Lazy holiday in Jamaica

Last year we went to Jamaica for our 10th Wedding Anniversary, but got hit by Hurricane Sandy. Luckily they gave us a free holiday,  so we took it. Here's a blog about what we did. Which was very little :-)

Wednesday

Get up 5am for taxi. Accident on M1so lots of queues. Cab driver goes off piste and we have to use my phone as sat nav to get to Gatwick after 5 hours.

After check in priority pass gets us into lounge for coffee and breakfast.   Nice.

As we board we notice staff are checking everything manually. Told on plane that power cut affected part of terminal, all systems are down. Flood in server room?

On tarmac for 3 hours, watch staff manually checking every bag. Watched a whole film before take off.

Good flight. Watched Lone Ranger with Johnny Depp and Alan Partridge.  After landing, straight to Sandals arrivals lounge for first Red Stripe of holiday. Yay! 100 min bus journey to resort. Arrive too late to meet butlers, (yes, we have butlers).

Up to room. Towel art on bed

Unpack. Order room service. Burgers, chips, beer. At 6 am UK time. Does wonders for resetting clock.

Thursday

Up latish. Phone butler on mobile phone left in room. Collect us in golf buggy to take to breakfast. This was view from our table

Then beach, swim. Rum punch. 

Jerk chicken, rice and peas, beer for lunch, in sun. Unlike last year. 

Afternoon in pool bar sampling cocktails. Dirty banana, White Russian. Pink lady. To name but 3. Forget rest.

Back to room for nap!  Buggy to dinner. Kelly's Dockside. On pier, in ocean, beautiful, mixed starter then Surf and turf.

Walk up to bar. Couple of drinks. I fall asleep. Narcolepsy or jet lag?

Friday

Up late, again. Buffet breakfast. To pool. Very hot. Spend morning relaxing on floats, drinking champagne. 

Back to villa. 

Lunch of club sandwich, salad, fries, brought by our wonderful butler  Damian and Oshane together with bottle of Jack Daniels because it was about the only drink not in our room and we'd said we liked it!

Afternoon by our private pool

 trying to watch my son Dans play which was being streamed from Drama Studio. Wifi not really up to it, but managed to hear the sound from most of it.  

Various cocktails, all home made.

In evening went to beach club for beach party. Given a coconut filled with rum as we got there

Good food,  had steak and lobster. 

Entertainment began with a fire eater, then two pirates, called "One Pair" because they each had one leg, but a different one, so they only had to buy one pair of shoes....  Got more cringeworthy after that - drunk Americans in a dance competition.  Lots of twerking. So, up to bar for drink. Awesome fiddle player entertained us there.

Back over road to Polo bar. Very bad piano player. Not our night for entertainment.  Back to room to find towel turtle on bed. Which was nice.

Saturday

Up late again. Butler took us to buffet breakfast. Here he is coming to get us

Getting used to starting day with Bucks Fizz, or Mimosa as they call it here. Back to room, read reviews of Dans play. All good. Watched a video review. Also good. Walked down through lush gardens and took bus to Rivera side. Short walk to pool. Hot. More lounging. More cocktails. 

Lunch by pool of fresh cooked pizza. Very good.

Then more reading, more lounging, more cocktails. Back to room for well earned rest after a busy day.

Over to seaside for dinner in Reef Terrace. Fantastic Caribbean restaurant overlooking sea. Great moon. Lots of jerk chicken, coconut shrimp and tamarind beef.

Over to pool bar for more cocktails, including a red yellow and green Bob Marley. Looked good, but was too sweet. Think its the only one I've had that I've not liked.

Spent an hour chatting to other tourists and barmen.

Then up to amphitheatre for steel band, but had to sit though some games first, men vs women, although it was quite funny. 

Steel band were amazing, not sure how they play and dance at same time. So energetic.

Even Michael Jackson turned up. Didn't get video, but he was great and moonwalked sideways. Better than MJ,

Back to our bar for nightcap and listened to some good piano playing.

Sunday

Buffet again, this time had a freshly cooked omelette.

Watched 3 huge birds circling, looked like buzzards. No-one seemed to now what they were. Described to us as John Crows, but they weren't crows, and vultures. Think they were definitely buzzards.

Sat by our pool for a while, then down to main one. Decisions, decision, pool or beach. And if pool, which one? Several to choose from, and all in amazing surroundings.

Main pool for most of day. A few cocktails, lunch in buffet, and read most of new Bridget Jones book.

