Day029

Thursday March 24th

Ok... so... we are in Jamaica safely. It was not an easy feat, however.

We started out our morning at 2am. Which actually translates into about 11am Wednesday for me. We went to bed around 10:15pm Wednesday night with the alarm set for 2:30am Thursday morning. I literally did not sleep the entire time we were supposed to be 'napping.' Got to the airport before they would even check you in (around 4am). Almost threw up when the man at the counter told me my passport was invalid. (this was my first indicator that today was not going to go all the smoothly)

I guess he entered something wrong because it went through finally. First flight was out of Newport News at 6am, putting us in the Atlanta aiport around 7:45am. Had a 4 hour layover there. Flew out of Atlanta around noon, putting us in Jamaica around 2pm Jamaica time. Apparently they don't believe in daylight savings time, so we are back an hour from the east coast.

First impression of Jamaica=not very good. Stood in a ridiculous and poorly orchestrated line for over an hour to go through customs. Then a lady pointed us in the direction of where we were supposed to hook up with the people taking us to the resort. The next lady told us to look for a 'Jamaica Tours Dispatcher,' after which a man with a tan uniform and red hat came over and grabbed our bags (all 2 of them), tossed them on his little cart thing, and told us to follow him and he would take us to where we were catching the bus for Wild Orchid.

We had run to keep up with him through the crowd. No lie.

He takes us outside and realizes our bus is not here yet and drops our stuff on the curb, tells us to wait here, and then looks at Ryan an barks "Tip your boarder." We had no idea what he was talking about until he was shoving his open hand at us yelling "Tip! Tip!" All I had was 20's. Ryan asked if he had any changed and he pulled out a wad of cash. I handed him the 20 and grabbed the first 10 I saw and made him leave. So uncomfortable. All I wanted was for him to be out of my face.

Then we engaged in even more waiting. Over half an hour on the curb watching the people dart in and out of buses, pulling people's luggage around and tossing it on buses. When our bus finally got there, we encountered yet another man wanting a tip for tossing our bags on the bus. I refused. Then we sat on the bus and waited for it to leave for another 20+ minutes. Ridiculous.

Rode the little rickety bus through the teeny tiny streets of Jamaica to our resort. Where we waited. Again. Seriously all I wanted was to grab my own bags and check myself in... but you can't do anything for yourself here. It's obnoxious.

Gah! There's my novel of today. I did get some awesome pictures, both at the resort when we finally arrived and at the Atlanta airport watching planes take off.

But here it is, the only one (other than later tonight) that you get until we are back in the states:

Day029: Beach Party

So this was taken from our private balcony. Yes, private balcony. We went to dinner for Grandma's 80th birthday. Seriously incredible food. I ate shrimp for the first time in YEARS... like since I was in elementary school. And I liked it... weird texture but the taste was amazing. Oh, and I discovered my new favorite drink (sorry Dirty Shirley)... it's called a Mellow Mood. Coconut rum, cranberry juice, pineapple juice and one other thing that I can't remember. It's phenomenal.  I plan to drink many of them. But anyway, so after dinner, there was a live band and dancing on the beach. We did not partake in the dancing because it was super awkward... 50% of the people dancing were like resort employees just gettin their groove on out there. Weird.

But the view is incredible and the water is bluer than you can even imagine. Other than the whole airport experience, Jamaica really is paradise. Well, at least the resort is :)