A day in paradise

Yesterday will go down as one of my favourite days on earth so far.
(Other immensely perfect days include popping my Glastonbury cherry, holding a baby lion in Mexico, driving down Highway 1 to Santa Cruz, chasing the sunset on a moped in Koa Toa, snowmobiling in Whistler and New Years Eve in South Korea.)

We booked one of the sea front cabanas. A perfect chill out area, resting in the waves. A four poster double bed scattered with pillows and flowing white drapes on each corner.


The gorgeous cabanas on the beach

We had a picnic in our cabana, sea food (large shrimp, octopus, squid) grilled swordfish, salad, couple of Red Stripes, a fruit plater and chocolate cake. Perfect.
 

At 3pm there was a heavy rain storm, thunder and tropical rain smashing down on the beach huts and the shore. We shut our curtains and loved every minute of the washout. Watching the rain bounce viciously off the sea and sand.
After an hour of reading our books, drinking Jamaican Smile cocktails and squealing when a lizard jumped in our cabana to shelter from the storm, the sun came back out.


tropical rainstorm, as we're tucked up in our private seafront bed

We swam around the bay and watched two friends, who we'd met a few nights ago from New Jersey, get married on the beach. The locals were all whooping and clapping. Rain on your wedding day in the Caribbean is a blessing from God. They told us all Jamaican's wish/ pray for rain on their special day. They couldn't understand why us English folk wish and pray for the exact opposite.


The sunshine after the storm and the place where our friends got married

We'd already asked our butler to organise a romantic candle lit dinner on the beach at 8pm. So we headed back to the room to get showered. We opened the door to find the bathroom covered with lit candles, rose petals scattered everywhere, a hot bath covered with bubbles and champagne chilling on ice with two flutes.
The butlers even left a single rose and tuned the radio into a station playing love songs.


The perfect bath, a rose, flower petals, candles, champagne... sea food...

I was squealing like a little girl, jumping up and down in amazement. Jimmy was trying to pretend he'd organised it (can't blame a man for trying).

Obviously we jumped straight in the bath, popped open the champagne and lay back thinking how lucky, spoilt and romantic we felt.

our private candle-lit dinner for on the beach

Do go chasing waterfalls

We hired a car and drove from Montego Bay to Ocho Rios today to go and climb Dunns River waterfalls.
It took about 1hour 45mins to get there and was a hilarious journey of non-stop horns, cars swerving all over the road, undertaking, overtaking and locals trying to sell us stuff.
Within minutes of arriving at Dunns River one of the locals jumped on us trying to persuaded us to buy two small, hand-carved, wooden people.
Before we could say 'no thanks' he (Anthony) had carved Jessika "be happy, don't worry" on one. And Jimmy "No problem mon" on the other.
He told us to "love each other, stand by each other but more importantly don't forget the jiggy jiggy." Before carving four lines on each for love, peace, respect and prosperity.
We handed over 3000 Jamaican dollars (£24) and went on our merry way with a wooden man and woman, and a traditional Jamaican necklace.

The two hand-carved figures, now engraved with our names

The waterfalls were amazing. Spectacular and scary. The water was flowing rapidly and the rocks were really slippy. We climbed to the top, swam in the whirl pools and went back to the bottom to do it all over again.


Jimmy getting excited half way up the water fall

We drove through the town of Ocho Rios on the way home, past all the small, shack-like bars\ restaurants, roadside sellers selling coconuts, bananas, other local fruit and huge stems of aloe vera.


A beauty salon we past driving on the way back to the hotel

Our butler, H-bomb, organised a romantic picnic for us which he'd packed into the boot of the car - salmon and tuna sandwiches, cakes and champagne. It was a great end to the day. The evening ended on a slushy note. We arrived back to our room after dinner, a bit drunk on rum 'n coke and Dirty Banana cocktails, to find the bed covered in petals and orchids placed in a heart shape.
The butlers were definitely giving my boyfriend a run for his money.


I'd love to come home to this every day :-)



Island life

We headed over to the private off-shore island today.

It's rustic, everything is made from the natural island materials. Beautiful lanterns were hanging everywhere, bamboo and palm leaf umbrellas and wooden, four-poster love-shacks with white curtains and a double bed.
There was also a nudist beach, a swimming pool and a jacuzzi.
Oh, and a parrot named Diana, after Princess Di (obviously, eh?)
A fat, naked American man gave us some bread (as well as an eyeful, a very burnt eyeful) so we spent an hour snorkeling with barracuda and sting rays before heading back to the main island.


