Anniversary visit to Ocho Rios
on George Hamilton (Jamaica), 10/Jan/2011 02:40, 34 days ago
On 29 December, 33 years ago, George and I came to Jamaica for our honeymoon. We were here one week, so we would have returned home to Canada on this weekend, the first weekend after New Years. In order to celebrate, we thought we'd like to spend one night in the same hotel, but alas the best deal we could get was $880 US per person per night. A little over our volunteer's budget so we opted to spend an anniversary night at a much cheaper hotel also in Ocho Rios.The Beaches Boscobel is now the resort where we stayed for our honeymoon. They wouldn't even let us in to have lunch! It's an all inclusive so the best they could offer was a day pass at $100 US each. We smiled and asked if we could take pictures inside so the security guard allowed us to take a picture of each other standing inside the gate. Trust me these pictures are not worth posting.Above is Fern Gully just a couple of kilometers outside Ochi and below are two of the many waterfalls there.We had our first swim in the ocean for 2011. The water at he Hibiscus Lodge Hotel where we stayed in Ocho Rios is patchy warm and cold, but the cold spots are no worse than a lake in the summer in Canada. The fluctuating temperatures are caused by the many rivers coming down from the mountains bringing the cold spring water into the warm Caribbean sea.The man above seems to be kayaking on a surf board or sail board without the sail.And of course my flowers for the day.We were driving through Ocho Rios after dark on Saturday night and noticed a foot hanging out of the trunk of a taxi in front of us. I've blocked out the licence plate deliberately, I don't want to get anyone into trouble, but this taxi driver obviously had more passengers than he had space for. The trunk-riding passenger jumped out shortly after I took the picture...we were just happy to know he was alive.One of the nice things about the weekend was the preparations for a wedding that was taking place today. We met the bride, she was at the table next to us at breakfast and from Calgary in Canada. Small world.We had hoped to stop at a banana plantation on our way home. This one is intriguing because the bananas along this stretch of the road are always covered in plastic bags. Someone in Toronto told us that they put plastic over organically grown fruits and vegetables to keep the bugs out. We're not sure if this is the reason but it sounds plausible...we'll have to return on a weekday when the plantation is open to the public to find out.We took a different route home for variety.