Trip Report - March 2014

[jsteil]

3/18 - 3/19
Bags all packed and ready to go. Our friends show up and we head out for lunch before heading to MCI. After eating and talking about the trip we head to the airport. We are on the last flight to Chicago with an 8 hour layover. Not enough time to want to pay money for a hotel room, so we sat around the airport and slept on the floor. By the way the carpet is disgusting. After about two hours of trying to sleep on the floor I notice that my wife and friends have all left. I wonder the airport and find them sleeping on benches a terminal over. I find a bench and sleep. Not for long though because several airport workers keep walking by talking to themselves. “They always think I’m in the bathroom. I work, my feet hurt from pushing this thing around all night, uugghh.” And “Dang Dave never comes to work and I have to do all his crap they need to fire that guy”. Another hour went by then an airport lady stopped to see if I was asleep and put a blanket on me. It’s now 7am and our flight to MBJ is about to start boarding. Everyone gets on and everyone is smiling. The captain comes on over the loud speaker. “Sorry guys, we are having mechanical issues with a backup system. We can’t take off until we have it fixed, should be another 15 minutes.” 15 minutes go by and another page. “Well it’s not fixed, but we are getting another part from our hanger and it will take 15 minutes to get here and then another 15 minutes to make sure it works.” Finally after an hour the plane takes off for Jamaica.

Our friends are going to Jamaica for the first time. My wife and I let them do everything without our help. They fill out the customs form about 3 times each before getting it right. We see Jamaica from our window and everyone is excited. It’s overcast and windy. We get through customs and everything very quickly. I call Kingsley to make sure he knows we made it after the delay. He sees us coming out of the walk way and says our names. We have used Kingsley many times in the past. We all hug and then he gets his van.
All four of us take a big sigh of relief that we made it. The radio is turned up and Kingsley is jamming to Chronixx. We all start singing along to the tunes and he is surprised that we all know the songs. Kingsley takes us to Mega Mart and we get everything we need including milk chocolate digestives that are hard for us to find at home.

We continue on our way to Negril. Our friends are speechless and drawn to the ocean. We start to enter Negril and Kingsley welcomes the new timers to Negril and welcomes us back home. We point out things along the way knowing they have no clue what we are talking about. We head around the city center and head down one love drive. Kingsley drops us off at Banana’s Gardens and helps us with our groceries and bags. The new comers can’t believe where they are.
Nicole, owner of Banana’s Garden, hands us our keys. We make our selves at home. I’m sitting outside smoking a cigar and giving the newbies time to explore. Nicole walks by and asks what we are doing tonight. Told her we are heading to Ahhh Bees and she asks if they can join us, absolutely. The newbies head out of the gate and onto the road for the first time. Several cars went by fast and the newbies turned to us and said “crap, we are not in American lol.” Ahhh Bees moved two spots down from its previous location. He now has a nice patio area and even had waitresses. The burgers were still delicious. The wife got the snapper burger and fell in love. He even has a new one where he puts cheese in the middle. After dinner we headed back to relax in the pool and put an end to day one.
3/20
Woke up at 6am because that’s when I wake up at home. The power went out in the middle of the night and it got extremely hot. Walked to the front of the property and found out a transformer and poll next to T-birds on the Cliff caught on fire and the poll burnt down. JPS had not shown up yet, but was told the power would “soon come, no worries”. Since no one was up yet I smoked a cigar while floating in the pool. The newbies Jeremy and Katelyn woke up and smoked Jamaica’s finest. The wife woke up and got dressed. Nicole brought down breakfast. Breakfast consisted of French toast, toast, papaya, banana, star fruit, pineapple, juice, and coffee.

Nicole was heading to Sav for some things and offered to drop us off at Alfreds. We arrived to Alfreds really early, but it has a great vibe, food, etc. Jeremy and Katelyn just stared at the blue water. Finally after standing around for some reason they got the courage to run into the water. I promised Jeremy’s mom that I would capture the moment with my camera. Jeremy and Katelyn have never traveled out of the Midwest, never been to another country, nor seen an ocean/sea. They did all three on this trip.

We headed back to the West End to get ready for dinner. Our plan was to hit up Eddie and Pam’s (DeBar). There were many people at Debar that night. While sitting there Dalbert walked by and said hello and welcomed us back. Jerk Chicken was the best. The newbies asked if we were going to eat at places like this the entire trip. The answer was an absolute yes.

Alfreds


Another up close picture of that yacht.