The handmade shack where lunch is served 



Parasole and lanterns made out of local materials



Four poster cabanas on the private island



Swim up pool bar...

 

Statue that welcomes you to island life

Early morning Sunrise.

The jet-lagged kicked in a 5am today.
After lying in bed for half an hour, trying to get back to sleep, we decided to knock it on the head and get up to see the sunrise. Which was utterly beautiful.
And we spotted a local fisherman (see bottom picture) dancing in the morning sun. Perfect start to the day.

Everyone's smiling

After only a few hours in Jamaica it's obvious why all the locals are constantly laughing, playing pranks on each other and smiling from ear to ear.
It's beautiful, blazing sunshine at 9am and a infectious chilled out, laid back vibe.



Our private beach

On our first dip in the sea we meet Skinny Man. A local who rides around the waves on a surfboard, with paddles, selling stuff to tourists. By 'stuff' I don't mean the usual tourist souvenirs sunglasses, hats, CDs - more like weed, hash, cocaine etc.
He sells carved wooden souvenirs too, in a bid to fool the middle aged, conservative Americans.
We've already spotted a number of guests reading the bible on the beach or other religious books such as "God will teach you to forgive."
Despite the naughtiness of Skinny's 'souvenirs' he's cool, and full of banter. He supports Man U and spends 8 hours every day in the sea. He has no front teeth. He also tells blatant lies, we worked this out quickly. But he's good comedy value.



Skinny Man doing his thing

We spent the whole day sunbathing, swimming and snorkeling. Our second butler Ellis (forgot to mention we have two butlers now, I know, I know! Ellis and H-bomb do 1\2 day shifts each) dropped off a cool box of beers to us on our sun loungers, around noon. He later brought cocktails and snacks too. It's safe to say I love this place. 

Us relaxing on a swing with Dirty Banana cocktails and Red Stripe

It still feels really weird having someone do everything for us. However, Ellis and H-Bomb are both really (genuinely) happy and keep telling us how much they love their job - so we try and stop being so typically English and polite.


Our second butler Ellis, the super smiley dude...

There's an American couple next to us on the beach who are ordering the world off their butler. I'm surprised they're not using him as a footstool.
There's and abundance of Americans at the resort. They're loud, brash, self involved and pretty intolerable. Their whiny, elongated twang is as annoying as the peacock who's woken us up both mornings so far at 5.30am with his mating call and general racket.


one of the many peacocks at the resort

Goodbye London, hello Jamaica

Excitement woke me up two hours before my alarm this morning.
Setting my alarm at 8.20am on a Saturday was already worryingly early. (I'm a lie in bed until noon kinda girl).
However 5.30am me and my boyfriend Jimmy were wide awake charged with excitement about our Caribbean adventure.
We got to Gatwick an hour before the flight, slightly panicking. But still like excitable kids on a school trip.
We completely underestimated how long it would take to get to airport, then took too long buying books\ snacks. The usual capers. Most of our friends know how useless we are at being on time and organised. A couple of glasses of red wine into the flight it started getting really rowdy on the back three rows.
A group of Irish friends, about 12, were getting stuck into the free booze. Shouting, swearing, cackling, jumping over chairs, pushing each other.
All the surrounding seats were now empty as everyone had asked to be moved. One elderly lady looked like she was going to cry. Thirty minutes later the pilot announced someone had been smoking in the toilet and put the whole flight in danger. People were panicking and getting angry.
Police will now be waiting when we arrive in Montego Bay.
Moment later alcohol is banned as everyone's to rowdy. There's still five hours to go.

We arrived at airport, get escorted into a VIP Sandals lounge, our bags are taken away and replaced with two ice cold Red Stripes and we're told our chauffeur will be ten minutes. Our chauffeur arrived, tells us to get two more beers and get in the back. Two minutes into the drive he says, "so you guys wanna smoke back there? You wanna buy some weed? Everyone in Jamaica has a smoke, put a smile on your face. You're here to have fun." It's obvious, instantly, we're gonna love this holiday.

Nobody likes a show off...

I just felt a moment of glee when I realised in exactly six weeks time, to the day, I'll be lording around the Caribbean in a two-piece supping a cool Margarita.
Sorry to be a smug fool, but I'm really excited.
Take at look at where I'm galavanting off to....



Sandals Royal Caribbean, Montego Bay, Jamaica