I AM HALF WAY THERE!!!
What better place to celebrate my half way mark than the land of Bob Marley? However, right from the beginning, this was no ordinary trip. My husband and I started planning this trip around the holidays with friends of ours, which is where the problems began. Planning anything let alone a vacation with other people has it's good and bad points. Although I enjoy the company of other people, it is so hard to make sure everyone is happy, and that everyone gets to do what they want. As the day was approaching and plans were still up in the air, our friends backed out. So now the question remains, "Should we stay, or should we go?" The night before my husband and I still had not decided what to do, and kept yo-yoing back and forth. So we went to bed, with no decision made, no plans made, and nothing packed. The next morning when I woke up I asked my husband what was going on? We needed to leave our house by 10:00am (which was an hour from then) to make our flight on time. He stayed in bed, and then at 9:40am he finally made the decision. WE ARE GOING! As you can imagine 4-letter words were pouring from my mouth, while throwing anything within reach into our suitcases, grabbing our passports, camera, and anything else that I thought of in the 5 minutes I had, and away we went. All I can say at this point is thank God for modern technology. On the hour ride to the airport I listed ourselves on Jetblue, and booked our hotel and rental car, and started to pray that I didn't forget anything.
Our flight was delayed out of Orlando, so we ended up arriving into Montego Bay about 2 hours late. Normally this would not have been an issue, but our hotel was in Negril, and it's a little over an hour away, and with little sunlight left in the day this made my husband a little nervous. It wasn't the driving at night that was the problem, but the fact that the steering wheel was on the right side of the car, and they drive on the opposite side of the road, and neither of us has ever driven like this, and not knowing the roads just added to the adventure. Little did we know at that time that this crazy day was about to get crazier.
Within 10 minutes of driving we got lost. Thanks to me, we ended up in downtown Montego Bay. Although the town was colorful, it was also crowded with several hundred if not thousand people walking the streets, traffic was crazy, music was blaring, horns were honking, and we might as well had tourist painted on the sides of the rental car with the looks we were getting. Then a man on a bike approached us through the traffic, obviously knowing we were not where we wanted to be, and told us to follow him. What did we have to lose? We followed him for about 6 blocks, then he dropped his bike right there on the sidewalk and got into the back seat of our car. This was definitely a WTF moment. The look on my husbands face was priceless, and all I could do was laugh. The man got us back on the road we needed, and had us drop him off at a bus stop. Now you might think this was nice, and it was, but generosity in Jamaica does not come free. As soon as the man got out of the car, his hand went right asking for money. Since we just arrived we didn't have time to change any money, and the smallest bill we had was $10.00, he asked for $ 20.00, which of course we didn't give him told him it's $10.00 or nothing, and we drove off. My husband and I just burst out laughing,and then I heard something that I generally don't hear from him. My husband looked over at me and said "I Need A Beer!"
We finally made it to our hotel. We decided to stay on the cliffs instead of the beach, and I loved it. Our hotel had a sister property on the beach which we were allowed to use their facilities. We checked in, and didn't like our first room simply because the people beside us were very noisy, so management was very helpful, and put us in a better room in another building. We freshened up a bit, and although we were both exhausted decided to had out for some Jerk and a Red Stripe. We didn't have to look far, and we ended up at a Jerk shack across the street from the hotel, and without a doubt was the best food we had on the whole trip. After an amazing meal, several Red Stripes, and a few giggles of the crazy day we just had, we went back to the hotel and crashed.
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