Jamaica : Sandals Resort- Ocho Rios Grande. Jun 27 to Jul 3, 2005.
Day 1-- 6/27 Monday.
We are flying to Ocho Rios, Jamaica for a 6-night stay at a Sandals resort. We are going down to see Heather and Rich get married as well as having a vacation. It is all-inclusive-- food and drinks included. Ocho Rios is on the North Central coast of Jamaica. We flew from Dayton to Charlotte, North Carolina and then onto Montego Bay, Jamaica. In Montego Bay we connected to an Air Jamaica flight for the 20-minute hop to Ocho Rios. Cheryl gave us a ride to the airport.
Check in at the Dayton Airport went fairly smoothly but that is about all that went right on day one. Take off was at 7:30 AM. We had a 20-minute delay in landing in Charlotte due to fog. That still left us 20 minutes to make our connection to Montego Bay. Patti and I walked to the gate and still had 5 minutes before take off. I asked a guy at the counter about an information screen to check on Heather’s flight. He said, “Are you the Littles? We are holding the plane.” Patti and I quickly headed down the skyway to plane. We saw a flight attendant pop her head around the corner. She said, to somebody behind her, “No that’s not them.” Heather was waiting in the door to make sure we made the flight. The flight attendant was expecting us to look older!
The flight to Jamaica was 2 ½ hours long. We flew down the coast of Florida, across the Bahamas and Cuba. We landed at Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay about noon. The heat and humidity get you right away. We cleared immigration and went to baggage claims. No Bags. They never made the flight. After 30 minutes of literally running back and forth between the missing bags department and the Sandals desk I finally got the missing bags paperwork filled out. We were coming up on the departure time for the flight to Ocho Rios. I was a little stressed. I was running to the front of lines cutting people off, but they all understood.
We flew on a small propeller driven plane, an Air Jamaica Dash 8 from Montego Bay (MoBay as the locals call it). We landed at the Ocho Rios airport 20 minutes later. The ‘terminal’ was a one room tin building/shack about the size of my bedroom’. Too funny. We got a taxi ride to the resort. The ride was only about 15 minutes long. Taking the hop saved us a 2 1/2 bus ride from MoBay.
We arrived at the resort for check in. The desk clerk called to check on our bags and we waited there about an hour. We were tired and just wanted to get to our room. Finally, I told her to just check us in and call the room later with an update. We finally got to our room on the beach side. It was not what we had paid for and booked. No balcony and the room smelled like wet moldy carpet. I called the desk for a room change and they said they would not be able to move us until the next day.
We got an update that our bags were located and would be delivered about 8:30 PM. We went to dinner. It was ‘Beach Party” night. A very good buffet with all kinds of local foods- meats, salads, fruits and deserts right on the beach with a Reggae band. I do like jerked chicken. Rich always checked out the desert bar first. We were all tired from traveling and made it an early evening. I called the desk about 8:30—no bags. To shorten the story, the bags finally arrived about 10:30 PM.
Day 2-- 6/28 Tues.
A much, much better day!! Clean clothes, tooth brushes, etc. We went to breakfast at ‘Valentino’s. It is one of their nicer restaurants that serves Italian food at dinner. But it also serves a regular sit down breakfast. It was downstairs in the Rivera building where we were staying. Patti and I got there about 20 minutes after it opened and we were their first guests of the morning. For breakfast each day we had 2 choices to eat at-- the buffet in the Bayside Restaurant or the sit down at Valentino’s. We had a corner table with a great view of the water.
After breakfast we went down to the beach and found a couple of beach chairs right next to the water. This became our favorite spot. We were in the shade of some tropical trees with the water lapping at our feet. It was very relaxing to close your eyes and listen to the sounds of the waves. The beach is kind of small but we were never really crowded. That morning we did not have anyone within 30 feet of us. Patti read a book while I did some snorkeling. I saw lots of fish and a small Ray. We made good use of the beach bar. Patti slipped the guy a tip and we were hooked up with ‘special’ service the rest of the morning. Ok, yes we were drinking in the morning, “Yeah Mon, the vacation thing.”
Heather and Rich came over from their side of the resort and found us at about noon. They had been meeting with their wedding coordinator. We went back to the room and checked on the room change. Good news!! We were getting the room we asked for. Patti and I got the key and checked it out. Much nicer. Good room, nice balcony view. They were going to send a bellman to move our bags so all we had to do was pack up the few things we had got out. We left the bags and went to lunch at the buffet. We went back to the beach and laid around till dinner. That night we ate dinner at the “Arizona Grill.” They serve Tex-Mex food and have tables set in the sand right on the beach at sunset.
