Friday, 10 Feb 2017 Montego Bay/Ocho Rios

We started our day a half hour earlier today to be ready for pick up 9:30 for our adventure tour. During the almost one hour bus ride our guide pointed out the sites, including Usain Bolt’s high school and Ben Johnson’s childhood house. You remember Ben. He was a sprinter for Canada until he tested positive for steroid use at the Seoul Olympics.

We first had a jerked chicken lunch and then boarded our catamaran for some snorkeling. After a while we motored over to Dunn’s River Falls for the iconic climb up the falls. I am not sure I would call it fun, but there were fun moments. It was an interesting experience and worth doing, but you are so focussed on your next footstep that it is hard to appreciate your environment. From the falls we set off on our party cruise back to base. There was no booze until this point for safety reasons, but the rum punch and beer now flowed freely. However, two issues combined to limit the partying. First, it was a fairly short time, certainly less than half an hour. The other issue was the rough water. It was hard to keep your feet and not spill your drink as the boat tossed about. However, the crew serving the booze did an admirable job under the circumstances.

The two pictures above have a story. The on-board photographer took them when we had barely left the dock. She showed them to us on the camera viewfinder in the sun, so it was a real crapshoot how they would turn out. but we took a chance and purchased the two above. Later on she came back with a CD which we took back to the hotel. When I loaded it in my laptop, the pictures were of four strangers! They were strange, all right, but not totally unknown to us. We recognized one of the couples from our bus. She was the one standing up near the back of the bus a couple of feet from Ron's right ear and flashing her boobs at her hooting and hollering buddies! The next day I told our story to the on-site Nexus Tours rep who was able to contact the photographer and get her to send over copies of the correct pictures.

Trying to avoid sunburn.

The weather has been great all week, about 30 degrees C every day with a good breeze to keep from getting too hot. Most days also had some broken cloud to help protect from the sun for periods of time. This morning was actually pretty cloudy and windy, however, the cloud cleared off while the wind grew stronger. It was blowing pretty well between 3 and 4 o’clock when we were supposed to be partying.

Back at the resort, we went to the buffet restaurant, called Ackee, for supper. It was just as excellent as all the specialty restaurants, although less formal. The dinner menu matched the breakfast and lunch menus for variety and excellence. There are seven buffet bars, each with a different theme or specialty. You tell yourself to have just a small sample of each of the few most desirable things, but, in no time at all, your plate is full and there are still several things you would like to try. I can’t rave enough about the food here. We have been to several resorts over the years and this one certainly has the best food of any of them.

 Tonight’s entertainment was the Jamaican Show. It traced the development of Jamaican music up to Bob Marley, then descended into pretty much hip-hop.