Brasi Report#5: Canadian Lovers and Lucky Sunglasses
I hopped in to the resort's van, and smiled a wide-ass Red Stripe smile.
“After all the waiting, I am finally in Negril again,” I thought. It was my first night. April 2011.
My driver (“my” meaning the guy who waits outside my hotel and offers guests rides, trinkets, what have you 24-7) agreed to let me tag a long on a pick up he was making at Rick’s. Free ride to Rick’s for me…his name? The Judge. Score.
He/we ended up being a bit early, so while the Mariner’s guests we'd come to pick up finished eating, I grabbed a(nother) Stripe and checked out the scenery. Lots of tourists. Lots of Jamaican taxi guys outside, waiting for the folks they’d dropped off. A really pretty Jamaican waitress checking me out. Really? Yeh mon.
Welcome to Negril...too bad I wasn't here for "that"...because THAT would be fun, I bet. (:
A bit later, after a second expensive Red Stripe, Judge signaled to me that his guests were done and waiting to be driven back to the hotel. I jumped in the passenger seat.
Sam and Sally of Ontario (names fictionalized) were a bit “tipsy” and very talkative. I discovered that they’d been married in Negril 20 years earlier. Just months after they’d left, they went through a horrific battle with throat cancer…Sam had a tracheotomy…and beat it. This trip was a celebratory one for them. It was obvious they were in love.
I myself was going through an “off again” period with my girlfriend-“Sarah”-of 18 months. This made the trip a bit of a melancholy one for me…and I believe they sensed it, and sensed how much I cared for this person they didn’t even know. They’d both been through rough divorces prior to meeting each other---just like me---and I really look up to their commitment to each other.
After filling them in about all of the issues I had endured with “Sarah”---cheating, health issues, a large age difference between us…they said “This relationship is not for you…someone you are with should make you HAPPY...there isn;t enough balance in that pairing for you.”
But love is stronger than logic. After the vacation, I took up with Sarah again, and due to that suffered a horrific loss in June that marks my dreams almost every night. Like a sinking ship...the water finally became too much for Sarah to bear and she is no longer with us.
Throughout that week or so at Mariner’s I had many beers with Sam and Sally, dinner a pair of times, and was touched by how friendly and considerate they were. My unofficial job became "the beer gopher" for Sam while we all swam in the ocean as he had to be careful with his health issue. I didn't mind at all. I had some really cool new friends.
One day, I was bringing back three beers to my newfound Canadian friends and a huge wave knocked off my sunglasses. This had happened to me on a previous trip and I ruined a good hour searching the sand and surf. This time, "screw it," I thought. I continued out to the chest deep water with three cold Stripes.
After finishing them, I decided to go back to my room and get my spare pair of sunglasses while grabbing a few more beers…two birds with one stone, ya know?
So: I have my “spare pair” of glasses on, three fresh Stripes, walking down the sand toward the beach…as I get waist high something hits me…THE SUNGLASSES I had just ‘lost!’ I grabbed them and to this day find that stroke of luck very hard to believe!
It was at least 30 minutes later…”they just took a swim,” I think to myself…haha. And I wasn;t even looking for them. What is more amazing is that a higgler hadn't seen it and grabbed them first!
Smiling again, I had a new story to tell.
I still stay in touch with my friends Sam and Sally. Their advice was to end my relationship with “Sarah”...that is hindsight now…but I’ll never forgot them or their kindness and how much fun I had getting to know them on my last reach to paradise.
***Next Trip Report Coming January 2012!!!***