The resort is in 2 sections and is fairly big, about the size of a college campus. It is laid out nicely with lots of little paths and little areas for privacy. A shuttle runs back and forth between the 2 main areas and we never waited for more than a few minutes for a ride. Patti and I were on the Riviera, or Beach side; and Heather and Rich were on the hill, or Manor side. Heather and Rich had a condo-like room with a small pool they shared with only a few other couples. There were over 85 pools in the resort. The best pool was on the Manor side. It was a huge Sandals signature pool like you see in all the advertisements with the Sandals logo painted on the bottom. That pool was about the size of 2 Olympic pools and had a cool swim/wade up bar. We had not used the pool there yet, but had looked at it.
A very good day. The resort is beautifully landscaped. The buildings are painted in tropical colors. There are lots of flowers, tropical tress and several fishponds. The staff is very nice.
Day 3-- 6/29 Wen.
Heather and Rich’s wedding day. We have been going to bed early and walking up early. No sleeping in yet on this vacation. We had coffee on the balcony and enjoyed the view of the ocean and boats. We had planned on trying the buffet for breakfast but did not make it in time so we went back to Valentino’s. We got the same corner table we had the morning before. Patti and I both ordered French toast. Patti ordered banana bread French toast and it was actually that. Two chunks of banana bread fried up with butter and syrup. She said it was ok but preferred the regular French toast I ordered. After breakfast-- back to our favorite beach spot.
We climbed onto the beach chairs and did nothing more strenuous than close our eyes and relax. The weather had been cooperating- not a drop of rain. Heather and Rich found us around 11:00am. We did the lunch buffet. Afterwards, Heather had a beauty shop appointment at 1:30 to get her hair done and Patti went with her. I packed up the clothes I was going to wear for the wedding and went to get ready with Rich. I ironed the shirts and pants Rich and I were going to wear for the wedding. Those years of ironing uniforms in the military were not wasted. Rich and I both wore tropical Island shirts and sandals. It is the tropics, Mon. Rich had on a pair of white linen pants and I wore a pair of khakis.
A wedding van picked Rich and I up about 45 minutes before the wedding. I told Rich, “How does this look… 2 guys getting into a wedding van together!” The wedding was being held in a gazebo on the dock right on the water. When Rich and I got there we met with the Jamaican Reverend who was doing the wedding.
Right on time (4:00 PM) I could see Patti and Heather at the end of the dock. They both looked gorgeous. Heather was in a white wedding gown and Patti had on a melon colored gown. I met Heather half way down the dock and walked her arm-in-arm up to the gazebo. I shook hands with Rich, gave Heather a kiss on the check. The ceremony was short, but nice. A photographer took pictures.
We were shuttled by the wedding van to a reception they had set up for the four of us. Hor derves, wedding cake and Champaign. Heather and Rich had their wedding dance together. Heather had brought a CD of some music with her for the wedding. Heather released the photographer and I took some pictures. I had been watching the wedding photographers the past few days and ‘stole’ some of their locations and poses. We grabbed a few drinks at the pool bar and killed time till dinner.
We had dinner on the Reef Terrace restaurant. Spectacular view and open air. The service was outstanding. It was a 5-course meal. They served Jamaican pea soup, which is actually almost exactly like Pinto bean soup. It was very good. After a Caesar salad I had steak and shrimp, Patti just had the steak. The desert was kind of neat. Patti and I shared a baked Alaska that was served in half of a carved out pineapple.
We went back to the room and Heather and Rich packed up a few things they had left in our room. Some how our room attendant got confused. She saw Heather leave our room in her wedding dress and thought it would be somebody’s wedding night in the room. There were rose petals and flowers on our bed and 2 towels folded like swans kissing that made a heart shape. And two bride and groom tee shirts. Heather and Rich took the tee shirts. After they left Patti and I tried to make the best of a romantic situation.
Some general thoughts: Even though the vacation started out rocky on the first day we are having a great time now. The staff at the resort is wonderful and they bend over backwards to take care of you. Tipping is supposedly not allowed by Sandals but many guests do some discreet tipping anyway. “The Jamaican handshake”. Slip a five or one dollar bill into the palm of your hand and say, “Thanks mon.” Shake hands. They say, “No problem Mon.” The money magically disappears. We now have several favorite bartenders who make sure we are well taken care of.
Patti found out today that the exchange rate is 1 US dollar is equal to 61 Jamaican dollars. A five dollar tip is like 300 dollars to them. As I write this it is getting late. (9:20 PM.) Vacations make you tired Mon. I hear the sounds of a jazz band drifting up from the patio area on the first floor. The room is standard hotel fair- king size bed. We love the balcony and view.
Day 4- 6/30 Thurs.