Cocktails and more reading in villa, then dinner in China Doll which is the Chinese restaurant, in Jamaica, with a French chef. Drinks in bar with couple from Kent. Discussed tricky subject of tipping butlers!

Monday

Same old...

Breakfast, pool, lunch, reading, swimming, cocktails.

Got pictures of Johncrows which we can now definitely say are Turkey vultures

Dinner in a Kimonos for tappenyaki. Excellent food, but not as much showmanship as you'd get from a Japanese tappenyaki

Drink in pool bar, and then to auditorium to watch Jamaican drummers and dancers. Good show. 

Back, nightcap, bed. So tired again. Wondering if its the anti-histamines I'm taking to calm the insect bites I picked up when we first got here. Maybe need to cut down on them.

Tuesday

Breakfast, beach. Sea. Rum punch.

Lunch in Kelly's looking at the ocean. 

Bit of a walk along beach, looking at fish, sea urchins.

More beach.

Pool for cocktails

Back for rest

Dinner in Valentines which is Italian.

Reggae night in auditorium. Excellent singer. 

Pianist in Polo bar, good player but can't sing! Remember him from last year.

Wednesday

Breakfast, then to Riveria pool

More reading.

Pizza for lunch.

Thunder, rain, lightening whilst we eat lunch under an umbrella. Soon clears up. 

More cocktails. The barman tells me it "tastes like chicken" as he hands it to me. I'm glad to say it didn't.

Dinner in Neptunes which is  on beach. Really good fish stew.

Back for amazing chocolate buffet - so much chocolate in one place. Even had chocolate cocktails.

Thursday

Pool. Reading. Cocktails Swimming. 

So many wasps (or bees) round the pool bar it was getting a bit dangerous to go too close. 

Lunch in buffet

More pool

Packing

Dinner in Manor, a Caribbean restaurant. Managed to eat in a different place every night, and all excellent.

Said goodbye to Damian as he wouldn't be on duty tomorrow.

Friday

Finished packing, had breakfast and checked out by 11

Had great tour of grounds from Oshane - he used to be a gardner and knew all the plants, and took us to some places on the report we hadn't seen before. We saw mango trees, avocado trees, and amazing flowers.

Then spent some time by pool, followed by lunch in the grill. 

Back to pool and Oshane brought us a cocktail and a dish of coconut shrimp which was delicious. 

And that was it. Bus to airport, and hour in lounge, and we were off. And our flight was 90 minutes shorter because we had a storm behind us giving us a bit of help!

Fabulous holiday. And as you can see, it was hectic!

End of the holiday

The last few days of the holiday were very, very lazy. Apart from Stuart who got several swims in a day. We spent most of our time lounging by the pool

and drinking cocktails in one of the cabanas if we could get one.

On the Saturday it was our tenth wedding anniversary, which was the reason we'd gone, and we had a lovely day.

As the resort had in effect closed and wasn't accepting any mor guests, the numbers went down everyday, until there were only about 30 of us on the resort. They moved us all into one area, and opened one pool, one bar and one restaurant for us. it was a real party atmosphere!

Finally it was time to go home, and we had one last walk round the resort, looking at how much of the damage they had cleared up - it was very impressive - they even had bulldozers on the beach!

We survived Sandy...

...but some of the resort didn't.

Thursday morning we got up to really see what the hurricane had done. This was the view from our balcony to what had been our lovely private pool:



And from the rear of the villa all we could see was crashed trees and vegetation. One villa had a tree through its roof:



And one of the main routes through the resort was completely blocked by a huge tree


Loads of people were out trying to clear up with rakes, chain saws, machetes. We were really impressed that by 11am one of the main pools was open:



When we got to the beach side of the resort, we saw what a mess it had made there:



With more large trees resting on villas



But some of the main damage was on the beach, which was completely unusable. All of the piers and restaurants were very badly damaged and will have to be rebuilt. This is one we intended to eat in:



Again, we were impressed that one of the pools had been emptied, cleaned and refilled by 12, so there was nothing for it but to have a cocktail, this is a Bishops Special which consists mainly of different kinds of rum:



And Stu got his daily swim in. The manager of the resort gave a briefing, thanking the staff, many of whom hadn't been home since Monday, and had worked really hard. Some had been to repair the damage in their own homes, before coming back to work here. The hurricane had been much stronger than expected, and had done a lot of damage. 500 trees had been lost on the resort. The damage has been so bad they were not accepting any new arrivals for about 10 days - I assume they were trying to fit people in their other resorts, and would only be running very limited facilities for those of us who stayed. In light of that, we were all getting a credit for the total cost of our holiday, to be spent within the next 12 months in any of their resorts. I must admit, I didn't expect this, and wouldn't have asked for any sort of refund as the hurricane was clearly not their fault. But, great customer service.
And on the way back we saw a humming bird. Never seen one before. Picture not brilliant, but they move very fast!



