Jamaica – the last days

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!