Woke up early again and did the coffee on the balcony thing. We watched the deep-sea fishing boats pull in and pick up their day charters. Next a big catamaran came in and picked up guests for a cruise to the waterfall. They were playing some loud reggae music and having a good time. We went to the breakfast buffet. The have average choices and quality except for the pineapple which is exceptional-- It was so sweet and juicy.
Started the day out on the beach again. I did some more snorkeling. I swam by a school of foot long silver fish with black-tipped tails. I swam in a circle to look at them, and they swam in a circle to look at me. We were sitting next to a vendor on the beach who was doing woodcarvings. Patti asked the guy to finish up a turtle for her that she had her eye on. He worked on it off-and-on for most of the morning.
Heather and Rich showed up about 11:00 AM. We went out on the water on a couple of Aqua bikes. Huge tricycles with big wheel/floats that seat 2 people. It was hard work! You have to peddle very fast. Patti and I got into a strong current and had to pedal very hard to get back inside the beach area. It was hard on Patti because of her shorter legs. Mine felt like jello when we got done. A pina colada with a shot of dark Jamaican rum made me feel better.
We all went to lunch at the buffet. We went back to the room and were ‘jus chillin’ as they say in Jamaica. I read for a while and Patti took a nap. We had put a ‘do not disturb’ tag on the door. Housekeeping saw that tag, called the room and asked, “Since you do not want to be disturbed when should we clean the room?” How about later in the afternoon. I had to laugh. I went down to the beach and bought the turtle from the vendor. He had it lying on the beach chair we were sitting in earlier. I guess lots of people asked about it and he had to keep telling them, “Sorry Mon, not for sale.” The turtle now sits on our hotel room dresser.
Later, we took the shuttle to the Manor side and met up with Rich and Heather at the big pool. Hung out at the big Sandals pool bar and put away several drinks by our favorite bartender Denny. His specialty was a drink he called the ‘Land Shark.’
We left the pool bar and went to Heather and Rich’s condo and changed for dinner. We went back to the Manor house where the big pool was and ate at the dinner buffet. They had a pasta station where you could choose your own sauce ingredients and style of pasta. It was little slow but very good. We went to the piano bar for a drink. We wrapped up the night and headed back to our room. Patti and I had planned on doing a waterfall climb and also horseback riding in the ocean surf. We ended up deciding not to do the riding because we had not packed any jeans.
Day 5—7/1 Fri.
Slept in a little later then we had been. Grabbed breakfast at the buffet and headed over to the Manor side. We wanted to review some pictures that were taken of Patti and myself the day before. The pictures were very funny. The photographer posed us with palm fronds in front of us so it looked like we were naked. “Yes, we are having a GREAT time in Jamaica!!” The pics were funny and we bought them.
We went to the reception desk to gets some change-one dollar bills for the tipping we weren’t doing (ha ha). As we finished at the desk an alarm went off. It was a fire/disaster preparedness drill. We were all evacuated to a large tented pavilion. We ran into Heather and Rich as we were being herded to the tent. To make the drill look real they were actually burning wood and palm fronds to make smoke outside the building. They had fire, police, and EMS crews all participate in the ‘disaster.’ Sandals employees were role-playing the victims and they were hamming it up. When one lady was brought out by stretcher next to us she really played it up for us with fake crying and screaming. It was a riot. When the exercise concluded they did not release us. They had to have a small recognition ceremony recognizing all the local crews. We all dutifully applauded as each team was recognized.
Finally, all lives saved and heroes recognized, they let us go. Patti and I took some pictures of the pool area and got a couple of burgers for lunch at the grill. It started to rain and we went to the gift shop to do some souvenir shopping. Next a stop was at the tour desk where we booked our waterfall climb. The trip was 31 dollars each.
Patti and I caught the shuttle back to our side of the resort. It was raining buckets! We waited about 10 minutes in the reception building on our side but it did not let up. We had about a 3-minute walk to our building so we finally just took off. We splashed in the puddles like a couple of kids. When we got to our room we opened the veranda doors and just sat and watched the rain. It was a nice prelude to a one-hour pre-dinner nap.
Heather and Rich met us at our room to go to dinner. We were dinning at ‘Valentino’s which is the upscale Italian restaurant. Up-scale because we had to wear pants (not shorts.) But it was nice. The waiters were friendly and even wore white gloves. We drank the house Champaign and had a nice 5 course Italian meal. I had shrimp and fettuccini and Patti had spaghetti. When the waiter brought out the desert he carried mine in his hand and balanced Patti’s desert plate on his head. He would kneel down for her to get it and the stand up before she could grab it. It was funny.