In the evening we ate overlooking the sea and what was left of the resort. I had one of my favourite meals, surf and turf, fillet steak and lobster, then watched a live Jamaican band playing some great reggae. We even had a dance!

Today we spent the day by the main pool, reading, swimming, drinking cocktails. Today's favourite was a dirty banana. I think it was a whole banana whizzed up with rum. One of my 5 a day obviously.

Saw lots of mongooses on way back (mongeese?), scampering around. Evening in the pavilion for a buffet and some entertainment which ncluding a fire eater. In a marquee! So wrong.

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Hurricane Sandy

Tuesday was when a different adventure started. Woke up to rain, lots of it. And wind. At breakfast we discovered that a tropical storm was heading for us, and due to turn into a hurricane before hitting us on Wednesday.

So, we had a relaxing day in the villa. Reading, listening to music, watching TV. Stuart managed to get 3 swims in, despite the rain. I didn't!




Had a bottle of champagne in the evening on our balcony



And then got a jitney in the pouring rain and ate in the Chinese restaurant.

Wednesday morning dawned, lots of rain, and at breakfast we were briefed that a hurricane was indeed on the way, all resort transport was stopping, most restaurants were closing apart from the two main ones, and those of us in villas high up should get to the main house and weather it out there. This was the view from our balcony when we got up.

So, armed with iPad, books, iPhone etc, we got to the lounge at 11am in the last jitney to travel. The wind got up, the rain came down. The resort was completely boarded up



And the resort staff were in hard hats, waterproofs and wellies, with very large machetes stuffed in them....



So, we sat it out. Gradually things got worse, and I think the main hurricane hit us about 4pm. There were 110mph winds and driving rain. Palm trees were falling all around. I saw this one fall, it was quite spectacular.




The resort had closed all the bars, " to keep us safe", and stopped all transport, but some people chose to walk up the hillside to their villas, despite the wind and falling trees!

We read, played games, chatted to people. It was all very jolly, but boring by the time we'd been there 8 hours. We were lucky that we could go outside under the huge porch to watch the storm, and you can see how bad it was

Eventually, about an army of men went out with machetes to clear the paths, and then about 8pm jitneys started running again, and we got back to our villa. The devastation we passed on the way was amazing, loads of trees down, and there was a palm tree in our pool. Our room had a small amount of flooding but not much.

It was certainly an experience, and quite exciting rather than scary. But that was because the resort was extremely well organised and we were in a safe place. I can't imagine what it must have been like for some of the residents of Jamaica, who certainly don't live in well built houses.



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Jamaica

Sunday was an early flight from Provo to Miami, and then a 7 hour stop over. So, once we'd done that ridiculous American thing of picking up your bags and checking them in again we got a cab to South Beach.

Glorious sunny day, so we had an alfresco coffee with a delicious blueberry tart, walked down Lincoln Street, and then onto Ocean Drive for a long walk and look at the beautiful art deco hotels. Took loads of pictures, these are just a sample.








Then back for lunch by the beach at a little cafe called the purple penguin. Underneath the Penguin Hotel of course.



Stu had an omelette from the breakfast menu, washed down with beer of course. Got a cab back to the airport and just had a couple of hours looking at the shops and sitting in the lounge before our short flight to Montego Bay. Glad the flight was short, as it was very, very bumpy. I don't like bumpy! Picked up at airport and driven by a slightly mad Jamaican to the resort, took about an hour.

Arrived to some cold towels, and two chilled glasses of champagne. Our villa is on the top of a hill in a wonderful tropical garden, a jitney ride away from the main house. Jitneys are the little buggys which whizz around the resort ferrying you from place to place. Found a towel swan when we arrived. Like you do.



We found a grill by the pool serving food through the night, so had something to eat and a couple of drinks in the bar before the ride back to the villa, where we found the fridge very well stocked with rum, brandy, gin, vodka, beer, champagne, wine......

A great nights sleep, and we spent the next morning in our pool

Then we went to the beach side of the sport, and had lunch of jerk chicken, rice and peas and rum punch whilst listening to reggae. How Jamaican is that!



Some sunbathing, more rum punch, then we swam up to the swim up bar where I drank rather too much champagne, and Stuart was on the white Russians. Nothing that a little nap didn't sort out before dinner in the grill.

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