Before we start having kids up the wazoo and get too old and
decrepit to move without the aid of jazzy scooters, we decided to take a last
hurrah trip to Jamaica. We used Costco travel to book a stay at the
all-inclusive Jewel Dunn’s River Falls resort, which turned out to be as awesome
as the brochures made it look. Sadly, we may never be able to go back to
anything other than all-inclusive resorts ever again because it was so great.
Our excursion began late Thursday night as our plane left SLC
just before midnight. We got a few hours of neck-breaking sleep on the plane
before arriving early at JFK in New York. Naturally, Heather was craving
Buffalo Wild Wings at 6 in the morning, so we tried to have some wings for
breakfast. Unfortunately we were informed that their fryer was down (we weren’t
not sure how a wing place could stay open with a broken fryer, but I guess
that’s why we aren’t in the restaurant business), so we went to another place
and had to settle for hot dogs and burgers and some awful chocolate ice cream.
Yes, apparently chocolate ice cream can indeed be ruined. Shortly after
breakfast, it was off to sunny Jamaica. On our plane ride, there was a very odd
woman who woke up screaming from a nightmare, but other than that the flight
was pretty routine. Delta currently has a charming Christmas themed safety
video with various Christmas characters putting their holiday trinkets in the
overhead compartments, but Eric was informed by Heather that they were “stupid”
and not as funny as he thought. Regardless, anything’s better than the boring
flight attendants teaching you how a seat belt works … Honestly, if you can’t
buckle a seatbelt, you probably won’t survive in Jamaica, so you might as well
turn back now.
Upon arriving, we walked outside to a wall of heat and
humidity that hit us hard since we were still wearing our Utah long pants and
jackets. After a long shuttle ride down the coastline—driving on the left side
of the road, mind you—which consisted mostly of Heather snapping embarrassing
pictures of Eric dozing, we arrived at our hotel. We were surprised by the lack
of doors and walls as the lobby of the hotel was basically outside. We were offered
complimentary drinks, but left them on the table after the ol’ sniff test revealed
they were full of liquor. We soon got our bags up to our room and checked out
our new digs before exploring the grounds of the hotel. There were many choices
for food, including a buffet, a pizza oven, a snack bar, and various other
restaurants. There were 3 peacocks roaming around who liked to hop up in trees
when they weren’t eating people’s scraps off the ground. There were 2 large
pools, swim up bars, a spa, and bungalows, all while the ocean was only a few
hundred feet away. We were hooked!
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| ZZZZZZ |
After relaxing and hanging around the resort the first day,
we planned some fun excursions for the remainder of our week. On Saturday we
hiked up Dunn’s River Falls for which our hotel was named. Heather had hiked it
while on a cruise with her family back in high school and it was pretty incredible.
You start down at the ocean and hike up a tiered waterfall with a guide and a
cameraman filming everything. We said “Yeah mon” a lot and took some awesome
pics with our selfie stick (the selfie stick people should probably give us a
bonus or something because we sold a lot of people on that thing). The only
down side was having to hold hands with strangers the whole way up as we formed
a big human chain that was somehow safer than hiking it alone. It seemed to us
that the risk of having a chain of old Asian women slipping and dragging us to
our watery graves was far more treacherous than it would have been with just
the 2 of us, but it was still pretty great. Heather got her first taste of
Jamaican wildlife as she discovered these giant, terrifying spiders that look
like they have skulls painted on their heads.
Sunday we chose to go ziplining through the jungle with a
place called CHUKKA tours. Luckily the harnesses weren’t too wedgie-inducing
and Eric laughed as the instructors told him to keep “both boys in the same
room” when putting the harness on. Good advice, Jamaican friends. It was very
exciting to soar over giant trees in the forest, although we were disappointed
to find out that there are no monkeys in Jamaica. Or snakes. But there is this
crazy tree that generates its own hanging fern from vines. And another one that
glows in the dark and looks like it’s on fire. The selfie stick survived this
excursion as well and we got some more cool pics.
On Monday we took the last of our excursions. We floated
down a beautiful river with a guide who sang lots of Johnny Cash songs and
tried to make really silly jokes. None of them were even close to Eric-quality
jokes, mind you. We were with a group of about 10 other people and one of the
funniest rules we heard during orientation with them was “don’t shit in the
river.” That made us think how that must have been a big problem with previous
groups for some reason … good thing we were the first group of the day instead
of the second. After saying “Yeah mon” a hundred more times and floating
through some naturally made waterslides, we headed back to the resort.
Other highlights of the resort included hammocks, a fridge
in our room that restocked itself every day, a large chess board, shuffleboard,
a tiny (but complimentary) par-3 golf course, a private dock, and a spa (which
we indulged in by having a couple’s massage, complete with that scrapey stuff
that you feel is removing all your flesh, but leaves you feeling very soft).
One day Eric went back to the room to get something, when he found the
housekeeping staff just leaving the room. The lady asked him if a child was
staying with him in the room (it was an adults only resort), as she had seen a
teddy bear, rubber ducks, and several Disney movies on the bed. He laughed and
laughed and said they were his wife’s.
We indulged in tons of homemade pizzas, jerk chicken,
Italian food, and mediocre buffet food. And then there was Heather’s favorite
discovery of “steak and cake” at the fancy sit down restaurant. We ate steak
there every night (typically after already eating somewhere else first) and had
fancy desserts, including some chocolate cake which Heather was convinced was
some of the greatest she’d ever had. We drank tons of virgin piña coladas and
strawberry daiquiris, plus something called a Jamaican sunrise, which
essentially was a mixture of pineapple juice and orange juice. When were
weren’t stuffing our faces, we participated in a few other nightly activities
such as karaoke night and battle of the sexes trivia. Karaoke consisted mostly
of the staff singing tons of songs and gyrating all over everything, but also
included a very drunk lady named Sue (who disturbingly did some gyrating of her
own).
After a great week, we reluctantly made our way back to the airport
to come home. At the airport, we got to wait in the special people lounge,
complete with more piña coladas and snacks. We flew back into JFK, where we
finally got the Buffalo Wild Wings Heather had been craving for a week. Our
plan was to spend the night in the airport somewhere and fly out in the
morning, but there was a big snowstorm that was delaying flights, so we thought
we’d try to get out earlier. As we inquired about changing our flight, we went
to a desk with 4 New York women trying to do the job of a single person. We
almost busted out laughing as they argued with each other and eventually got us
on an earlier flight. Between them and the customs lady singing an original
Thanksgiving song which had a chorus consisting of “Happy gobble gobble, happy
Gobble gobble,” we were excited to possibly end up in New York for PA school.
Plenty of weirdos to keep things interesting. We got to Salt Lake around 1:00
AM and went to sleep to prep for another full day of eating on Thanksgiving.
Jamaica truly lived up to its reputation of being a tropical paradise. We can’t
wait for our next all-inclusive getaway.
