Trip report, short and sweet!
Our family just returned home on 12/30 from our 8th trip to Negril, our son who is 7 experienced his 2nd trip and absolutely had a blast. We stayed at White Sands making this our 3rd stay and all went wonderful, great place to stay in the center of the beach. I must say that after reading quite a few posts regarding safety and aggresivness of the vendors, we were a little more on guard than previously. I feel great saying that it was not necessary and if anything we felt less pressure from the vendors on the beach. A quick no thanks was all that was needed and we never got talked back to or hassled and never ran in to anything that made us worry about our safety. It was also just as busy as other visits on Christmas vacation. Niahs patty was one of my first stops as it is right next to White sands, good as ever however wow the prices went from 2 dollar patties to $4.50 us, still worth it as they were huge and tastey as ever. Made sure we had Best in the West as we some how missed this wonderful place before and it lived up to its name, could have been spicier for us both and we would have been fine. Very hard to please our son who is the pickiest eater and he settled on hot dog or grilled cheese, complained about the cheese of course but he survived. We visited Rhodes hall and although we did call ahead and explain we were coming for the crock tour and snorkeling, when we arrived it wasn't available due to it being Christmas and we had to pay $40 to get there and back when web site stated free transportation, we were told ahead that we missed the morning van. We were offered our enterance fees back and she did apologize, was very friendly and welcoming and picked us up the next day for croc tour and so all ended well as we spent the first day snorkling in some of the best reef ever and the seclusion on Christmas was very welcome. Overall a very beautiful place and our son loved the crocks and the beautiful peacocks he tortured by chasing around, lol. We visited Kool Runnings water park and also had a blast, no lines and cheap eats, cheapest we found in Negril! We did not make it out anywere after dark, no shows at all as little man was tired from his day in the sun, wanted to visit Tic and see the Christmas Eve show, but just was not going to happen. We did enjoy quite a few dirty bananas one night and I crashed a little sooner than expected, man I love those things! Oh, too funny our route taxi ran out of gas while taking us from Xtabi to White Sands, not really funny but quite a shock as this has never happened before. Another taxi quickly helped out and we were on our way to beach and him to gas station! We " adopted" our house keepers grandson(Kemoney) for a day. We asked if he could spend the day with us and play with our son, both had fun and we got to fill him up with all the sweets he probably did not usually get to have, hey its all good and he did not complain a bit! We visited Xtabi and our son loved, loved it, jumped off a few small cliffs, saw some bats in caves which scared me to death and loved the snorkeling. We did not make it to Ricks to see the cliff divers but have to save something for next trip. Other than the above we just experienced the best sand gravity ever and it was another beautiful 10 days in Negril. We will soon come again and again!!
