Trip Report - February 1-8, 2013

[butch]

Great trip report! It's great to hear a report for the exact same dates I was there....I'm sure I crossed your path a few times. I stayed at Secrets and had breakfast at Firefly when Maxine worked mornings and the Wild Parrot the other days. I also bought the little honey bananas from Cortis and soursop when she had it every morning, she is one awesome lady! I look forward for more of your great report...respect

[Maryann]

Enjoying your TR. Beautiful photos!

[Jim-Donna]

Really nice. Enjoying the pictures. We also are up early, so I understand an early bed time. LOL We also have a LOVE affare with the Red Dragon~~

[Monty&Melo]

Superbowl Sunday…..

We started visiting Negril for Superbowl about 4 years ago. I am not the biggest football fan around, and I am a fan of the Cincinnati Bengals, so I never have to worry about missing my favorite team in the big game. I enjoy the Superbowl in Negril if only for the fact that I can tell my friends back home that I have my feet in the sand watching the game while they are at home freezing their aXXXX off.

We planned on breakfast at Café Goa and the RealNegril webcast. So with a late breakfast I decided to sleep in a little and get up at 7am to start my walk. Walk down to Sandals and back and by 9am I am back at the room. We weren’t headed to Café Goa until 1030ish so I relaxed a little around the room and just enjoyed the peace and quiet some. It rained quite a bit and pretty hard, but that just made me relax more, I love rain in Negril, I certainly would not want it all the time, but a little every now and then is a nice change of pace and of course the ground needs it!!!

We decided we would walk down the beach to Café Goa and cut through just before Bourbon Beach to cut over to the road. I normally avoid walking down the beach this way, it just always seemed that the beach guys were more aggressive at this end. Like other experiences this trip though, I found them to be not as bad as before. We walk down to Goa with no problem and seat ourselves for Breakfast.

They have done some work there, the place is much nicer than before, they’ve installed a raised floor which really gives the place a nice look. The roof looks much more put together than before. The rain was over by the time we got there, but I didn’t notice any puddles from roof leaks and if you have ever been there before you know the place was famous for this.

We order up a round of Angry Bloodys and await our food. The band in playing, Rob is webcasting and everyone seems to be having a good time. Soon enough our food comes. I, of course, had the Jamaican breakfast, complete with Ackee and Saltfish, festivals, some callaloo, etc. It was great and we got our food a lot faster than we had in the past. We noticed that a lot this trip, almost every meal we had (with the exception of one) seemed to arrive much quicker than it had in previous trips. Maybe we are getting used to it, maybe it is indeed coming faster.

After breakfast we walk back down the beach to Rondel, and resume of sunning ritual. Since this was Superbowl Sunday we were not planning a Canoe trip today (not saying I didn’t miss it!!!). We had plans to go down to Gardenia to take part in their SuperBowl party and watch the first half and then we were going to stop at Best of the West, grab some chicken and watch the second half from the Rondel bar with Delroy and the assorted cast of characters that were staying at Rondel (I mean characters in a good way!).

About 430 we decide to leave the beach and get ready to go to Gardenia. We have our driver pick us up just after 530 and off we go. Stop for a phone card along with way and pretty soon we are there. Not much of a crowd, Rob and Lisa are there, along with about 10-15 others. We find a table right up front (they had plenty of TVs) and sit down. We get beers and rum punches (Rum punch very good, they put bitters in it which was a new one on me, but I noticed other establishments putting those in as well, so I must have just missed this phenomenon before). We were all given a couple of their jerk chicken wings to munch on and later some chicken soup. We hung around and watched the first half, talked to Rob some and secretly guessed to ourselves that Gardenia was the spot that was going to be featured on Hotel Impossible (found out about 3 weeks later that we were right).

Just before halftime, we headed out and decided to walk back down the road to Best of the West and then Rondel. When we got to Best of the West we sent the girls on back and me and R waited for the chicken. Once again our food was ready quickly and we were on our way.

Got back to Rondel and it was still halftime!!! Damn that SuperBowl halftime takes forever. We chow down on the chicken, throw down several Red Stripes, endure a power outage at the game (funny, the power in Negril, which we all know can be hit or miss, never missed a beat the whole week and here is the biggest sporting event in the US hampered by a power outage. We had to laugh at the irony of that!!) and it becomes 10pm and time to go down to Alfreds. We were promised a show by “White Bob” among others.

If you don’t know who “White Bob” is you are definitely missing out. Bob is the proprietor of One Stop Vacations and if you aren’t booking your Negril vacation with them then you are not doing it right. He and Susan spend winters in Negril and they take all their own pictures and post them on their site (Negrilonestop.com). What that gets you is “truth in advertising” and no worries about whether the place really looks like the pictures. It does look like the pictures because their pictures are real. Anyway, if you haven’t checked them out, please do so, they come highly recommended by not just me, but by lots of us. We can’t all be wrong!!!

We arrive at Alfred’s pay our cover and go in. Whoa!!! Not many people, not many at all, but the Superbowl is still winding down and the music has not started yet. No Problem, we go to the bar and get some drinks and wait. Soon enough the music starts and eventually White Bob is invited to the stage. He’s called White Bob because he does Bob Marley covers and he does them pretty damn well for a “white” guy. He honored my request and did Rebel Music (3 O’clock Roadblock) first and then proceeded to do Concrete Jungle and Comin in from the Cold, which ironically are all in my top 10 Marley tunes.

We hang out at Alfred’s until about 1am. We threw caution to the wind and walked down the beach at night, probably for the first time in about 3 years. No Problem…there were plenty of people walking the beach and there were four of us so no one bothered us and pretty soon we were back an Rondel. We had to have security open the gate, which was actually nice, means he was awake and paying attention.

No pictures from this day for some reason, but here are a few of the beach that I took on other days of the trip:







Coming tomorrow the Ricks, Catcha, Bentleys progressive party......more soon come....

[yetta]

Great report and pictures!! Really great quality photos! Anxious to hear more. Thanks for taking time to post.

[Lady Jane]

Great pics and report. Looking forward to more

[rootsie]

enjoying this one! (and secretly, i love me some spicy big foots!) LOL

[kylake]

Thanks M&M great report and nice pictures!

[luvmylabs]

Thanks for sharing. Great report.

I'm also a Bengals fan so I feel your pain. I have faith that you'll get to watch them one of these years while you're in Jamaica.

[OAngie]

I'm a Bengals fan as well. Enjoying your report.