Jamaica

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!

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.