The first two full days of the cruise were spent out at sea, and were probably two of the most relaxing days of my whole life. There was a lot of eating, a lot of sleeping, a lot of lazing about and reading, a little swimming, and just the right amount of lovemaking. We also did some shopping, wherein we bought many varieties of duty-free rum. Why is the rum gone? Because it's all at our house now, that's why.
That first evening we skipped out on "prom night," deciding that since my party dresses were at home, the rental money for Matt's tux would be better spent elsewhere, and ended up going to bed early after stuffing ourselves in the cafeteria. The next day was more of the same, except that night we got dressed up to have our portrait taken and have dinner in the main dining room again, where we were joined not only by the other Tulsa couple but also by a pair of fellow honeymooners from Waco. Sweet kids. All in all, we were well-rested and pretty damn happy by the time we arrived in...
Jamaica
Jamaica was... interesting. I'll go ahead and say that it's not the shiny happy irie jammin' paradise that it's cracked up to be. At least not in Ocho Rios. The friendliest individual we encountered there was a dolphin named Mitch, with whom we got to swim and have our picture taken as he gave us dolphin kisses. I kinda think he wanted to make out with Matt. But who doesn't? Anyway, it became pretty apparent pretty quickly that Jamaicans generally hate tourists. A lot of the people we encountered seemed to want to take our money, take advantage of us, and then have us bugger off. Not that we didn't meet our share of genuinely friendly and helpful locals, most of whom seemed to feel duty-bound to protect us from the first group. We learned the hard way that it's a bad idea to wander off the tourist-beaten path and go exploring on your own. Still, we had a good time, and I'd call getting to eat jerked chicken and drink Red Stripe beer in an open-air cafe one of the high points, despite getting harrassed the entire time by locals who either wanted us to buy their wares or get the hell off of their island. Another high point: Appleton's rum and Coke at John Crow's tavern. Low point: the walk from the shopping center through town to John Crow's, where we got ganged up on by "volunteer" would-be tour guides who took it upon themselves to follow us despite being asked not to, eaves-drop on our conversation to learn where we wanted to go and then insist on showing us the way despite being told we didn't want them to, and then demand money from us for their "trouble" once we got to our destination; and people asking to sell us mushrooms and cocaine. Like I said: interesting.
That night, back on the boat and totally exhausted, we stayed in, ordered room service, and recuperated from our day so that we'd be ready for...
Grand Cayman
Grand Cayman is beautiful. Seriously, it's everything you expect a Caribbean island to be. The people were friendly, the weather perfect, the scenery gorgeous. If not for the ginormous hurricane potential we would totally want to pack it all up and move there.
We got it backwards when we booked our excursions--we thought Jamaica would be the place we'd want to explore, so we went light on the tourist activities there. Everywhere else we packed as much into our schedules as we could. Not that we didn't love our helicopter ride over the island and around the reef (where we could see sharks. Hammerheads! For serious!), or snorkling with the sting rays (none of which stung us in the chest or anywhere else, but one of which suctioned itself to my knee hard enough to leave a hickey) and getting our picture taken giving them kisses (they're really big into making tourists smooch the marine animals down there), but we were pretty disappointed that by the time we got back there was no time left to explore the town or hit the beach before we had to be back on the ship. Still, it was a nice, long boat ride to and from the sandbar, and we got to swim in the Caribbean with sting rays. That's pretty damn cool. The sunburn I got was less cool, but worth it.
Not so worth it: losing Matt's wedding ring.
Yeah.
Before we left that morning he took it off and set it on a shelf next to the bed while he put on his sunscreen, and then he forgot to put it back on. Sure enough, when we got back that afternoon it was gone. We tore the room up searching for it, then our stateroom attendant came in and helped us look. He swore that he was the only one with access to our room, and we believe that he didn't steal it. He also swore that he was very careful when he cleaned and couldn't have thrown it away or vaccuumed it up by accident, but, y'know, stuff happens, and so he checked his trash and vaccuum bags anyway. Nada. We held off a couple of days before filing a report in the hopes that it would turn up. It never did.
So that night was tense and depressing, and definitely not a high point of the trip.
Next post: Mexico, Dallas, Big Foot and Okie-talian.
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