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.