as were heading to someplace that you wear shorts and swim suits, they can pretty much do whatever to get us there.

We had a short layover in the airport on our first stop and we were kinda hungry because of the schedule that we had in the morning. So when we saw a Retirement Party – and with cake, well I must admit I did kind of walk by to see what was going on and take a gander at the cake. It turned out that they were celebrating the retirement of the 767 plane and now it was heading to the desert to be abandoned. I felt kind of bad for it, but when I was offered some cake, I didn’t feel that bad anymore. The sugar fix was just the right ticket! The plane ride to Jamaica was pretty much uneventful (which is good!) and it didn’t take long and we were changing into summer clothes at our final destination – Jamaica. Since we booked our trip on line, we all weren’t just sure what we needed to do to get from the airport to our hotel, but the people at the airport were nice and we were hoping that we’d fine the correct bus to get us to our hotel.

We were on the right one and once in the lobby – it was warm and it felt good. Yea, really good! It was funny because our group usually either wears something from Iowa or carry’s Iowa mugs, and just as we were checking in we met up with others from Iowa also just checking in. And throughout the course of the week, we all became pretty good friends.

Our rooms were really nice and clean, and of course came with a welcome towel design on our bed to let us know who our housekeeper was for the week. For me to it’s a true sign that we’re really on vacation. Now I’m not saying that I don’t fix our bed at home – but I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen any fancy towel designs on any of our beds!

After unpacking we needed to get a lay of the land and to see what fun excursions were available. We signed up for a couple and we all were hoping that we picked the ‘good ones’.

Daryl checking out the hotel from the balcony

First one was going to be on a Party Catamaran where we were going to do some snorkeling, Dunn’s River Falls, and then lunch and hang out in the Caribbean Sea for awhile.  First things first. We knew that it didn’t make sense to risk getting our good cameras wet so we checked out the cameras that you could buy. OK, now we all decided that the $5 disposable camera that was selling for $27 just wasn’t worth it. I mean seriously, $27?? So we decided that we’ll just buy a picture from the local guys that they took if we got a chance.  We had to take a bus from our hotel to the boat and it was literally a 15 minute ride. We laughed when we saw this little building and was sure hoping that we wouldn’t need the fire station to help us today. It looked pretty small. It’s the building on the right (red one)

This has got to be the smallest fire station around!

Here’s a picture of the boat that we spent the day on and other picture of the bay where the boats are all held. Check out how clear the water is even here.

Our boat for the day

The bay where the boats were kept. See how clear the water is!

We got to the spot that we were going to snorkel and into the water we go. Now it’s not like we’re expert snorkelers or anything – but I’m telling you that I’ve never seen such a perfect spot ever to check out the underwater wildlife! Usually when we’ve snorkeled in the past you’d see one or maybe two cool fishes, but this time there were tons of all different types of fish just swimming around by you. It literally was like you were in someones aquarium or something. My brother had a couple of fish so close to him that he was trying to catch them. So cool! Too bad I didn’t have that $17 camera with me to take that picture 🙁  We were swimming by a reef and it was so alive with color and different types of coral. I read reviews that said it was the best that you’ll find for not only the water but also the fish and scenery and I’m thinking that review was spot on! I tried to dive under deeper to get a better look, but after getting a couple of mouthfuls of water, I decided that maybe I didn’t need to get any closer after all. 

After snorkeling we were off to Dunn’s River Falls. Now this falls is spring fed and is about 180 feet high and 600 feet long. And rocks.. lots of rocks and water! It’s one of the very few waterfalls in the world that empties into the sea. When you stand on the bottom of the falls and look up – well it doesn’t look possible that you would be able to climb them. Everyone tells you that you need water shoes to do it, but I’m thinking that I’ll need spiked boots or something! But with a lot of hand holding (literally) you do eventually make it up the falls. I found a picture off the web that gives a better visual of what we climbed. It’s just a picture of a small part of the climb.

Just part of the falls that we climbed

Thank goodness the guides every morning brush the rocks so there isn’t anything on them to start the day out that will make the climb too slippery. They tell you to hold hands and at first I thought this holding hand thing was… well kinda dumb. Yea, that thought was short lived! Poor Daryl’s hand! I think I cut off his circulation a couple of times.

After the falls, we got back on the boat, cranked up the music, found some food, and headed out to the waters for a good time and some good food. Even though the weather was overcast today, we all sure had a good time!

When we were getting ready to go out for the night, I quick checked the internet on how cold it actually was there. Yea, too cold! 

At the end of the night we had a good meal and headed down to the nightly entertainment. Tonight’s show was a tribute to Michael Jackson.

What a couple of busy days we’ve had – I wonder what adventures we’ll have tomorrow?

What a great time we had this past week in Jamaica! I can’t believe how you wait and wait, and then you have to wait some more and then finally the day is here that you get to go on vacation. It feels to me just like when you were a kid and you were waiting for the summer time to come to get out of school. You know what I mean? Then just like that the time you’ve been waiting for is over and you’re looking forward to the next year. Well now that our vacation is over and it’s stinking cold here, I have to admit I’ve been thinking about next year already.

So as always I’ve got tons of pictures to share and some stories, but it’s going to take a little bit of time to put them all in the blog. I thought I’d start out with the picture of Daryl and I just hanging out in the kitchen waiting to get picked up to head to the cities for the night. When I looked at this picture I realized that maybe the camera was at a weird angle. We had to put it on a stand on the table and then set the timer to get this one. After a couple of tries,  I was sure wishing one of the boys were home instead taking it! But for now – here is our ‘Heading out for vacation’ photo and of course in front of the cupboard in our kitchen 🙂

For the past week, both our hotel and the weather was really good and so how can you complain about.. well anything right? I’ve got a picture of our hotel that we took from the ocean (another story) but I have to figure out how to combine two pictures. The hotel was so big that I couldn’t fit it in all on one. So I’ll keep trying and see if I can get it.

At the end of our vacation, the car pulled into the driveway around 4:30 am . With being busy on the vacation and just vegging out, it’s going to take sometime to catch up on our sleep I think. So I’m glad to have the weekend coming up to do just that! I’ll try to post some of the vacation pictures hopefully tomorrow.

But for tonight – here is a sneak peek of the beach from our balcony.