Afterwards we went to the lobby of our building. It was a large, open on two sides, room with sofas, chairs, game tables and several slot machines. We had a few more drinks and then Patti and I played some slots. I had put about 6 dollars into a slot machine and then hit it for 80 dollars. I quit right there. It paid for our waterfall trip. I shot a couple of games of pool with Rich. He beat me each time. He is very good. We thought we were making it a ‘late night’ but when we got back to the room it was still only 9:00 PM. Also when we got back to the room there was an envelope under our door confirming our departure information. Yuck!! We do not want to leave. We watched a little TV. Patti is now asleep as I write this.
Day 6—7/2 Sat.
Did the breakfast buffet and then headed over to the Manor side to catch the tour bus for Dunn’s River falls. The tour cost $31 each which covered the entrance to the park. I seriously doubt that the locals had to pay a 15 dollar US entrance fee. But that’s ok.
The falls were awesome and were definitely a highlight of the vacation. The water was much cooler (about 65 degrees) than the ocean and came down from the Blue Mountains. We started out on the beach. It was a 45 minute hike up through the falls rising a total of 985 feet. It was not like a rock climb, by that I mean we did not go straight up. It took about a half mile. Some parts were a little steep. We were in a group of 22 with a guide. Everybody held hands as we made a human chain. The waterfall is actually a series of falls with pools and flat spots in between.
We took pictures as we went along. I had purchased a waterproof disposable camera in the gift shop for this climb. There was also a Jamaican lady who videotaped the group. We bought a copy on DVD. It cost us $40 dollars. But it was worth it. It was dropped off at the hotel later that night. They did a good job. It had a music sound track and a nice intro showing some of Jamaica.
When we got back to the resort we had a sit down lunch on the manor side. Then we all went to try a pool on our side of the resort. The pool was much smaller than the big pool but it did have the wade up bar. It turned out our favorite bartender Denny was working there. His assistant Nicholas was very funny too and kept us in stitches. A little discreet tipping and our glasses rarely got close to being half empty. We were telling jokes and playing bar games.
Everybody at the bar was having a good time. There was a young couple sitting next to us from Pennsylvania that had just got married. I think they had a good time hanging with ‘the old people.” Another couple had gone for some snacks and came back with a plate of onion rings. Patti was staring at them and said they sure looked good. Denny took the plate from the lady and let Patti take one. Denny said, “We are all family here Mon.” funny.
Denny was watching our drinks closely and kept topping them off. We were there about 3 hours. Heather and Rich left for there room. By then we had downed quit a few ‘Denny specials”. We were… just a tad lit up. Ok more than a tad. But what the heck it was our last day and we weren’t driving anywhere. We ended up missing dinner but got a couple of cheeseburgers when the grill opened later. After that, we packed to get ready for our departure in the morning. How sad is that? I was able to get a broken zipper closed on one of our big bags…whew, last trip for that bag.
Day 7—7/3 Sun.
We sat the room alarm as well as placed a wake up call to make sure we got up in time. We showered and did the last minute packing of the bathroom stuff. Our bags had to be in the hall by 8:00 AM for the bellman to pick them up. We got a quick breakfast at the buffet and then Patti tracked down our room attendant and gave her a tip. We did some last minute souvenir shopping and dropped off our room key at the desk.
Our bus to Montego Bay left at 9:00 am. The trip to the airport took about 2 ½ hours with a stop about halfway at a little roadside stand on the beach. A 20oz coke cost 2 dollars. Again not what the locals pay I am sure. We saw many homes that were nothing more than shacks. One even had a blanket as a door. It does make me appreciate that by the grace of God we were born in America.
We got to the airport and got our bags off the bus. A skycap took us to the middle of the check in line not the end. Check in was very long because the Jamaican airport did not have x-ray machines to screen the luggage and it all had to be done by hand. After finally getting checked in, we found out our flight was delayed about an hour. I guess the plane taking us back to the States was delayed coming in due to a medical emergency. We had time to get some lunch.
We ate lunch at Jimmy Buffett’s Margaretaville restaurant. Patti and I ordered the Cheeseburger in paradise’. The menu read just like the song lyrics…. “Tomatoes, lettuce, Heinz 57… and French fried potatoes.”
Boarded the plane to Charlotte, North Carolina. The delay in take off caused us to miss our connecting flight to Dayton. We waited an hour for the next flight. Believe it or not, our bags again missed the flight. We did not get our luggage until about 7pm the next night.
After thoughts:
Like the song, “Come back, come back to Jamaica” we hope to. Other than the baggage issues we had a wonderful vacation. “Yeah Mon, no problem.” It turned out we picked the right week to go. Hurricane Dennis swept through the following week. It did not get Jamaica too bad but still they probably had to evacuate parts of the resort. We found ourselves worrying about the people we had met there like Denny and Nicholas.