3/21
Woke up and did basically the same as the previous mornings. We ate breakfast that consisted of Banana pancakes, fruit, toast, juice, and coffee. We were doing the One Love Bus, so we didn’t want to wonder too far away. Last time we missed the bus or it missed us, ha. About 2pm we could see the bus from the road and cheered. We are the first ones on. We picked up two girls from tensing pen and then moved on towards the beach. Picked up about 50 people from the beach side and headed back to the West End. First stop was Sunset after dark, which had a pretty view of the beach. Next we headed to Skybar. Skybar has a really cool elevated patio. While drinking Red Stripes, Nicole, from where we stay walked by and said she was dropping off birthday stuff for a party happening the next night for some popular DJ. Next we headed to No Limit Bar, but it got crowded really fast, so we walked across the street to PeeWee’s. PeeWee’s was fantastic and a place we will go to more often the next time. From there we went to Bella Donnas. She had some pizza that hit the spot. Then she started to sing to one of the guys on the bus and started to play a cd over and over that kept skipping. From there we headed to Negril Escape. Beautiful property, there was a local artist called Ras Nobel getting footage to make a Youtube video. We realized we would be in the video dancing until this beautiful black lady started doing moves you see in a Vybz Kartel video and realized our footage will probably not make the final cut lol. Bus loaded back up and we headed down to SirD Firewater, which is right were we stay and always a fun place. The last stop was Xtabi. From there we tipped Lanbert and headed over to 3 Dives for dinner.

3/22
Dave, Kingsley’s cousin picked us up early. We headed toward Sav and then towards Blackriver before taking a left towards Y.S. We have done this tour before, but Jeremy and Katelyn wanted to get away for at least one tour. Y.S. was beautiful as always. From there we headed to Appleton. We noticed that there is no longer a tasting of all 13 bottles and that it was reduced down to 7. Also there is a 10 minute time limit now. The tour guide felt bad that we are the only paying people in the group that consisted of a school group on tour from Kingston. He took us into a side bar and said he would join us in a minute. We drank bottles down before he came back. Asked him if the changes were due to Italians now owning Appleton? He said that the new owners want to cut cost and the tour is one area. Most of the people that take the tour are women and they like the creams. The new owners want to reduce the tasting down to just the signature rum’s that are marketed for men. He keeps telling them that they need to keep the creams. It was a good talk and he appreciated our love for Appleton Rums.

[jsteil]

Continued...

Next stop is the Pelican bar. We got a boat and got in. Asked where it was and the guy pointed to a speck barely in sight. 20 minutes of treading through the water and seeing properties falling into the sea we finally arrive to the Pelican Bar. It was as expected. We spent an hour just sitting and watching Dolphins. The other couple wanted to leave that took the boat with us, so we headed back. On the way back the Dolphins appeared, so we got to see them up close. Dave said we must me lucky, he had been out there many times and never saw Dolphins.
It was a long drive back to Negril. Started to think about dinner and ended up with a group decision of pizza. Ended up at German Bar. We had never been to the German Bar, but it ended up being one of the best meals for the price. A big veggie pizza for 900J.



3/23
Slept in due to being tired from the previous day. Katelyn wanted to do some shopping at the duty free stores. Jeremy got the idea that we should do a ¼ of a “special brownie”. Worst idea of the trip. About two hours in we were laughing in the shops at eachother and my wife grounded us to a bench outside. That was the good part of the experience. The girls finished shopping so we entered the beach through Alfreds. My wife wanted to go to Idle Awhile. I probably should have had more water before walking. About halfway down the beach I’m starting to freak out. I need to either sit down or get in the ocean and chill. My wife says I need to man up and continue to walk. I start to get paranoid because I think everyone is looking at me. I’m wearing sunglasses, so no one can see my eyes. I walk by all the vendors like a ghost. We finally make it to Idle Awhile and I’m not feeling too good. I lay down for about 20 minutes. Jeremy and Katelyn are concerned, so they sit down next to me. My wife goes in for a swim and waves to Katelyn. Katelyn waves back and a hustler selling aloe is thinking she is wanting something. The hustler sits down and starts to do his thing. I know they are relying on me to tell him no, but all my force field is down due to the brownie. I’m lying there like a beached whale occasionally taking a gulp of water. 10 minutes into the aloe massage for Katelyn I sit up and look at the hustler and say “I’m going to be sick”. The hustler just looks at me and shrugs. A couple minutes later I fill up a cup full of vomit. The hustler gets freaked and runs down the beach. I guess that’s one way to get rid of someone lol. Got rid of the cup and felt 100% better. Assured everyone around me not part of my group that everyting was good and apologized. Lifeguard at Idle Awhile was concerned, but I was good. Really enjoyed the rest of the day after that.

I got ideas from here on announcing our pregnancy. We ended up doing the 3 sandals on the sand with Sept 2014 written in the sand. I'll keep trying to post the picture, but the uploader is not working.



I’ll write more later.

[Honey518]

Great report! Love day 3/23 ..LOL! AWESOME way to announce the new baby- Congrats !!!

