Jamaica

Dec 10th
Jamaica

Today was my second stop in Jamaica. This time though, instead of turning right off the ship and heading towards the beach where I went last time, I headed left with Brandon and George and walked about an hour in hopes of finding another beach. Those hopes weren’t exactly realized though. It turns out that once you get outside of the city of Ocho Rios, which is considerably dirty, busy, and run down, you get to a fairly empty area of the island where the majority of the buildings on the water front are high quality beach and vacation resorts that we weren’t allowed into. After getting of tired of walking in the same direction towards a beach we just couldn’t seem to find, Brandon found some path through the forest towards the water, which we hoped would take us to a beach. Instead, it took us inside a resort area where the water was lined with condos and private homes, not with accessible beaches. We exited that area, found our way back to the main road we walked there on, and started heading back towards the ship. We stopped at one of the resorts in hopes of talking the guard at the gate into letting us in to look around. The resort was the Jamaica Inn, and the guard did let us in, where we were soon after greeted by a manager who gave us a tour of the area. It was really interesting walking around the place, seeing the rooms, the spa, and this paradise they were trying to create on 45 acres of Jamaican waterfront. It was really nice, the beach was beautiful, and the rooms looked like they’d provide a really great get away for anyone with enough money. The pricing guide I was given lists the rooms starting at $280 per day for a cheap balcony suite in low season, to $1,760 per day for a small cottage in high season, not including the $100+ meal plan. And after a minimum stay of 10 days over the holidays, this place has the potential of bringing in over $20,000 per cottage in 2 weeks, wow. It was really nice though, and the people there enjoying the resort didn’t seem too fond of three guys walking around the area.
Following that stop, we walked back to the ship. George was getting impatient and after speeding up his walking pace, eventually disappeared from our view. From doing the discover shopping shows, I recalled hearing about an offer of free beer if you go to the House of Diamonds and shout out “crazy Larry”, so after telling Brandon about the offer, we tried to locate the retailer. I did manage to find the place, at which point Brandon looked inside, saw it was a fancy diamond and watch retailer, and was sure that I must have been mistaken because there was no way a place that nice was going to be serving drinks of any kind. Well, that didn’t stop me, and after walking in and confirming the offer with a girl behind the desk, yelled out Crazy Larry! Larry, the owner, then laughed and offered us both drinks. Brandon had a red stripe and I went for the rum and coke (because you drink run in the Caribbean). We talked to the owner for a while about the ship and his drink offer, and then left with the intentions of coming back again next time we’re in port. We then walked back to the ship, played our big band set, and that was about it for the day. Thanks for reading!