We made it home, unfortunately. I mean once the journey starts I want it to end, I just hate the idea that the journey home has to start. We left on Sunday and Saturday night the weather got awful. Rain, Lightning and Thunder like I have never heard in Negril. Tons of rain, and when we got up Sunday morning we heard a heavy roar and walked down to the beach to figure out what was going on. The lifeguard chair that I featured in an earlier part of the trip report was tipped over and was in the process of being covered up with sand. A few guys from Boat Bar and the security and groundkeepers from Rondel and yours truly worked for a while to get it out of the sand and upright and behind the wall at Rondel. Never knew how heavy that thing was. It was all 5 of us could handle. As has been reported elsewhere the famous Alfred's swim platform is no longer. It washed down the beach by Charela and Coco. If you look closely in this picture you can see parts of it washed up on the beach. Scary stuff.
And just in case you wonder why they have rules about how much your building can encroach on the beach, here is why they have those. Blue Skies (which used to be Mariposa) which had a wall that was already too close to the water built stuff out even further than that. I don't get it, but none of my business I guess.
A few thoughts on the trip.
We were there at the end of July as well and I thought it was dead then, but this was as slow as I have ever seen it in Negril. Hopefully things turn around soon because the people are hurting with no income. It sounds like a lot of the hotels are rotating who gets to work and trying to spread what little wealth there is around. I hope the busy season is at least a shell of it's former self. I hate to think what will happen if we don't have something like a 50% or more winter for these folks.
Also very impressed by the whole travel thing. I never felt unsafe or too close to anyone in the airport or on the plane. Everyone I encountered seemed to be following the rules. Luckily we were able to cash in some unused tickets and upgraded to first class so I am sure that helped my perception of how safe traveling was.
I continue to say that you have to almost look for a bad meal in Negril. This was our 36th Jamaican trip and probably 25th to Negril and I think we can count the number of bad meals on one hand. The food is one of the things that keeps drawing us back (that and the people). Notice I didn't say bad service, that happens lots of places, not necessarily bad, but you know, soon come, or sometimes it seems like almost never come. But I stopped letting that bother me a long time ago. I don't go to Negril to get in a hurry, in fact just the opposite, I wake up every morning in the states on a dead run and I have to cover a lot of ground to get all of the stuff that I have to get done completed in one day. Most days I rush around like an idiot and still end up going to bed with things still unchecked on that day's to-do list. I go to Negril to absolutely not do that, so if my dinner takes a little longer, I try to not let it bother me and understand that pretty soon I'll be back at home rushing around again.
We are definitely headed back on February 6th for our "normal" February trip, assuming anything is normal anymore. Trying to work on the wife for a quick little trip between Christmas and New Years, but realize that might be a little bit of a dream at this point. We'll see, one way or another we'll be back as soon as we can make it work.
Thanks for reading everyone. This trip report was actually more fun that I thought it would be and gave me some time to reflect on the trip.
Hope to see you all in Negril soon!!!
M&M