[Oncedeported]

Sounds like you started with a bang! Great report so far. Thanks

[Mandy]

Loving the report!!

[Jambarney]

Wicked start jsteil , unfortunately have had that bad trip also , wife felt no sympathy on me either and made me hang out with her on the beach also for the day.
It was rough, I mean real rough don't wish it on anyone.

Great work,

Jamb

[jsteil]

3/23 Continued.
Got a taxi and headed back home. Wound up lying in a hammock the rest of the night with a smile from ear to ear before falling asleep.

3/24
Somehow my wife got me from the hammock into bed. I woke up around 3am asking if we still had birthday cake. Arrival day was my wifes 29th birthday, so Nicole had made a cake. Sure enough there was half a cake left. I demolished the cake and ended up eating the rest of our fruit.
Woke up around 8am ready for breakfast. Banana muffins, toast, coffee, juice, and fruit.. yum.
The pool looked good so we did that for a while before going to the beach. Upon walking to the road Nicole asked me if I remember Trevor from DeBar. Of course we remember Trevor and hear he had a new place, but didn’t know where it was located. Was told that he was having a rough time being off the main road, so we made a decision that our last meal would be at Trevor’s. We headed back to the beach and went from bar to bar making sure the newbies got to see everything they wanted and did a little shopping.
It was about 2pm, so we headed to Canoe Bar and did some snorkeling. Katelyn saw an octopus, the rest of us saw mainly fish. Canoe had very good drinks and a 2 for 1 special. We all got pretty tipsy.

3/25
Everyone realizes it is our last full day on the island. Instead of boring everyone with the same pool and beach story I will jump to dinner.
I realize that although we are right across the street from Ricks we never took Jeremy and Katelyn there. I told Trevor we would be ready at 6:30pm and he offered to pick us up. I get Jeremy and Katelyn and we head across the street. The regular guys are out front selling bracelets and Ganja. We walk right through them and into Ricks. Jeremy comments that it’s crowded. Katelyn watches two people cliff dive and takes a picture. Katelyn asks me why people don’t go to LTU and Firewater because in her eyes they are more chill. Both ask me if we can leave, so we head back across the street. We get my wife Katie and head back to the street. Trevor is right on time and he takes us to his place. If you want to know where it is? When heading north from the West End you will see Canoe Bar on your left, the next street after you pass Canoe Bar take a right. Trevor’s will be on your left. We were treated like family. Red Stripes for 3 of us and water for the wife. He didn’t have any snapper and my wife can’t eat King Fish, so we got chicken. Katelyn and Jeremy wanted lobster. The chicken, veg, rice and peas, was fantastic and huge portions. Katelyn and Jeremy’s meal consisted of two lobsters each and two lobster tails each plus veg, rice and peas. Total bill for all of us was 8500J. After relaxing Trevor took us home. We thanked him for our last dinner on the Island and told him we would be back.

3/26
First time in six days I have woken up to an alarm. Damn it we have to go back home. Breakfast seems more like a last meal. We all have the look of, yeah you guys can leave, but I’m staying. We all know we have to leave through. Kingsley pulls up and we pack the van with our stuff. We head to the airport, flight leaves on time, and we make it to Chicago on time. After not eating processed fast food for a week it’s not really appealing. Even the Dr. Pepper I once enjoyed on the flight tastes like crap. Every time we leave Jamaica my wife and I say we will continue to eat the same as when we are on the island, but always end up eating crap. We look around the airport to find the most wholesome food to eat. Settle for some overpriced fruit and water. We get to our departure gate back to Kansas City. This lady in first class heads to the plane first. She comes back out and yells at everyone saying the plane is broken and we will have to wait. We wait an hour and the plane is fixed. At this point I’m looking at the weather and thinking it’s going to be a rough flight. Plane takes off and it’s a pretty steep climb. I can hear the engines going and it sounds like beeping coming from upfront. I tell myself if I can survive the bad brownie trip I can make it through this plane ride. The plane finally settles and everything is good. It’s very windy on this flight and I’m thinking the landing is going to be worse than the takeoff. We start to descend for MCI and the weather is bad. The plane is rocking from side to side. I tell myself that the plane can handle the swaying back and forth; everyting is going to be alright. It’s raining hard. With rain I knew the plane would have to hit the runway hard to stop. Everything was good and the plane made it.

We get our luggage and my wife says something smells like pineapple rum. We wait to get home before opening our luggage and sure enough one of the bottles of rum was crushed. Either way the other 4 bottles of rum and rum cream made it just fine.

[rocknrollfarmer]

Good trip report mon', but geez, it's uncomforting {is that a word?} to hear about the plane's being broken and the awful rides! And we just watched that Denzel Washington movie the other night...FLIGHT ! Freaky.