Trip Report Day 2, June 4, 2011
Awoke to damp, what is this? Sunshine? Quick! HIT THE BEACH! My experience with June in JA has been sun in the morning, clouds start to form after lunch and brief storms follow from 3-6 or so. Thus, the need for SUN! However, the two complimentary continental breakfasts were calling to us. So, we went to breakfast in our swim wear with beach luggage in tow. Here is where Coco really shines. Tam ordered the continental and I upgraded to the saltfish and ackee plate for $3 or so. Big plates of food, Tam had plenty of fruit and lots of yummy baked goods. Neither of us could finish it all. Service was exceptionally slow this morning. It was never this bad again, and we always wondered why, as there wasn't much of a crowd. We actually laid out for some time, higgled with higglers and had a fairly typical beach day. Saw the jerk pork guy while walking the beach but we were too far from Coco to purchase any. In retrospect, we should have. Never saw him again. Not the rest of the trip, even though we looked and asked! We settled for some coco bread and a veggie patty on the beach, so it was all good. Since For Real is closed we got some cheap beer at Sun Beach's bar, just north of For Real. Cheap beer, but not much of an atmosphere and some of the higglers would lounge around there. The clouds rolled in about noon but the rain held off until 230 or so. We were tired from the travel and sun so we packed up and headed indoors to wait out the rain. The rain stopped around 430 or so, so we hung at the pool and confirmed our pick up time from SeaStarInn for the reggae show featuring LUCIANO!. The main pool at Coco is very big, very clean and the only flipping place to get Wi-Fi in the whole resort. What is up with THAT? I don't think sitting in the rain with electronic devices is such a brilliant idea. I suspect they have set their wireless router to reject signals that aren't of a certain dB strength, in an effort to minimize hacking attempts, but sheesh, you need a user name and password to log on to the network at the pool anyway.
So, at 630pm, sharp, the SeaStar shuttle arrived to fetch us for the show. Did I mention that it rained before pick up? The show was an extra $7 on top of the normal $18, but that was to cover Luciano. And, it included return shuttle. The buffet was TOP NOTCH. I can't vouch for prior buffets, but this one was excellent. Jerk Chicken, Rice and Peas, Escoveitch Snapper, shredded carrot/cabbage salad, Roast Beef in Gravy(?!?!?!!!!), mashed potato, rolls and callaloo veggies. Yum. Tam really liked the salad, I loved the Snapper, the chicken was crazy tender and we enjoyed everything on the line that night. The entertainment was non-stop(Literally. No breaks between sets!), and Luciano was in fine form as well. The drink service was spot on.. We made it to the end of the show at midnight and watched Luciano wade into the crowd and shook EVERYONE's hand. What a great dude! Tam would have enjoyed the show better had she not brought a sinus infection and screaming headache with her to JA. The drummers really were painful for her, I enjoyed them and the OUTRAGEOUS dancing(daggering?). That was FUN! Off in the lovely shuttle bus back to Coco, grabbed a cold RS from the fridge and drift off to a pleasant sleep...
There ends another chapter into the ten day saga of how RockRobster and Tam get their chill back!
